Douglass was not only an astonishing man of words, but a thinker steeped in Biblical story and theology. Blight tells the fascinating story of Douglass's two marriages and his complex extended family. In this remarkable biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historians have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass's newspapers. He sometimes argued politically with younger African-Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. He denounced the premature end of Reconstruction and the emerging Jim Crow era. His book, Frederick Douglass Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. The book also includes a chronology of Douglasss life, a bibliography, questions for consideration, illustrations, and an index. By the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Douglass became the most famed and widely traveled orator in the nation. Blights extensive introduction and the related materials he provides place the Narrative in both its historical and literary contexts. Blight notes that in a sense, Douglass was living in the past during the last part of his life the Civil War and Reconstruction were the refer. He broke with Garrison to become a political abolitionist, a Republican, and eventually a Lincoln supporter. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, often to large crowds, using his own story to condemn slavery.
His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.
He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. Selections of Civil War era poetry may also be provided at times during the course.Summary: "The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. Films:įilms will be scheduled during the course: especially several episodes of the PBS series, “The Civil War.” The film, “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Civil War,” will also be assigned. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War In American Memory. For further background reading on the post-war period you may want to consult David W. James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is provided largely as background reading. Teaching Assistants will have discretion in assigning particular documents for each week’s sections, and many such documents will be especially important for use in paper assignments. We are using two anthologies of documents (Gienapp and Johnson). William Gienapp, ed., Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection. Norton. Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. Farrar Strauss Giroux. Johnson, ed., Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War. Bedford Books. Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches, ed. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom. Oxford University Press. Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat.Harvard University Press. Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. University of North Carolina Press.Įric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. Harper & Row.įrederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, ed. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press.ĭrew G. Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. Hill and Wang.ĭavid Blight, Why the Civil War Came. New York: Oxford University.Ĭharles R.
0 kommentar(er)
