Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War
With a fresh interpretation of African American resistance to kidnapping and pre–Civil War political culture, Blind No More sheds new light on the coming of the Civil War by focusing on a neglected truism: the antebellum free states experienced a dramatic ideological shift that questioned the value of the Union. Jonathan Daniel Wells explores the cause of disunion as the persistent determination on the part of enslaved people that they would flee bondage no matter the risks. By protesting against kidnappings and fugitive slave renditions, they brought slavery to the doorstep of the free states, forcing those states to recognize the meaning of freedom and the meaning of states’ rights in the face of a federal government equally determined to keep standing its divided house.

Through these actions, African Americans helped northerners and westerners question whether the constitutional compact was still worth upholding, a reevaluation of the republican experiment that would ultimately lead not just to Civil War but to the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. Wells contends that the real story of American freedom lay not with the Confederate rebels nor even with the Union army but instead rests with the tens of thousands of self-emancipated men and women who demonstrated to the Founders, and to succeeding generations of Americans, the value of liberty.

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Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War
With a fresh interpretation of African American resistance to kidnapping and pre–Civil War political culture, Blind No More sheds new light on the coming of the Civil War by focusing on a neglected truism: the antebellum free states experienced a dramatic ideological shift that questioned the value of the Union. Jonathan Daniel Wells explores the cause of disunion as the persistent determination on the part of enslaved people that they would flee bondage no matter the risks. By protesting against kidnappings and fugitive slave renditions, they brought slavery to the doorstep of the free states, forcing those states to recognize the meaning of freedom and the meaning of states’ rights in the face of a federal government equally determined to keep standing its divided house.

Through these actions, African Americans helped northerners and westerners question whether the constitutional compact was still worth upholding, a reevaluation of the republican experiment that would ultimately lead not just to Civil War but to the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. Wells contends that the real story of American freedom lay not with the Confederate rebels nor even with the Union army but instead rests with the tens of thousands of self-emancipated men and women who demonstrated to the Founders, and to succeeding generations of Americans, the value of liberty.

41.95 In Stock
Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War

Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War

by Jonathan Daniel Wells
Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War

Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War

by Jonathan Daniel Wells

Hardcover(New Edition)

$41.95 
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Overview

With a fresh interpretation of African American resistance to kidnapping and pre–Civil War political culture, Blind No More sheds new light on the coming of the Civil War by focusing on a neglected truism: the antebellum free states experienced a dramatic ideological shift that questioned the value of the Union. Jonathan Daniel Wells explores the cause of disunion as the persistent determination on the part of enslaved people that they would flee bondage no matter the risks. By protesting against kidnappings and fugitive slave renditions, they brought slavery to the doorstep of the free states, forcing those states to recognize the meaning of freedom and the meaning of states’ rights in the face of a federal government equally determined to keep standing its divided house.

Through these actions, African Americans helped northerners and westerners question whether the constitutional compact was still worth upholding, a reevaluation of the republican experiment that would ultimately lead not just to Civil War but to the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery. Wells contends that the real story of American freedom lay not with the Confederate rebels nor even with the Union army but instead rests with the tens of thousands of self-emancipated men and women who demonstrated to the Founders, and to succeeding generations of Americans, the value of liberty.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780820354859
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Publication date: 04/15/2019
Series: Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures Series , #57
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 198
Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

JONATHAN DANIEL WELLS is a professor of history in the department of Afroamerican and African Studies, the Residential College, and the department of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of several books, including Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South and most recently, The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War.

JONATHAN DANIEL WELLS is a professor of history in the department of Afroamerican and African Studies and dean of the Residential College at the University of Michigan. He is the editor of The Routledge History of Nineteenth-Century America and the author of several books, including Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South and A House Divided: The Civil War and Nineteenth-Century America.
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