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What Shall We Do with the Negro

Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

Paul D Escott author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Virginia Press

Published:30th Mar '09

Should be back in stock very soon

What Shall We Do with the Negro cover

Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the ""New York Times"" in 1862, 'What shall we do with the negro?' The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for both those in the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens' organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. ""What Shall We Do with the Negro?"" demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue. Escott gives especial critical attention to Abraham Lincoln. Since the civil rights movement, many popular books have treated Lincoln as an icon, a mythical leader with thoroughly modern views on all aspects of race. But, focusing on Lincoln's policies rather than attempting to divine Lincoln's intentions from his often ambiguous or cryptic statements, Escott reveals a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than on emancipation, who showed an enduring respect for states' rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly in freedom, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of the interests of blacks. Escott's approach reveals the depth of slavery's influence on society and the pervasiveness of assumptions of white supremacy. ""What Shall We Do with the Negro?"" serves as a corrective in offering a more realistic, more nuanced, and less celebratory approach to understanding this crucial period in American history.

Paul D. Escott's well-written, interesting, important, and revisionist 'What Shall We Do with the Negro?' urges general readers and historians not to romanticize and decontextualize historical events in general, and the Civil War, emancipation, and President Abraham Lincoln's role as 'the great emancipator' in particular. - John David Smith, author of An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918 ""'What Shall We Do with the Negro?' is the work of a veteran scholar who knows the primary and secondary sources of the Civil War era. This book will make a mark in the crowded field of Lincoln scholarship."" - Joseph P. Reidy, Howard University, author of From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800-1880

ISBN: 9780813927862

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 595g

320 pages