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Nash's work may have contributed to the wider reading our modern texts include, rather than the revisionist version which paraphrases down to 'the North had to accept slavery against its will because the South would have balked from the new republic.' Our selection of texts, particularly the primary material, consider this dynamic with more balance than in the century and a half prior to Nash, if his historiography is true. Nash applauds DuBois particularly as one of the first to controvert such mythologization (p. 72), and we have read some of his primary works. Nash supports and expands upon DuBois and the other readings; what Nash does contradict is the assertion that "We hold these truths self evident," and proves the authors of those words had their fingers crossed when they signed at the bottom of that page.
What I took most from Race and Revolution was a wider understanding of the degree to...
The reductionist view that the South would suffer economic catastrophe as a result of emancipation, and thus slavery continued for a century after the American Revolution against Northern preferences, is the inherited wisdom I mostly encountered in public education. Nash's version that the North bore equal responsibility, and that this aggregate responsibility was caused by individuals who constituted and perpetuated abstract institutions forming the new nation, helps balance the Southern separatist explanation as perhaps history as revised by the victors (p. 3). This is a valuable perspective for all who would understand a national identity where slavery and then segregation comprise seven-eighths of our history rather than the nominal equality only one generation has…
references, is the inherited wisdom I mostly encountered in public education. Nash's version that the North bore equal responsibility, and that this aggregate responsibility was caused by individuals who constituted and perpetuated abstract institutions forming the new nation, helps balance the Southern separatist explanation as perhaps history as revised by the victors (p. 3). This is a valuable perspective for all who would understand a national identity where slavery and then segregation comprise seven-eighths of our history rather than the nominal equality only one generation has experienced for an entire lifetime so far.
In fact, the American Revolution may have served to assert the natural rights of some people, but those people were limited to a class of white males. It is important to keep in mind that one of the ideological underpinnings of the Revolution was a challenge to imperialist ideals, and race-based oppression and slavery had long been major parts of the imperial system. Despite that, it is unfair to characterize
This happened because blacks had learnt that they no longer had to obey the people that illegitimately enslaved them. Slaves had been determined to fight for their freedom through any means possible, and, they took advantage of any opportunity that they had to become free. According to Nash, tens of thousands of slaves have left the American continent as the British forces advanced inland. Apparently, a great number of black
We would not accept such an assertion about any other historical notion. Who would say that the revolution was inevitable, without the fight of the patriots and the leadership of the Founding Fathers? Yes, the question of slavery was a contentious issue -- but it was just as contentious a hundred years later, a hundred more years of bondage for blacks, and a hundred more years of making the
Race and Revolution An iconoclastic figure in the study of American History, Gary Nash, who is Director of the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA, writes from a position of authority as he questions the history that many of us were taught during our primary and secondary educations. In Race and Revolution, Nash turns his keen vision toward the matter of slavery at the time our country was
He adds a complete set of notes and references used at the end of each chapter in addition to the nineteen complete documents he includes at the end of the book. He completed exhaustive research, so his ideas are not simply based on speculation; they are well thought out and thoroughly investigated. He uses a combination of books, articles, letters, memoirs, and other written documents to ensure he has
He uses numerous quotes from source docs, and he does not imply his conclusions, he spells them out. He also writes in a relatively easy to read style that is academic but not too pedantic, and so it is easy for the student to follow and understand. In the context of the course, this book ties in quite well. It explains a part of American history that has often been