Thousands Gone: The First Two

¶ … Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, by Ira Berlin is a book about the first two centuries of slavery and the final part and epilogue discuss the time of revolution in North America, and how it affected the slaves in both the North and the South. The author shows that after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, many Americans began to question the practice of keeping slaves, in their own quest for liberty and freedom. He shows how slavery ended in the North, and the idea of adding free and slave states to the Union came about.

One of the most interesting aspects of these readings were the distinctions the author made among the different slave populations of the South. While it makes sense that slaves who lived in different areas of the South had different experiences and affected society in different ways that is not often discussed in slave histories and it seems many people assume that slave experiences were the same all across the South. This book illustrates that the culture and lifestyle of different groups in different areas helped create the overall culture in that area (such as the Creole slaves in Louisiana), and that further generations of American-born slaves and freedmen helped spread that culture throughout an area and keep it viable.