Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery

In some ways it's surprising that so few have been aware of the North's complicity in slavery. The very first slave auction took place in what is now New York. Even after the end of Northern slavery, Northern racism continued. Sadly, this was true in the White Churches as evidenced by the need for Richard Allen and Absalom Jones having to start the first Free Black Denomination due to White Christian prejudices. Though surprising that these facts are unknown, Farrow and her co-authors have done modern readers a great service by providing first-hand, primary sources that reveal not only the facts, but the cruel, soulless heart of the North's sad legacy of enslavement, racism, and prejudice. What readers don't hear as much of, are the inspiring stories of African American survival--through faith, nor do they hear enough of the stories of many Whites in the North, and even in the South, who did indeed reject slavery and the evil premises behind it. Of course, no one book can tell every aspect of the story of slavery. "Complicity" tells its story well. Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

I am so glad that I bought this one. I had read some of the Hartford Courant articles by Anne Farrow and wanted the full story of New England's part in slavery. This book is well researched and written. The authors are to be congratulated, and the Hartford Courant should be very proud of this team.

With all due respect to the teacher of US History, most US citizens have never taken a history course at a freshman college level. Yes, it is still a surprise to many people in the north. I live in Central PA where we see more confederate flags on pickups than you see in Alabama, yet there is a cultural moral superiority over the south that exists here, and can only be worse in Massachusetts. I took African-American history in college and even I was surprised to read that the mayor of NYC openly spoke of joining the south in secession. So sorry to burst your bubble, this is a needed book. Even northerners who will admit there were slaves throughout all the colonies, a book like this shows the truth we'd like to forget about. I was a working class white kid who thought himself pretty progressive and knowledgeable on these matters. Most of my peers and neighbors haven't ever given this topic a thought. If I can still find eye-opening material, most laymen can too. And some of the lucky few who've had a college course. Don't dismiss this as old news so readily. We're not all college professors.

Wow! This was one of those books I found myself carrying around from room to room, so impatient was I to resume it after interruptions. Maybe the material is familiar to serious students of American history, but for somebody like me this book was a revelation, showing how hugely significant slavery (both in the Americas and in Africa itself) was for the economies and lifestyles of the northern states. The material assembled here is utterly fascinating, and the writing is condensed and pointed, with telling choices of anecdote or quotation in almost every paragraph. The book is much more of a page turner than most histories I have read. Maybe it's because the writers are professional journalists, people whose daily job it is, after all, to make information accessible and interesting to the average guy. I also get the sense the writers were deeply moved by the material, and eager to share it. The book isn't written in a straight chronological form, but organized according to topic (for example, a slave revolt in colonial NYC, or the hounding of a Connecticut woman who ran a pre-Civil War school for blacks, or the kidnapping of freed slaves from the North, or the thoroughly horrible ivory trade's beneficial impact on two Connecticut towns), and the writers, skillfully shifting their gaze back and forth in time, are quite masterful at showing how the past leads to the present. When I had finished reading I had a much deeper understanding of slavery's power and significance. The book itself is very handsome, not too bulky to hold, inset with many well-placed illustrations - not all grouped in a center section, as they are in so many histories and biographies. My one quibble is that some of the maps and reproduced newspaper clippings, etc., are too small to be read easily without a magnifying glass.

At just over 300 pages, this slender book is packed with one-after-another stunning revelations of the long-buried history of the North's intimate involvement in the slave trade. This isn't the history your teachers taught you; this book will open your eyes to the realization that what has passed for American history for seven generations was a lie by omission, a mythology that portrayed the North as the home of noble souls who sought to free the slaves while the South exploited them. This book will show you how the North exploited both the slaves and their masters, making them the engine for its own great wealth. The book, written not by academicians but by professionaljournalists, is a rapid and exciting read, and the writing flows so smoothly, the reader finds herself at book's end wanting more. Surely, more will come in the wake of this survey. The book teases us with many brief tellings of tales that could be books unto themselves, and it should be no less than a first window into a new era of re-examination of our greatest national shame.