Slavery and the Making of America

"Slavery and the Making of America" by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton This companion text to the PBS television documentary is a riveting account of the taking of African slaves for trade in the Americas. This is a historical account of human suffering and exploitation, and the social impact of slavery upon the Americas. I have three criticisms of the text concerning its accounts. First, the text does not elaborate upon the Abolitionist movement as a fundamental religious movement. Second, the book does not elaborate enough on the role of religion in elevating former slaves. Third, the book gives no account of early voices in America protesting the practices of slavery. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams were all opposed to slavery and attempted to abolish its practice in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. For lack of sufficient votes from the southern colonies, the clause was stricken from the Declaration. Notwithstanding, the text is higly informative and thorough. It does enter into detail concerning the nature of slavery and the economoic and social forces which drove it, and it is an excellent resource.

Deftly co-authored by James Oliver Horton (Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies & History at George Washington University, and Historian Emeritus at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian) and Lois E. Horton (Professor of History at George Mason University), Slavery And The Making Of America is the companion volume to the PBS television miniseries of the same name and is an invaluable study of inclusion and influence of the African culture arising from conditions of slavery in the American south. Informing the reader with vivid and descriptive pictures, as well as providing precise understandings and accounts of historical occurrences and happenings from the African slave culture with stories from fugitive slaves, Civil War soldiers and many more engaging stories from the lives of many historical figures. Slavery And The Making Of America is very strongly recommended to all students of the African-American slave trade, and the emancipation of slaves in American cultural and political history.

Fact check: Legally protected Human bondage only existed in the USA from 1776/1789 until 1/31/1865. The 13 "Original" North American colonies were the property of the British Crown from 1619 until 7/4/1776. It was the King of England that allowed human bondage in those colonies. The Horton's "fact-based" reflections on the major impact that Negro ethnic people's had in shaping - the North American colonies - into the USA is a first rate and well-researched piece of history. But this is a story that has been told by many other historians over that past 50 years. This critic would have preferred seeing the Horton's explore the reasons... 1) Why African Negro ethnic slaves in-bondaged in West/Central/South/East Africa or Arabian North Africa - from 1000 ce until 2005 ce - have not had a similar effect in the expansion of human freedom on those regions of the Africa? 2) What was it about the USA (and its pale-skinned citizenry) that allowed the USA Negro bondman/bondwoman and USA Negro freedman/freedwoman to play such a role in the expression of human freedom in the USA - which still remains unknown in most of Africa if not most of the non-Western world? Blues to you

Slavery began in the United States in 1619, before the Pilgrims landed. It lasted until 1865, almost 250 years. Originally not just a southern institution, New York City had as many as 10,000 slaves at the end of the 1700's. The stories of slave holding has been told many times, from the movies like Uncle Tom's Cabin, to Roots, to Ken Burns series The Civil War. This book brings a concise overall view to slavery and seems to draw on a wealth of original schlorship. The photographs are not those commonly seen in such histories. This book covers more of the slave rebellions than most. The famous incidents like the Dred Scott case, the Harpers Ferry raid of John Brown and so on are covered, but so are rebellions of a smaller and much less well known nature. Some of the slaves brought to the US had been military leaders in Africa. They had the martial thoughts and training to forment true rebellion of a type that absolutely terrified the Southern slave owners. The book basically ends at the end of the Civil War when slavery as a legal institution ended. The story of the continuing African American struggles to find equality belong in other books. One final thought. Slavery existed in the South because of cotton, and particularily the difficulty of separating the cotton seed from the fiber. By the mid 1800's slavery was still in power, but the impact of the cotton gin was beginning to make slavery uneconomical. An interesting what if -- would slavery have ended within a few years even if the Civil War had not been fought.

SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA is a terrific historical account of the roles and influence that the black slaves made on the United States. The Hortons provide an insightful look on how the slaves impacted all aspects of culture from the first arrivals during the colonial period through the Revolution, the early nineteenth century fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, and finally the Civil War and post Reconstruction. The authors pull no punches while making a solid logical argument with strong supporting evidence that blacks were major players in the colonial and birth of a nation America. Especially interesting is the deep look at various roles and of unknown people. Anecdotal reciting and photographs augment this superb account of how much the black slaves influenced America. Easy to read but difficult to put down because the book is so engrossing, this is a fabulous tome that history buffs will take immense delight in as the Hortons make their case quite interesting as they shatter preconceptions of early American History with insightfulness. Harriet Klausner