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Human Bondage


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OgminMay 24, 2005 7:35am
A Radical History of the Underground Railroad

Most American history textbooks paint a romantic picture of the the Underground Railroad. In his new book Bound for Canaan author Fergus Bordewich challenges those images, telling the story of a bi-racial movement animated by moral outrage, religious fervor and radical politics. Link below includes a 38 minute interview with the author and a text excerpt from Chapter One: An Evil Without Remedy




The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
by Fergus Bordewich
214878Nov 18, 2005 2:10am
Founded in 1888 by veteran Union Army, Navy and Marine corps officers, ours is the oldest chartered Civil War institution in the United States created to preserve the history of that conflict, and to promote public education through the collection, preservation and display of artifacts and written and photographic documents.



cwurmuseum.org [cwurmuseum.org]

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OgminNov 18, 2005 10:17pm
The Anger and Shock of a City's Slave Past

The exhibition, which illustrates the centrality of 200 years of slavery to the growth of New York City, opened on Oct. 7 and runs through March 5. The very idea of slaves walking the streets of what is now SoHo or of slave auction blocks in Lower Manhattan - in a city known for tolerance and diversity - has attracted people of varied races and ages. There are no specific attendance figures yet, but museum officials said the exhibition galleries had been packed and attendance was up 83 percent over the same period last year, when the museum presented an exhibition on Alexander Hamilton.

The $5 million slavery exhibition features more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps spanning 9,000 square feet in 10 galleries. Visitors can see advertisements for runaway slaves and "negroes, to be sold"; caricatured drawings of blacks; items like chairs and cribs made by slave hands; and a 1644 document granting slaves "half freedom" and land around what is now Washington Square.

After all, slaves in New York worked sunup to sundown. Slaves helped build the wall on Wall Street (and were sold there) and built the first City Hall and Trinity Church. Slavery was the lifeline for hundreds of city businesses. During British rule, about 40 percent of the city's households owned slaves. Institutional exhibitions about America's slave-holding past are relatively new and help foster a national conversation about race, said James Oliver Horton, the chief historian for "Slavery." This show's size and location facilitate that dialogue, he said. "Back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton asked for a national conversation about race, most people didn't have the context in which to have the conversation," said Dr. Horton, a professor of American studies and history at George Washington University. "This exhibition will help Americans have such a historical context. It will help people start with a common experience."

One commonality that emerges from viewing five hours of the visitor videotapes is how much people do not know. Many were unaware of the existence or extent of slavery in New York, which lasted until 1827, longer than in any other Northern state except New Jersey.

also make sure to take a good look at --

Slavery in the North

an excellent website that will blow and educate your mind.

African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people.

dreamartistDec 8, 2005 8:03am
QUOTATION: He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves--and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.

ATTRIBUTION: Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut's Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981). As quoted in Divided Houses, ch. 1, by Leeann Whites (1992).

On a Southern slave owner. The "unfortunate results of his bad ways" refers to the children born of his illicit sex with slave women.


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OgminMar 6, 9:10am
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Barely a year into the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested buying slaves for $400 apiece under a "gradual emancipation" plan that would bring peace at less cost than several months of hostilities.

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Human Bondage

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