 | |
| Author | David W. Blight |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Belknap Press |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 512 |
| Awards | |
| ISBN | 978-0-674-00332-3 |
| 973.7 | |
| LC Class | E468.9 .B58 2001 |
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory is a 2001 book by the American historian David W. Blight. [1] The book was awarded the Frederick Douglass Prize for the best book on slavery of 2001. [2]
The book looks at the aftermath of the Civil War and argues that sectional division was lessened and reconciliation achieved at the expense of memory of slavery and the continuing effects of racial prejudice and discrimination on the United States. [2] Blight investigates how the Civil War was reimagined, with white soldiers on both sides sharing common valor and glory of military campaign, eliding the destruction of slavery from its central role as the integral cause of the war. [2] He describes the way Lost Cause, states rights, and the Old South myths were promoted by Southerners in literature and popular culture. These ideas were influential for decades, and published in textbooks, histories and other works. [2]
Blight’s work was widely praised by other scholars. István Vida writes, "It is justified to call Professor Blight a pioneer of this field [of memory studies], and his Race and Reunion offers the most comprehensive study of the War...rel[ying] on a stupendous variety of primary sources." [3] [4] [5] In Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Wilbur C. Rich writes, "Blight's book exposes the misinformation, puffery, and distortions that characterized Southern memories and history." [6]
In awarding Blight the $25,000 Frederick Douglass Prize, the award’s sponsors said:
“Blight’s book is not only good history, it is superb writing. The masterful and engaging style of Race and Reunion makes it extraordinarily appealing to a broad audience. That is important, because few Americans have a clear understanding of the impact of slavery in our nation’s history. This book will be read, and it will make a difference.” [2]
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
The Pulitzer Prize for History, administered by Columbia University, is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished book about the history of the United States. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. The Pulitzer Prize program has also recognized some historical work with its Biography prize, from 1917, and its General Non-Fiction prize, from 1962.
Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. Some neo-Confederate organizations such as the League of the South continue to advocate the secession of the former Confederate States.
My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first, discussing in greater detail his transition from bondage to liberty. Following this liberation, Douglass, a former slave, went on to become a prominent Abolitionist, speaker, author, and publisher.
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology that advocates the belief that the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. This ideology has furthered the belief that slavery was just and moral, because it brought economic prosperity. The notion was used to perpetuate racism and racist power structures during the Jim Crow era in the American South. It emphasizes the supposed chivalric virtues of the antebellum South. It thus views the war as a struggle primarily waged to save the Southern way of life and to protect "states' rights", especially the right to secede from the Union. It casts that attempt as faced with "overwhelming Northern aggression". At the same time, it minimizes or completely denies the central role of slavery and white supremacy in the build-up to, and outbreak of, the war.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History was founded in New York City by businessmen-philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman in 1994 to promote the study and interest in American history.
Neoabolitionist is a term used in historiography to characterize historians of race relations motivated by the spirit of racial equality typified by the abolitionists who fought to abolish slavery in the mid-19th century. They write especially about African-American history, slavery, the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era.
The North Star was a nineteenth-century anti-slavery newspaper published from the Talman Building in Rochester, New York, by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The paper commenced publication on December 3, 1847, and ceased as The North Star in June 1851, when it merged with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper. The North Star's slogan was: "Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are Brethren."
The Slave Power or Slavocracy was the perceived political power in the U.S. federal government held by slave owners during the 1840s and 1850s, prior to the Civil War. Antislavery campaigners, led by Frederick Douglass, during this period bitterly complained about what they saw as disproportionate and corrupt influence wielded by wealthy Southerners. The argument was that this small group of rich slave owners had seized political control of their own states and were trying to take over the federal government in an illegitimate fashion in order to expand and protect slavery. The argument was later widely used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854–55 to oppose the expansion of slavery.
David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
James Oakes is an American historian, and is a Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he teaches history courses on the American Civil War and Reconstruction, Slavery, the Old South, Abolitionism and U.S. and World History. He taught previously at Princeton University and Northwestern University.
Tiya Alicia Miles is an American historian. She is a Professor of History at Harvard University and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer whose work explores the intersections of African American, Native American and women’s histories. Her research includes African American and Native American interrelated and comparative histories ; Black, Native, and U.S. women's histories; and African American and Native American women's literature. She has been a MacArthur Fellow.
James F. Brooks is an American historian whose work on slavery, captivity and kinship in the Southwest Borderlands was honored with major national history awards: the Bancroft Prize, Francis Parkman Prize, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Frederick Douglass Prize. He is the Gable Professor of Early American History at the University of Georgia, and Research Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he serves as editor of the journal The Public Historian
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize is awarded annually by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.
Rebecca Jarvis Scott is an American historian, and Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, at University of Michigan.
John Stauffer is Professor of English, American Studies, and African American Studies at Harvard University. He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and photography.
Manisha Sinha is an Indian-born American historian, and the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016), which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian. She is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University.
Thavolia Glymph is an historian and professor. She is Professor of History and African-American Studies at Duke University.
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom is a 2018 biography of African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, written by historian David W. Blight. It was published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History.