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The widely recited claim that the Irish in the South were perhaps more misused than slaves is traceable to William Howard Russell (here, 1855), who wrote: 'The labour of ditching, [...]

AS THE FREEBORN WILLIAM H. GIBSON SR. TRAVELED FROM HIS NATIVE Baltimore, Maryland, to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1847, the 'picturesque scenery' of the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River inspired [...]

With the start of the Civil War, the nation was thrust into the most crucial event in its brief history. From the time of its inception, America carried the overwhelming [...]

TO EMANCIPATE A slave, explained Virginia's Thomas R. Dew, was to throw him 'into the hands of those who have no scruples of conscience--those who will not perhaps treat him [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2009.08.001 Byline: Derek H. Alderman (a)(b) Abstract: There are growing calls from some African Americans, particularly in the U.S. South, to create sites of counter-memory that recognize the often forgotten historical struggles and contributions of the enslaved. Commemoration of slavery is not only a contentious issue for whites but also African Americans, who differ with each other over how best (or even whether) to narrate these difficult memories. Few geographers have explored the politics of remembering slavery among African Americans and how these struggles shape the commemorative landscape. I explore the efforts of Abigail Jordan to establish a monument to the enslaved in Savannah, Georgia (USA) and the ensuing public debate that took place over the appropriateness of inscribing the monument with a description of the inhumanity found on slave ships during the Middle Passage. Led by two outspoken black officials, Savannah's city council refused to give final approval for the monument until the inscription was revised to end on a more optimistic note. An analysis of public comments made about the Savannah monument reveals that the inscription debate served as an arena for multiple ideas about how best to represent African Americans as victims of slavery, the legacy of racism and slavery in contemporary America, as well as conflicting personal and political visions within the black community. In interpreting the Savannah case, I suggest that the politics of remembering slavery be examined in terms of surrogation, the search for a suitable commemorative stand in for the enslaved, and textual politics, the recognition that the words used to represent slavery are at the heart of the struggle to remember (or forget) the trauma of enslavement. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Geography, Brewster 227-A, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA (b) Center for Sustainable Tourism, RW 208 Rivers, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of our presidents. He saved the Union, which made it possible for him to free the slaves. But he did more than this; without him [...]

In 1807 the U.S. Congress passed legislation, which became effective on January 1, 1808, to end all importations of slaves into the United States. Even before that date, Congress had [...]

While historic sites in the American South have tended not to engage visitors in critical discussions of slavery, there are indications that this pattern is changing. In understanding how the [...]

In preparation for the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, Abraham Lincoln set down notes for a speech differentiating the Republican view of slavery from that of his Democratic rival, Stephen A. [...]

Byline: Marc D. Davidson (1) Abstract: Today, the United States is as dependent on fossil fuels for its patterns of consumption and production as its South was on slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. That US congressmen tend to rationalise fossil fuel use despite climate risks to future generations just as Southern congressmen rationalised slavery despite ideals of equality is perhaps unsurprising, then. This article explores similarities between the rationalisation of slavery in the abolition debates and the rationalisation of ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases in the US congressional debates on the Kyoto Protocol. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15, 1012 CP, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Article History: Registration Date: 13/03/2007 Received Date: 17/10/2005 Accepted Date: 23/02/2007 Online Date: 27/04/2007

In the framework of American slave societies from the turn of the nineteenth century, the definition of citizenship contained in the Brazilian Constitution of 1824 was certainly the most inclusive one for African descendants. Furthermore, discussions leading up to this solution, both in the Cortes of Lisbon (1821-2) and in the Rio de Janeiro Constituent Assembly (1823), did not resort to the idea of race in approaching the issue. This article analyses how the absence of racial criteria to define the citizenship of African descendants contributed directly to the maintenance of social and racial hierarchies in Brazil, which were based precisely on black slavery. We attempt to understand the terms of the debate over this matter both in Lisbon and in Rio de Janeiro, looking at their similarities and differences as well as their relation to the notion of race. Finally, we seek to determine how the text of the Constitution of 1824 was related to a long-term policy for the expansion of slavery in Brazil.

In August 1843 Presbyterian minister Henry Highland Garnet delivered his 'Address to the Slaves of the United States of America' to the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, NY. While often read (and almost as often dismissed) as either an unqualified call for a violent slave rebellion or, at the least, a celebration of prior acts of militant resistance which suggested that such methods deserved further consideration than they were currently receiving, the 'Address' might profitably be approached within the context of an identity-action dialectic. Garnet's discussion of resistance and violence is more complicated than many scholars have recognized; one way in which we might recuperate these contested ideas and recognize their implications for African American identity and agency is to examine the way Garnet engaged and negotiated some of the antebellum African American community's dominant discursive traditions. The image and the accompanying idiom of a frequently submissive, emasculated 'suffering servant' as well as the image/idiom of a violent, potentially brutish 'avenging messiah' have long occupied prominent positions in the African American cultural imagination. Garnet's 'Address' negotiated the disjunctive logics of submission/resistance, emasculation/brutish violence, and 'suffering servant'/'avenging messiah' by drawing on and exploiting the resources of these and other performative traditions in order to fashion a tertium quid, a middle course of action capable of constituting a new mode of African American agency and an alternative form of civic identity. Keywords: Henry Highland Garnet; African American Identity; Resistance; Nonresistance; African American Masculinity; Performative Traditions