American slavery, American freedom

This book is justly a classic. A true masterpiece of historical research and writing. Morgan transparently uses a vast number of primary sources and painstakingly works toward an answer to an important historical question: how can we make sense of "the union of freedom and slavery in Virginia and America." (p. 362) I can see why it is a very rare example of a book that remains very influential in the historiography of a field for four decades (see: earlyamericanists.com/2013/08/08/the-american-dilemma/ )

I read this book immediately after finishing, [b:The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism|14894629|The Half Has Never Been Told Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism|Edward E. Baptist|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1390433357s/14894629.jpg|20548399] , and I read the new and old classics as a dialogue. This is a portion of the the half of the story of slavery that has been told, or the quarter since it only covers the first half of slavery in Virginia or less since it is only Virginia. The half that has been told because it explains the actions and ideas of enslavers. This is traditional history, in the sense that it is the history of those who held power and left documentation of their words and deeds.

What is curious to me is how this well-respected and well-read academic masterpiece does not seem to have penetrated the popular understanding of slavery or the treatment of slavery in high school history classes. This book has been a field defining classic for 40 years, and its thesis would not be familiar to most Americans, high school students, and I even, I’m guessing, most high school history teachers. In the popular understanding slavery seems most often to be presented as bad, but fundamentally at odds with the founding ideals of the United States of America. The notion that slavery, and the racism that was used to justify it, could themselves be foundational is seldom voiced in popular culture or in high school history classes. Instead, as the title of the US History text used by my school, Pursuing American Ideals, implies, racialized hierarchy in early America is viewed as a tragic oversight or mistake waiting patiently to be rectified. Morgan, on the other hand, argues that the use of enslaved laborers allowed founding Americans to conceive of a Republic of free citizens. He is saying that without slavery there would have been no freedom. Or, at the least, that this freedom would have not have been available to as large of a swathe of the white, male population.

The gap between scholarly and popular understandings of slavery can be seen in the cover of the 2003 paperback edition which I read and which is pictured here. The cover reproduces a mid-nineteenth century engraving depicting “Eli Whitney’s first cotton gin, 1793.” This is outside the chronology and geography of the book, which is subtitled The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. This mistake conveys the popular understanding of slavery as a static phenomenon of the past. It was bad, it was about cotton, and now it’s done. But, as both American Slavery, American Freedom and The Half Has Never Been Told make clear the institutions of American slavery and the experiences of those enslaved had a history. Like any historical development American slavery should be analyzed for continuity and change over time.