Race and the Early Republic Racial Consciousness and Nation-Building in the Early Republic

by Morrison, Michael A.; Stewart, James Brewer; Davis, David Brion; Ford, Lacy K., Jr.; Gjerde, Jon; Horton, Lois E.; Melish, Joanne Pope; Richter, Daniel K.; Roediger, David R.; Ronda, James P.

• ISBN13: 9780742521308
• ISBN10: 0742521303
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

By 1840, American politics was a paradox--unprecedented freedom and equality for men of European descent, and the simultaneous isolation and degradation of people of African and Native American descent. Historians have often characterized this phenomenon as the white republic. Race and the Early Republic offers a rich account of how this paradox evolved, beginning with the fledgling nation of the 1770s and running through the antebellum years. The essays in the volume, written by a wide array of scholars, are arranged so as to allow a clear understanding of how and why white political supremacy came to be in the early United States. Race and the Early Republic is a collection of diverse, insightful and interrelated essays that promote an easy understanding of why and how people of color were systematically excluded from the early U.S. republic.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
Michael A. Morrison
James Brewer Stewart
The Pursuit of Whiteness: Property, Terror, and Expansion, 1790-1860	5	(22)
David R. Roediger
``Believing That Many of the Red People Suffer Much for the Want of Food'': Hunting, Agriculture, and a Quaker Construction of Indianness in the Early Republic	27	(28)
Daniel K. Richter
From Class to Race in Early America: Northern Post-Emancipation Racial Reconstruction	55	(20)
Lois E. Horton
The ``Condition'' Debate and Racial Discourse in the Antebellum North	75	(20)
Joanne Pope Melish
``Here in America There Is Neither King Nor Tyrant'': European Encounters with Race, ``Freedom,'' and Their European Pasts	95	(18)
Jon Gjerde
Modernizing ``Difference'': The Political Meanings of Color in the Free States, 1776-1840	113	(22)
James Brewer Stewart
Making the ``White Man's Country'' White: Race, Slavery, and State-Building in the Jacksonian South	135	(24)
Lacy K. Ford Jr.
``We Have a Country'': Race, Geography, and the Invention of Indian Territory	159	(18)
James P. Ronda
The Culmination of Racial Polarities and Prejudice	177	(20)
David Brion Davis
Index	197	(4)
About the Contributors	201