Term Paper on "Race and the Revolution"

Term Paper 7 pages (2172 words) Sources: 1 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Race and Revolution

Book Critique & Analysis: Race and Revolution

Nash, Gary. (1990). Race and the Revolution. New York: Madison House Publishers, Inc.

Gary Nash's book, Race and Revolution questions the common assumption that the Founding Fathers, however great, were 'men of their age' and did not understand how the ideology of slavery clashed with their conception of universal freedom and justice for all. The debate over race, and the question of whether America would become nation that would be governed for the people and by all the people, regardless of race, did not begin with the Civil War or even the time right before the 'War Between the States.' Rather, the conflict over race was codified within the text of the U.S. Constitution. Within the document that holds the Bill of Rights contains laws that demonstrate the defeatist stance by northerners who should have known better, but preferred not to fight for what they knew was right. Rather than an unquestioned triumph of democracy, the final wording of the constitution was also a cowardly retreat from the patriot's ideals of universal freedom.

Nash marshals considerable primary source documentation to demonstrate that, amongst early colonial patriots, it was largely recognized that the ideals that Americans had fought for required the complete abolition of slavery. It was later American liberal Progressive historians who would insist that slavery was such an "accepted institution" in human history and within the colonies that the Founding Fathers did not see or understand the moral contradictions slavery presented (Nash, 1990: 3). Ironically, even during the 1950s when the civil rights movement began to take off, so-called Consensus historians ignored the influence of race in American history, and envisioned the founding of the nation as a largely white struggle (Nash, 1990: 4). Viewed as such, the acceptance of slavery was ignored or bracketed in terms of 'they knew not what they did/they accepted defeat for the unity of the nation,' and left the struggle (wisely, it is implied) to later generations of Americans.

Nash goes back to what we know, empirically, about the real character of the American nation. The first African slaves were transported to Virginia in 1619 and during the founding of the new nation they made up 20% of the population. Despite their considerable numbers and considerable documentary and anecdotal evidence of the lives of African-Americans, still there remains a longstanding imbalance in the way that the history of African-Americans in the United States has been treated by historians. It is if, Nash writes, blacks suddenly sprung into existence in American history after the Missouri Compromise of 1820. But slavery was contentious issue during the Constitutional Convention, and the debate was a palpable presence even during the revolution itself.

To address this imbalance of present-day historians, Nash dedicates himself to exploding some long-standing myths, such as the fact that Crispus Atticus, the first black man to die fighting for the colonies, is representative of all black attitudes of the era. In fact, far more Blacks, free and slave, joined the British army, because the so-called patriot army often prohibited blacks from joining, and even those state militias that did allow blacks to participate did not give much an incentive to blacks risk their lives as did the British army. In contrast to the Americans, the British guaranteed unconditional freedom to every slave that left his master to join the British forces, an attractive incentive for men in bondage.

Although the actions of the slaves that fought for the royalist side seem both justified and natural in retrospect, this English policy profoundly upsets the easy equation many white Americans make of freedom with the America side, and tyranny with the British side. Americans may have fought for no taxation without representation, but they denied freedom and representation to African-Americans before and after the struggle for independence from British control. They did not even guarantee liberty to the black men who did fight for liberty against the supposed will of a tyrannical king. The king did not exercise dominion over the colonists with as nearly as much ruthlessness as an overseer or slave-owner did over blacks. It is discomforting to our conception of our history to realize that blacks had loyalty, not to American soil (to which many had only been recently transported from Africa, as the slave trade was still legal) but to the ideal of freedom. Nationhood did not matter; it was freedom that mattered to slaves. Ironically, this was true of the revolutionaries who placed their concept of personal and economic freedom above loyalty to the crown.

Nash does not entirely deny the positive benefits of revolutionary rhetoric upon the enslaved population of the Americas. For example, the ideals of inalienable rights motivated many slaves to rebel and fueled the abolitionist movement. The rhetoric of the colonists against the reification of aristocracy and British oppression inspired early abolitionists, white and black to do away with all hierarchies, of race as well as titles. After all, if titles and a system that gave power like a monarchy based upon birth was wrong, why not a system that privileged individuals on the basis of their racial heritage, rationalized the abolitionists? Nash's point is not to convince modern readers that slavery is wrong, of course, as most rational individuals today take this assumption as a given. Rather it is to show that this ideology of universal enfranchisement was also spoken of in the literature of the day, and the concept of racial equality is not a new doctrine.

Nash divides his book into three essays guided theoretical rubrics. One section focuses on how the revolution fanned abolitionist ideals. The second focuses upon the service of blacks during the revolution, and finally the third essay recounts the disappointing aftermath, as hopes for creating an ideologically consistent and coherent American ideology that was applicable to all Americans, regardless of race, were dashed with the wording of the constitution and the many compromises it spawned afterwards, as America expanded into the Western territories and increased in size during the 19th century.

Nash is not interested merely in taking Southern states-rights advocates to task, or blaming the South alone for laws like the 3/5ths compromise, in which every black slave was valued as only a part of a white voter, and which effectively enshrined slavery in the constitution and deprived blacks of voting rights. Nash also places the blame squarely on Northern states as well, for failing to fight hard enough for abolition (Nash, 1990: 7). Right after the revolution would have been an ideal time to abolish slavery, but this was not accomplished because the Founding Fathers, even the fathers who abhorred slavery, refused to act with courage. The implication is that when men, even great men in positions of power act with cowardice, then historical opportunities for change are lost. The entire racial history of America might have been rewritten if northerners and abolitionists had fought more zealously for a different type of legal framework for America, and perhaps the Civil War would never have been fought. White and black lives could have been saved on both sides.

As a historian, Nash engages in an extended dialogue, not simply with the past, but with the historians of the recent present. It takes to task those northerners and Founding Fathers that knew and admitted slavery was wrong, yet allowed it to perpetuate, out of cowardice, or the desire to form a union more quickly and more easily and historians who have accepted their version of history. Rather than make allowances for the dire nature of the times, and the sense that time was 'wasting' for fear that the new nation might be attacked by a foreign power, if action was not taken soon, Nash suggests that actually more time was wasted by allowing slavery, which fragmented America, diluted its ideals, and crippled its emerging system of government. To this day, America is still wrestling with race, from today's debate Affirmative Action, back to the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement, back to emancipation and the Civil War, all because of this critical failure of the Founding Father's judgment.

The failed struggle of the Founding Fathers to create true justice means now Americans still struggle with the issue of race because the fathers passed off the responsibility to later generations, rather than grappled with it themselves. Rather than the generation that ought to have tackled the issue, later generations have debated, suffered, been enslaved, and died. Nash is courageous in being willing to criticize Founding Fathers whose reputations are virtually sacrosanct, and not to make excuses for people as men of their times, which is an easy and often reflexive gesture of even good historians.

The idea that abolishing slavery was not pragmatic has become a kind of big lie, in Nash's view, accepted even by academic historians as well as ordinary citizens today. It is also, Nash argues, sloppy thinking in general and sloppy historical analysis to assert that… READ MORE

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