Symbols of Freedom
Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War
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Narrated by:
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Bill Andrew Quinn
About this listen
In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divided people. A language of freedom played a similar role in shaping the new nation. Resonating across the country, they encouraged the creation of a republic where the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was universal.
For enslaved people and their allies, the language and symbols that served as national touchstones made a mockery of freedom. Yet, as author Matthew J. Clavin reveals, it was these powerful expressions of American nationalism that inspired forceful and even violent resistance to slavery.
Symbols of Freedom is the surprising story of how enslaved people and their allies drew inspiration from the language and symbols of American freedom. Mindful and proud that theirs was a nation born in blood, these disparate patriots fought to fulfill the republic's promise by waging war against slavery.
In a time when the US flag, the Fourth of July, and historical sites have never been more contested, this book reminds us that symbols are living artifacts whose power is derived from the meaning with which we imbue them.
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By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
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Four Hundred Souls
- A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
- By: Ibram X. Kendi - editor, Keisha N. Blain - editor
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the 400-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present - edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
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History never taught
- By Scott P ODonnell on 02-16-21
By: Ibram X. Kendi - editor, and others
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The War Before the War
- Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
- By: Andrew Delbanco
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights.
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Great promise greater disappointment
- By Amazon Customer on 12-09-18
By: Andrew Delbanco
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The Slave's Cause
- A History of Abolition
- By: Manisha Sinha
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 30 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved, found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor.
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Thorough, convincing and haunting
- By Roger on 07-23-17
By: Manisha Sinha
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Lies Across America
- What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
- By: Dr. James Loewen
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 18 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through the nation's public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way American listeners see their country.
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some necessary repetition
- By TravellingCari on 09-20-24
By: Dr. James Loewen
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Island on Fire
- The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic.
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Learned a lot
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-21
By: Tom Zoellner
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Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence
- By: Harlow Giles Unger
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From New York Times best-selling author and Founding Fathers' biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution, and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men's souls.
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well written and researched
- By K D on 09-29-19
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Freedom's Dominion
- A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
- By: Jefferson Cowie
- Narrated by: André Chapoy
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others. In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace.
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Very easily read and I learned a lot
- By Kev All on 02-05-23
By: Jefferson Cowie
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Union
- The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood
- By: Colin Woodard
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood.
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Required Reading
- By Ben Brafford on 08-30-20
By: Colin Woodard
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Give Me Liberty
- A History of America's Exceptional Idea
- By: Richard Brookhiser
- Narrated by: Tony Messano
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Nationalism is inevitable: It supplies feelings of belonging, identity, and recognition. It binds us to our neighbors and tells us who we are. But increasingly - from the United States to India, from Russia to Burma - nationalism is being invoked for unworthy ends: to disdain minorities or to support despots. As a result, nationalism has become to many a dirty word.
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Extraordinary!
- By Cynthia M. Suprenant on 12-23-19
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American History, Volume 1
- 1492-1877
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Craig Hinkle
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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American History, Volume 1 surveys the broad sweep of American history from the first Native American societies to the end of the Reconstruction period, following the Civil War. Drawing on a deep range of research and years of classroom teaching experience, Thomas S. Kidd offers students an engaging overview of the first half of American history. The volume features illuminating stories of people from well known presidents and generals, to lesser-known men and women who struggled under slavery and other forms of oppression to make their place in American life.
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Too much of an agenda
- By anon on 03-19-23
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Inhuman Bondage
- The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
- By: David Brion Davis
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In Inhuman Bondage, David Brion Davis sums up a lifetime of insight. He looks at slavery in the American South; the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; the daily life of slaves; the destructive internal long-distance slave trade; the sexual exploitation of slaves; the emergence of an African-American culture; and much more. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism.
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Very Useful Contribution
- By Biggar Thomas on 06-14-08