The Slave's Cause
A History of Abolition
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Narrated by:
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Allyson Johnson
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By:
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Manisha Sinha
About this listen
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. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive new history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave's cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.
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The Black History of the White House
- By: Clarence Lusane
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black first family, the Obamas.
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From Quarries to the Oval Office - Unforgettable
- By Susie on 07-14-16
By: Clarence Lusane
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Force and Freedom
- Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence
- By: Kellie Carter Jackson
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.
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My ancestors were active in their freedom
- By Amazon Customer on 09-24-24
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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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With élan and erudition - and with winning enthusiasm - Henry Louis Gates Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Rogers' work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African American history in question-and-answer format. Among the 100 questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry?
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great book
- By Anthony Costello on 06-14-18
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Debunking the 1619 Project
- Exposing the Plan to Divide America
- By: Mary Grabar
- Narrated by: Liisa Ivary
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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According the New York Times’ “1619 Project”, America was not founded in 1776, with a declaration of freedom and independence, but in 1619 with the introduction of African slavery into the New World. Ever since then, the “1619 Project” argues, American history has been one long sordid tale of systemic racism.
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the ultimate downplay
- By Stephen Alston on 01-09-22
By: Mary Grabar
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A Self-Made Man
- The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849
- By: Sidney Blumenthal
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The first of a multivolume history of Lincoln as a political genius - from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, his assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. This first volume traces Lincoln from his painful youth, describing himself as "a slave", to his emergence as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln.
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I Can't Wait for Volume II!
- By NC-N-NC on 06-14-16
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers
- By: Brion McClanahan Ph. D.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Here to rescue the reputations of our Founding Fathers from the plague of modern political correctness is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers. Author and Professor Brion McClanahan shows how patriots like Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton laid the foundations of American civil liberty and had a better understanding of the problems facing us today than our current Congress.
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Highly Recommended
- By Colleen H. on 08-13-09
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Freethinkers
- A History of American Secularism
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than 200 years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution.
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Essential history of free thought in America
- By Clark Savage on 11-27-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Four Views on the Apostle Paul: Audio Lectures
- 18 Lessons on Reformed, Catholic, 'Post-New Perspective,' and Jewish Understandings of Paul
- By: Michael F. Bird, Douglas A. Campbell, Mark D. Nanos, and others
- Narrated by: Michael F. Bird, Douglas A. Campbell, Mark D. Nanos, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
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Recent years have seen much controversy about the apostle Paul, his context, and its effect on his theology. In Four Views on the Apostle Paul: Audio Lectures, four leading scholars present their views on the best framework for describing Paul's theological perspective, including his view of salvation, the significance of Christ, and his vision for the churches.
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Author intro needs help
- By EverDave on 10-25-20
By: Michael F. Bird, and others
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The Real Lincoln
- A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
- By: Thomas J. Dilorenzo
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in American history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's?
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OpEd Disguised as History
- By John McDowell on 10-30-18
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These Truths
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In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.
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Good Story but distracting sound engineering
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What listeners say about The Slave's Cause
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Roger
- 07-23-17
Thorough, convincing and haunting
This book is meticulously researched, and the themes are presented convincingly.
Sinha has several themes: Her first is that the white abolition movement was inspired by black activity. Sinha does a very good job detailing anti-slavery activities by blacks—from self-emancipation (running away) and uprisings, to periodicals, newspapers and lecture tours. Sinha deservedly gives blacks due credit for their many roles in the abolition movement, in ways that made the evils of slavery harder and harder to ignore. Certainly white abolition was inspired by the plight of the slaves, and certainly slave uprisings motivated whites, but it’s hard to believe that white support for abolition wasn’t also important to slaves. A more nuanced approach might be to argue that black and white abolition fed off each other, in a mutually supportive way.
Sinha’s second theme is how free blacks suffered from the same racial theories that were used to justify slavery. In effect, the free states invented Jim Crow decades before the Civil War. This leads to Sinha’s third theme—that abolition had two goals: emancipation and equality. The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment achieved the first goal, but the second would be ignored for a century and is still not fully attained.
Sinha’s fourth theme builds on the two goals of emancipation and equality to demonstrate the joint efforts of abolition and women’s suffrage. While most suffragettes supported abolition and most famous abolitionists like Douglass and Garrison supported women’s suffrage, Sinha explains how what she calls the evangelical wing of abolition could not get comfortable with equality for women. This ultimately led to a break in the two movements and the eventual abandonment of the goal of racial equality by much of the women’s movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Sinha’s fifth theme explains how the abolition movement tried to make common cause with the white working class, with minimal success. Sinha also recounts how many people blamed capitalism for the rise of slavery. But America was part of the British mercantile system when slavery first took hold, so perhaps greed and selfishness, rather than simply capitalism, make a better explanation.
This is a very moving book. Much has been made of the irony of the “land of liberty” being founded on the backs of slavery. Even Samuel Johnson commented on it at the time of the Revolution. This leads to the question how such moral blindness could exist. Edmund Morgan has explained how Virginia used the idea of black inferiority to shake off many of the class-based distinctions among whites that were the inheritance of the Old World. Gordon Wood has explained how slavery was must one of many societal differences accepted in colonial America, but the only one to survive the Revolution. If race was therefore the critical factor, and white Americans also treated Native Americans with the same disdain as they treated blacks, then I wish Sinha had explored the question of whether the abolition movement also tried to make common cause with Native Americans.
This book did so much that I wanted more, which is a sign of a very good book.
Clearly, America made a devil’s bargain to accept slavery to achieve independence from Britain and then to establish the Union. Quite possibly, there was no way to abolish slavery at the time of the Revolution, and perhaps the Union was not strong enough to survive the upheaval of abolition until the 1860s. Sinha, however, has done a marvelous job detailing many of the horrific costs of that bargain. It is a fruitful area for further exploration.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Erica Olsen
- 12-09-18
A challenge as an audio book but worth it!
This book is remarkable for its depth and breadth. The density of the research made it a bit of a challenge as an audio book, but I am so grateful for this work. It has broadened my knowledge tremendously.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Paul Fletcher
- 03-28-21
slavetocracy
American labor capital, buy low sale high this is the way profits are made. Slave labor is the foundation of America. The dollar is always looking to buy, borrow or steal: land, lobor or capital. Nation States are merely the game board that so called civilizations play on.
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1 person found this helpful
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- John P. Stierman
- 10-18-17
Essential History--Not Engaging
This tome has enjoyed critical acclaim from leading scholars. It is chock full of information, and I am happy that I read it. Having said that, I did not find the book engaging. And the reader needs to learn more about American history. I cringed when I heard her pronounce, repeatedly, George Whitfield, Roger Taney, and Clement Vallandigham (especially the latter). Having said that, I did enjoy her voice, and think she was a good choice. The errors mentioned previously could have been easily corrected, which makes my wonder how one prepares for reading a book such as this.
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2 people found this helpful
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- ejb
- 11-20-23
Slow Start, but Great Book
In listening to this rather than reading it, I struggled to follow it in the beginning. I think maybe I needed the book to be more linear then. However, as the book went on I enjoyed it more and more.
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- Chief
- 10-30-23
Awful Narrator
I’m absolutely positive that they could have found a better reader of this important story!!
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