A Madman's Will: John Randolph, Four Hundred Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom

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Author :
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 132409222X
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis A Madman's Will: John Randolph, Four Hundred Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom by : Gregory May

Download or read book A Madman's Will: John Randolph, Four Hundred Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom written by Gregory May and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold saga of John Randolph’s 383 slaves, freed in his much-contested will of 1821, finally comes to light. Few legal cases in American history are as riveting as the controversy surrounding the will of Virginia Senator John Randolph (1773–1833), which—almost inexplicably—freed all 383 of his slaves in one of the largest and most publicized manumissions in American history. So famous is the case that Ta-Nehisi Coates has used it to condemn Randolph’s cousin, Thomas Jefferson, for failing to free his own slaves. With this groundbreaking investigation, historian Gregory May now reveals a more surprising story, showing how madness and scandal shaped John Randolph’s wildly shifting attitudes toward his slaves—and how endemic prejudice in the North ultimately deprived the freedmen of the land Randolph had promised them. Sweeping from the legal spectacle of the contested will through the freedmen’s dramatic flight and horrific reception in Ohio, A Madman’s Will is an extraordinary saga about the alluring promise of freedom and its tragic limitations.

A Madman's Will

Download A Madman's Will PDF Online Free

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781324095620
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (956 download)

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Book Synopsis A Madman's Will by : Gregory May

Download or read book A Madman's Will written by Gregory May and published by . This book was released on 2024-12-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold saga of John Randolph's 383 slaves, freed in his much-contested will of 1821, finally comes to light.

Longing for Connection

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Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421448319
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Longing for Connection by : Andrew Burstein

Download or read book Longing for Connection written by Andrew Burstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Untangling the private feelings, ambitions, and fears of early Americans through their personal writings from the Revolution to the Civil War. Modern readers of history and biography unite around a seemingly straightforward question: What did it feel like to live in the past? In Longing for Connection, historian Andrew Burstein attempts to answer this question with a vigorous, nuanced emotional history of the United States from its founding to the Civil War. Through an examination of the letters, diaries, and other personal texts of the time, along with popular poetry and novels, Burstein shows us how early Americans expressed deep emotions through shared metaphors and borrowed verse in their longing for meaning and connection. He reveals how literate, educated Americans—both well-known and more obscure—expressed their feelings to each other and made attempts at humor, navigating an anxious world in which connection across spaces was difficult to capture. In studying the power of poetry and literature as expressions of inner life, Burstein conveys the tastes of early Americans and illustrates how emotions worked to fashion myths of epic heroes, such as the martyr Nathan Hale, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. He also studies the public's fears of ocean travel, their racial blind spots, and their remarkable facility for political satire. Burstein questions why we seek a connection to the past and its emotions in the first place. America, he argues, is shaped by a persistent belief that the past is reachable and that its lessons remain intact, which represents a major obstacle in any effort to understand our national history. Burstein shows, finally, that modern readers exhibit a similar capacity for rationalization and that dire longing for connection across time and space as the people he studies.