Volume 56, Number 5 · March 26, 2009
White South Africans and Their Slaves
By James M. McPherson
In response to The Historian Who Saw Through America
(December 4, 2008)
To the Editors:
Professor Bengt-Arne Vedin has pointed out a careless error for which I am responsible ["The Historian Who Saw Through America," NYR, December 4, 2008] by lumping South Africa with Brazil and the United States as an importer of non-European slaves. As George Frederickson, but not I, made clear, white South Africans enslaved and otherwise oppressed the indigenous African population.
James M. McPherson
Princeton, New Jersey