Volume 29, Number 7 · April 29, 1982
How to Understand Slavery
By Stanley M. Elkins
Slavery and Freedom
by Willie Lee Rose, edited by William W. Freehling
Oxford University Press, 224 pp., $17.95
Who would have predicted, back amid the storms of 1975 or thereabouts when American historians were still smiting each other over the historical meaning of slavery, that only a half-dozen years later the waters could have become as deadly calm as they seem to be now? I can't say exactly why this is so, or how long it will last.[*] But meanwhile a voice is heard above these waters, speaking with precision and in tones of quiet reason. It is that of Willie Lee Rose; the voice has been with us for quite a while, and we have always known the sound of it. But it was never very loud, or nearly as insistent as most of the others, and we can hear it better now.
Review, 3383 words
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