Sydney Nathans offers a counterpoint to the narrative of the Great Migration, a central theme of black liberation in the twentieth century. He tells the story of enslaved families who became the ...emancipated owners of land they had worked in bondage.
Sydney Nathans offers a counterpoint to the narrative of the Great Migration, a central theme of black liberation in the twentieth century. He tells the story of enslaved families who became the ...emancipated owners of land they had worked in bondage.
To Free a Family tells the remarkable story of Mary Walker, who in August 1848 fled her owner for refuge in the north and spent the next seventeen years trying to recover her son and daughter. Her ...freedom, like that of thousands who escaped from bondage, came at a great price—remorse at parting without a word, fear for her family’s fate.
To Free a Family tells the remarkable story of Mary Walker, who in August 1848 fled her owner for refuge in the North and spent the next seventeen years trying to recover her son and daughter. Her ...freedom, like that of thousands who escaped from bondage, came at a great price--remorse at parting without a word, fear for her family's fate.
Originally published in 1973. Professor Nathans illuminates the changes wrought by Jacksonian democracy on the career of Daniel Webster, a major political figure, and on the destiny of a major ...political party, the Whigs. Daniel Webster was a creative anachronism in the Jacksonian era. His career illustrates the fate of a generation of American politicians, reared to rule in a traditional world of defined social classes where gentlemen led and the masses followed. With extensive research into primary sources, Nathans interprets Webster as a leader in the older political tradition, hostile to permanent organized political parties and fearful of social strife that party conflict seemed to promote. He focuses on Webster's response to the rise of entrenchment of voter-oriented partisan politics. He analyzes Webster's struggle to survive, comprehend, and finally manipulate the new politics during his early opposition to Jackson; his roles in the Bank War and the nullification crisis; and the contest for leadership within the Whig Party from 1828 to 1844. Webster and the Whigs resisted and then belatedly attempted to answer the demands of the new egalitarian mass politics. When Webster failed as an apologist for government by the elite, he became a rhapsodist of American commercial enterprise. Seeking a new power base, he adapted his public style to the standards of simplicity and humility that the voters seemed to reward. Nathans shows, however, that Webster developed a realistic vision of the common bonds of Jacksonian society—of the basis for community—that would warrant anew the trust needed for the kind of leadership he offered. The meaning of Webster's career lies in these attempts to bridge the old and new politics, but his attempt was doomed to ironic and revealing failure. Nathans studies Webster's impact on the Whig party, showing that his influence was strong enough to thwart the ambitions of his rivals Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun but not strong enough to achieve his own aspirations. Nathans argues that Webster, through his efforts to increase his authority within the party, merely revealed his true weakness as a sectional leader. His successful blocking of Clay and Calhoun brought about a deadlock that significantly hastened the transfer of power to men more committed to strong party organization and more talented at voter manipulation. Webster's dilemma was the crisis of an entire political generation reared for a traditional world and forced to function in a modern one.
Epilogue Nathans, Sydney
A Mind to Stay,
02/2017
Book Chapter
By the fall of 2008, Alice Hargress and I had known each other for thirty years.
I had first phoned Alice Hargress in July 1978 to ask if she knew anything of Paul Cameron and the black people he’d ...sent out from North Carolina in 1844 to work an Alabama cotton plantation. “That’s right,” she’d replied. That answer, and many conversations that followed, opened up a world of black striving to me. When I called in October 2008, she was ninety-four years old and still going strong.
It was just a month before the presidential election. I felt anxiety and
Prologue Nathans, Sydney
A Mind to Stay,
02/2017
Book Chapter
This time they would be prepared.
Two days before, they had gone to the march in the morning, expecting to be among those at the demonstrations who might see the barricades come down and the ...courthouse open its doors to the registration of voters. They had not expected the tear gas. They had not expected the baby to be scalded. They had not expected to have to flee toward the church. The one thing they had expected was the heat—after all, it was July in Hale County, Alabama, where they had lived all their lives. They knew there would
Despite the efforts undertaken to reclaim her family, Mary Walker battled despair in the summer of 1854. As always, she confided her feelings to Susan Lesley, who arrived in Cambridge in July to be ...with her mother. For Mary Walker, it had been a “year of untold sorrows.”¹
Those sorrows had deep sources. As the nation observed almost fourscore years of independence in 1854, Mary Walker had to wonder whether independence would ever come for her children or for herself. It had been more than a year since she had first learned of the death of Duncan Cameron and initiated
Mary Walker needed all her new reserves of faith.
In September 1855, Peter Lesley wrote from Philadelphia to say that he’d just met with the rescuer they had hired to recover Mary Walker’s children ...in North Carolina—and that the mission had ended in utter failure. “P” (James Price) had gone down to Raleigh for a second time, had stayed for weeks, but had made contact with no one and come back without a lead. “I have not a moment to spare and can only tell you how fruitless all our hopes are. Seventy dollars more are thrown away and
