EMANCIPATING SLAVES, ENSLAVING FREE MEN

by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

This is a bold new interpretation of the American Civil War, namely that it was simultaneously the culmination and the repudiation of the American Revolution. Hummel hurls challenge after challenge to the "collected wisdom" of the Civil War. For example, he asserts that the failure of the North to accept the withdrawal of the South from the Union was a rejection of the right of self-determination that was supposedly a cornerstone of the American Revolution. (After all, if the Colonies had the right to break away from Britain, why couldn't the South do the same thing with the United States?) He also disputes the automatic assumptions that splitting the United States into two distinct nations would have produced catastrophic results. Nor does Hummel accept that war was the only recourse to ending slavery; he points out that slavery was under great economic strain and, in fact, ended peacefully in nations like Cuba and Brazil solely because it became cheaper to hire free men as employees than to own slaves. This eye-opening book is the perfect gift for any Civil War buff you know!