American Inheritance

August 1, 2022

The Pulitzer Prize--winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, Larson probes the awful contradiction at the heart of the American Revolution: it was fought to liberate the Colonies from England by settlers who themselves enslaved others.

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December 12, 2022
Pepperdine University historian Larson (Franklin & Washington) explores in this solid account the interplay of liberty and slavery in the decades leading up to and following the American Revolution. Among other individuals and events, Larson spotlights enslaved Boston poet Phillis Wheatley, the 1772 Somerset v. Steuart ruling that American laws protecting slaveholders’ property rights did not apply in England, and Ona Judge, who ran away from President George Washington’s household in 1796. Elsewhere, Larson analyzes meanings of liberty in the writings of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and others; examines how the independence movement, born of opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, employed slavery as its “activating metaphor”; recounts how the sectional divide deepened at the Constitutional Convention; and details how abolitionists sought to use Benjamin Banneker’s 1792 almanac to refute Thomas Jefferson’s belief that Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Larson’s memorable turns of phrase (“As arbitrary as it was, the three-fifths compromise acted like a riptide sucking in delegates no matter how they tried to swim against it”) and keen insights into important yet lesser-known figures keep the narrative moving, even as he sticks to mostly familiar terrain. The result is an accessible and informative overview of the paradox at the heart of the American experiment.

Starred review from November 15, 2022
The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian returns with a study of the era that "changed the American understanding of liberty and slavery." Larson, author of Franklin & Washington, A Magnificent Catastrophe, and other acclaimed books of American history, recasts the narrative of the nation's founding by focusing on vociferous debates about liberty that erupted during three crucial decades of revolutionary fervor. By 1700, more than 2 million enslaved Africans had been shipped to America. At a time when rebellious colonists proclaimed their refusal to be enslaved by the British, most saw no contradiction in buying and selling men, women, and children. Many, especially in the South, agreed with Thomas Jefferson that Blacks were inferior, "incapable of liberty on a par with whites." Some, mostly in the Northern states, held that slavery was morally "odious," incompatible with a nation promoting freedom for all. War gave enslaved people some hope of liberation: More Blacks served on the British side than the American, hoping to gain freedom from the nation that had abolished slavery. The American military refused to integrate until troops became so decimated that Blacks were accepted into "non-arms-bearing duties." In 1777, when conscription was initiated, Whites in New England freed slaves to send as substitutes. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, the issue of slavery created a deep sectional divide, with the South refusing to ratify any document that did not preserve the Atlantic slave trade and assure the return of fugitive slaves. Although the term slave does not appear in the Constitution, provisions over the right to property mollified slave owners. Larson's stirring narrative includes the perspectives of free and escaped slaves, such as James Somerset, who was brought to England by his owner, where he successfully sued for his freedom; poet Phillis Wheatley; and Ona Judge, dower property of Martha Washington, whose escape incited George Washington's desperate, enraged search for her return. An authoritative contribution to the dismal history of race in America.

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