The Republic of Violence
The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestselling author reveals the story of a nearly forgotten moment in American history, when mass violence was not an aberration, but a regular activity—and nearly extinguished the Abolition movement.
The 1830s were the most violent time in American history outside of war. Men battled each other in the streets in ethnic and religious conflicts, gangs of party henchmen rioted at the ballot box, and assault and murder were common enough as to seem unremarkable. The president who presided over the era, Andrew Jackson, was himself a duelist and carried lead in his body from previous gunfights. It all made for such a volatile atmosphere that a young Abraham Lincoln said “outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times.”
The principal targets of mob violence were abolitionists and black citizens, who had begun to question the foundation of the U.S. economy — chattel slavery — and demand an end to it. Led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison and James Forten, the anti-slavery movement grew from a small band of committed activists to a growing social force that attracted new followers in the hundreds, and enemies in the thousands. Even in the North, abolitionists faced almost unimaginable hatred, with newspaper publishers, businessmen with a stake in the slave trade, and politicians of all stripes demanding they be suppressed, silenced or even executed.
Carrying bricks and torches, guns and knives, mobs created pandemonium, and forced the abolition movement to answer key questions as it began to grow: Could nonviolence work in the face of arson and attempted murder? Could its leaders stick together long enough to build a movement with staying power, or would they turn on each other first? And could it survive to last through the decade, and inspire a new generation of activists to fight for the cause?
J.D. Dickey reveals the stories of these Black and white men and women persevered against such threats to demand that all citizens be given the chance for freedom and liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Their sacrifices and strategies would set a precedent for the social movements to follow, and lead the nation toward war and emancipation, in the most turbulent era of our republic of violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Dickey (American Demagogue) delivers a colorful if uneven revisionist history of the abolitionist movement in the U.S. Between 1833 and 1838, Dickey contends, America endured "some of the worst violence the nation has ever seen," with drunken mobs of Andrew Jackson's nativist, pro-slavery supporters targeting immigrants, financial institutions, free Blacks, and abolitionists. Dickey explains how the abolitionist movement emerged out of the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening and delves into early tensions between Black leaders like David Walker, whose 1829 manifesto Appeal in Four Articles exhorted captive slaves to "kill or be killed," and white abolitionists who opposed slavery but were wary of racial amalgamation. Meanwhile, pro-slavery advocates used the specter of Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt and anxieties over "interracial sex and marriage" to incite mob violence and further constrain the rights of free and enslaved Blacks. Dickey documents numerous outbreaks of racial violence, including the 1835 Snow Riot in Washington, D.C., and spotlights lesser-known African American abolitionists, including David Ruggles and Samuel Cornish. The portrait of Andrew Jackson is notably one-sided, however, portraying him as a conspiracist with a "bent toward violence" while underplaying the economic factors that contributed to his appeal among working-class whites. Still, this is an accessible and enlightening chronicle of a tumultuous period in American history.
