Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is a hard-hitting history of the impact of racism and religion on the political, social, and economic development of the American nation from Jamestown to today, in particular the nefarious effects of slavery on U.S. society and history. Going back to England’s rise as a colonial power and its use of slavery in its American colonies, Steven L. Dundas examines how racism and the institution of slavery influenced the political and social structure of the United States, beginning with the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Dundas tackles the debates over the Constitution’s three-fifths solution on how to count Black Americans as both property and people, the expansion of the republic and slavery, and the legislation enacted to preserve the Union, including the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act—as well as their disastrous consequences.
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory squarely faces how racism and religion influenced individual and societal debates over slavery, Manifest Destiny, secession, and civil war. Dundas deals with the struggle for abolition, emancipation, citizenship, and electoral franchise for Black Americans, and the fierce and often violent rollback following Reconstruction’s end, the civil rights movement, and the social and political implications today.
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is the story of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders; slaves and slaveholders; preachers, politicians, and propagandists; fire-eaters and firebrands; civil rights leaders and champions of white supremacy; and the ordinary people in the South and the North whose lives were impacted by it all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dundas, a retired U.S. Navy chaplain, debuts with an ambitious but underwhelming chronicle of religion and racism before and during the Civil War. Dundas purports to focus on Christianity's role in the conflict, but he begins with an extensive preamble covering the founding of Jamestown, the arrival of the first slave ship in 1619, and manifest destiny's justification for the mass killing of Native Americans. The narrative digresses frequently, as when the author delves into how "nationalism buttressed by religion" drove the 17th-century Thirty Years' War or how proponents of slavery attempted to annex Cuba in the 1850s (religion's role in the latter goes unmentioned). Even when Dundas sticks to his subject, his straightforward account of Southern preachers using Christianity to defend slavery and such Northerners as William Lloyd Garrison denouncing the "peculiar institution" from a Christian perspective will likely be familiar to casual readers of history. Additionally, the author's lack of original analysis can make this feel like a compendium of quotes from historians and primary documents (an excerpt from the dissenting Supreme Court opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson takes up more than two full pages). Overstuffed and missing a fresh perspective, this doesn't add much to the ample historical literature on racism and religion.
