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  • Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love
  • Beverly Tomek
Richard Newman and James Mueller, editors. Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011) Pp. ix, 260. Notes, index. Cloth, $39.95.

Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia offers an interesting collection of essays addressing the city's abolition legacy. The editors set out to provide a "broad survey of themes" that collectively illustrate Philadelphia's central role in the U.S. antislavery movement and they succeeded. Though very useful for undergraduate students and readers with some knowledge of the U.S. abolition movement, the collection might be less suited for the other half of the target audience—visitors to Independence Mall. While some of the essays offer the type of broad coverage befitting a general audience, others are more specialized and will be better appreciated by readers with some background.

The collection is broken into three sections, moving from a more general to a more specialized treatment of Philadelphia abolition. The first section features an overview essay by Ira Berlin that traces Philadelphia's antislavery movement from 1685 to 1861. This chapter gives a valuable background and introduces a number of topics on which the other essays elaborate. For the most part the following essays take up the topics introduced and do a nice job of creating a dialogue that keeps the book flowing and locks the essays together.

The second section offers a number of essays that collectively lay out the framework of Philadelphia abolition. David Waldstreicher explains the origins of the state's abolition movement and draws upon his work on Benjamin Franklin's role in the movement. He also offers a glimpse into the importance of free produce to early abolition efforts. This essay will appeal especially to anyone with some understanding of free produce. Julie Winch's essay traces the role of black activists in the city's freedom struggle generation by generation and explains their efforts in a way that gives a thorough introduction to the subject. Of all the essays in the collection her description of the black abolition and civil rights movements does the best job of keeping the general reader in mind. Gary Nash's essay follows with a thorough explanation of how the Jeffersonian revolution and eclipse of Federalism led to a state-centered republic that left the issue of slavery in the hands of state rather than national authorities and left citizenship beyond the reach of blacks throughout the country. This chapter offers exciting insight into the political climate and racial ideologies of the time. Finally, Richard [End Page 115] Newman's essay provides a nice overview of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, its relevance to the national antislavery movement, and its shortcomings in terms of its failure to include black members.

The one topic Berlin introduced that should have been developed further in a separate essay in this section was the rise of immediate abolition in the city. The first national immediatist organization was founded in Philadelphia and a number of the city's abolitionists, including David Paul Brown (a gradualist mentioned in the book), founded an auxiliary society soon after. Newman and others mention the immediatists, but this topic should have been addressed on its own, perhaps by Ira Brown, the expert in this field.

Other topics that could have further enhanced the collection include the role of women in Philadelphia abolition and an overview of Quaker involvement. Some of the essays mention these issues, but if the book is intended for a general audience they should have been laid out in detail before further analysis of more specialized themes.

The third section is devoted to more specialized analytical treatments that will appeal more to readers with some background in abolition studies. W. Caleb McDaniel places Philadelphia antislavery into the transatlantic context, and Dee Andrews offers a very interesting and thorough look at the role of the various churches in the movement. Heather S. Nathans contributes an analysis of how various theater productions in the city addressed abolition...

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