Documents of Upheaval: Selections from William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, 1831-1865, and: From Plantation to Ghetto: An Interpretive History of American Negroes (review)

354CIVIL WAR HISTORY an equal right to earn a living (p. 151). The reviewer may be guilty of nitpicking in pointing out that Adams did not become President in 1824, oi Van Buren in 1836 (pp. 54, 55), but he may be permitted amusement in reading die bibliographical citation: W. J. Case, The Wind of the South (p. 210). In short, Smidi's book has a dubious function, and diat function is so seriously flawed by errors as to raise die question whether die publisher should wididraw this printing for correction. James A. Rawley University of Nebraska Documents of Upheaval: Selections from William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, 1831-1865. Edited by Truman Nelson. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966. Pp. xxii, 294. $5.95.) From Plantation to Ghetto: An Interpretive History of American Negroes. By August Meier and Elliott M. Rudwick. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966. Pp. vü, 280. $5.75.) William Lloyd Garrison has so seldom been treated sympathetically, even by his biographers, that one welcomes a book which accepts him on his own terms and declines to chip away at his greatness. Mr, Nelson's volume, of course, is not biography but a documentary collection clearly designed to speak to proponents of racial justice in our own time. As such it is a highly selective choice that does not shrink from portraying Garrison as the revolutionary he was. Mr. Nelson has discerned what I take to be the inescapable lesson taught by the failure of the abolitionists as moral reformers: Abolition of slavery did not come through moral suasion or education but by the sword, sometimes wielded by Negroes themselves. This is harsh instruction, and all but a few will resist its implications. The nineteenth century's "fixed liberals"—Mr. Nelson's phrase—opposed abolitionists and their methods; so now their counterparts shrink from demands to push beyond legislation, which, after all, has proved to diis date quite ineffectual in altering existing social and economic arrangements . But from whence shall relief come? A people is not likely "to redeem itself by love alone, creating a nation of saints," concludes Mr. Nelson. The cause of racial justice in die last century "had to merge, to dissolve itself into the revolutionary demands, however harsh and brutal, of the whole people." Whatever one thinks of such a message, this book is worth a good deal of reflection, based as it is on a profound insight into the abolition movement and the process of revolutionary change. The Garrison volume is in some sense the product of intuitive understanding , the work of an artist. From Plantation to Ghetto, on the other hand, is neither prophecy or poetry. It is history, an able synthesis of the Negro past by two seasoned workers in the field. But the contradictions between Meier-Rudwick and Nelson are less great than might appear. BOOK REVIEWS355 Here too we find die Negro forging his own freedom, a minority acting to leaven if not to revolutionize a racially prejudiced and resistant American society. At every point Negro activism is stressed. If any still suppose that American Negroes willingly accommodated diemselves to slavery and oppression, tiiis book should finally dispel die error. Negroes diemselves, die authors would have us believe, were largely responsible for dieir own emancipation and for such odier later advances—legal and económicas they have been able to make. While some attention is given to die efforts of white liberals in behalf of Negroes, die total effect is to minimize dieir aims and accomplishments. In die process of emphasizing die role of Negroes in die antislavery movement and die Civil War, the work of white abolitionists is denigrated. Most abolitionists, including Garrison, are here portrayed as repositories of a racial bias diat made them unwilling to grant to black fellow workers dieir rightful place widiin die movement . Thus die emphasis throughout die volume is on what Negroes diemselves did—on dieir ideologies, dieir institutional developments, and dieir protest movements. Much of die focus too is on die urban Negro. The plantation slave is allotted significandy less space than the Negro in the antebellum cities. There, it appears, alienation and protest had their focus. For nineteenth...