The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (review)

BOOK REVIEWS185 ade, a process shaped by a multitude of economic, political, intellectual, emotional and technological factors. Of these, fear of rebellion, and the climactic Nat Turner uprising in particular, was important, but it was an importance leavened by other forces. It is unfair to compare the work of a historian and a novelist, but the almost simultaneous appearance of William Styron's novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, merits a word about the two treatments. Using tools not available to the scholar, Styron captures the essence of southern plantation life and black-white relationships in a way that throws additional light on the period and the people. In the novel, Turner becomes a man. In the historical essay, the South and its slaves are overweighted with statistics and interpretation which fall short of explaining the event and its impact, and the man who caused it. Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. State Historical Society of Wisconsin The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Shvety in the North. By Arthur Zilversmit. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Pp. viii, 262. $6.95.) Professor Zilversmit has put into convenient form a summary of the growth of abolitionist opinion and legislation to end slavery in the northeastern colonies and states. The first half of the book sketches the nature of slavery in this area and the well-known procession of men in the colonial period who argued that slaveholding was wrong. The second half explains the steps taken by the various state governments which freed the Negroes either at once or by gradual emancipation. An appendix lists prices and appraised values of slaves in the middle Atlantic region between 1709 and 1804, as well as statistics on manumissions in New York and New Jersey between 1744 and 1800. The figures on slave prices, together with the well-documented opposition of masters to emancipation laws, support Zilversmit's contention that emancipation did not result from slaveholders discovering that slavery was unprofitable. On the contrary, he finds that proslavery opinion existed in proportion to the use of slave labor—most common in northeastern New Jersey and the older parts of New York. Rather, he asserts that abolition was the consequence of a belief held by many late colonial non-slaveholders that slavery was "detrimental to their own interests and to the interests of the community," a belief converted to abolitionism when combined with the antislavery arguments of men like John Woolman and Anthony Benezet and the widespread devotion to liberty and humanitarian reform during the Revolutionary period. Zilversmit's explanation of emancipationist ardor, however, is not sustained by the chronicle of lobbying and governmental decisions which tells when and where the antislavery measures got into law. This chronicle —the only product of original research in the book—provides useful facts, 186CIVIL WAR HISTORY but virtually nothing about political processes or motivations. It would be unreasonable to expect more from the sources used, records of abolition societies and state legislatures, but some of the details are so puzzling as to make plain the inadequacy of the documents. For instance, the sudden shifts in voting by the legislatures of New York and New Jersey on certain occasions appear to have taken the abolitionist lobbyists by surprise , a reaction which the reader is left to share, as no explanation is offered in this book. Perhaps we should conclude that if lobbyists could not understand what was going on, no one ever will. Quite possibly, though, we should conclude instead that the lobbyists had less to do with events than they thought they did, and accordingly, Professor Zilversmit's narrative of interplay between legislators and those who petitioned or buttonholed them tells less than it seems to do. In any case, various other avenues of inquiry should be explored. Private papers might yield clues; an examination of action on slavery in the context of other aspects of legislation and politics might help, too. Zilversmit has done very little along these lines. Nor has he found out much about the people who figure in the story. Furthermore, his account of events does not lead to more searching questions , as he has used simplistic conceptions of all the elements involved. His most detailed...