The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (review)

BOOK REVIEWS291 have devoted more time to his hero's conversion to outright abolitionism; he might also have said a little more about the antislavery movement in general. Recent reinterpretations of the importance of William Lloyd Garrison as compared with Theodore Weld have a place in a life of Lovejoy, but they are not mentioned. Moreover, it is very doubtful that Alton lost out to St Louis as the most important city in the vicinity as a result of the bad reputation it sustained because of the lynching. Finally, a few illustrations and an index would have improved the book. But these points should not obscure the fact that this is a noteworthy effort to reawaken the spirit that animated the antislavery apostles. Mr. Simon has not given us any new facts; he has provided us with the emotional background necessary for the understanding of Elijah Lovejoy. It is to be hoped that his words will not remain unheeded. Hans L. Trefousse Brooklyn College The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists. Edited by Martin Duberman. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Pp. x, 508. $10.00.) This book, comprising a number of original essays, is a diverse bill of fare. Five of the essays (those by John L. Thomas, Leon Litwack, James McPherson , Willie Rose, and Robert Durden) deal directly or indirectly with a common theme: the failure of American abolitionists and/or American society as a whole to look beyond slavery to the larger question of racial equality. Robin Winks deals with much the same question with respect to Canada, and thus by analogy the United States. Litwack emphasizes the disillusionment of many Negro leaders with the white abolitionists' failure to see that the entire question of racial equality was at issue, not merely the elimination of chattel slavery. This disillusionment led in the 1850? to the advocacy by many Negro spokesmen of an emigration movement which "enunciated a vigorous race nationalism , rejected the democratic pretensions of white Americans, and urged the establishment of a separate Negro state." While this represented a minority viewpoint among Negroes on the eve of the Civil War, Litwack concludes, "a strong undercurrent of race pride and consciousness . . . was clearly present, and white reformers would henceforth have to contend with its implications." McPherson takes direct issue with Litwack'i view by arguing that racial equalitarianism was indeed the goal of the vast majority of abolitionists, and that American society as a whole, rather than the abolitionists, was shortsighted. Mrs. Rose, writing on the successful experiment pioneered by abolitionists and others on the Sea Islands of South Carolina to prepare Negroes for freedom, seems at first glance to agree with McPherson. Not so, however, as Rose concludes that "posterity may regret that for the American reformer of a hundred years ago the cause of the freedman never equalled 292CIVIL WAR HISTORY the cause of the slave." If McPherson's thesis is to be rejected (and the essays of Durden, Thomas, and Winks also suggest that it must), neither Litwack nor Rose answers satisfactorily just why it was that most antislavery crusaders were unable to view abolition as not a panacea, but only the first step toward elevating the Negro. Clearly, racial prejudice on the part of many abolitionists is part of the answer, as was their rejection of of environmentalism—that is to say, their anti-institutional bias, their emphasis on individual responsibility in a free society, and their abstract preoccupation with slavery as a sin. Litwack and Rose mention these factors only in passing; it remains for historians to explain more exactly why few abolitionists demanded that Reconstruction be turned into a movement to achieve racial equality. It is just here that Thomas, who writes on the communitarian experiments of the 1850's, offers a significant insight. Thomas argues that the failure of these experiments, and the concomitant decline of Utopian thinking in both perfectionist and secular circles, largely accounts for the fact that "Reconstruction was an uncompleted social revolution." That Thomas makes an original contribution in setting forth this connection is indisputable ; but the need, mentioned earlier, for further investigation along these lines, still stands. Durden, implicitiy challenging Thomas in an...