The Negro American: A Documentary History (review)

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 political analysis, of the passage of the New York gradual emancipation act of 1799, is directed only to determining how many Federalists and Republicans voted on each side. He explodes one old misconception about the vote, but supplies nothing positive to replace it, which is hardly surprising, as it is well known that state politics in the early national period cannot be understood only in terms of national parties. Though Zilversmit's information on antislavery lobbying and legislation is superficial, it will be useful and we should be grateful for it. The rest of the book, however, is still more superficial and does not compensate for this quality by offering provocative hypotheses, a summary of the best studies by other, or even completely reliable information. Readers will have to look elsewhere to find the results of the best scholarship on slavery in the colonial period, antislavery opinions from 16588 to 1800, the colonizationist movement, the slave trade and its suppression, and efforts to help freed blacks to meet the demands of their new condition. Sydney James University of Iowa The Negro American: A Documentary History. Edited by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles. (Glenview, IU.: Scott, Foresman, and Co ., 1967. Pp. xv, 536. $4.25. ) The story of the American Negro is a complex paradox, inextricably a part of the history of the whole nation yet at the same time consistently separate and distinct. It is also a dreary tale of injustice and hypocrisy bright- BOOK REVIEWS187 ened sporadically by a jerky, uncertain kind of progress in the face of heavy odds. A documentary history of the black man's American odyssey in a single volume is an arduous, ambitious task, a risky venture even for the most sensitive, skillful scholars. Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., director of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and Benjamin Quarles, professor of history at Morgan State College, have attempted just such a project, and, overall, they have succeeded. In a large paperback they have presented a reasonably balanced and objective documentary history which clearly indicates the significant but not dominant role of the Negro in the history of the nation. The short narratives, six pages on the average, which introduce the twelve main chapters are effective summaries of large slices of time, and the brief introductions to individual selections are generally clear and concise . The documents themselves have been chosen judiciously. Any reader can quarrel with a sprinkling of selections or omissions—this reviewer would have preferred more on the American Colonization Society and the southern white emancipationists, for example—but, remembering the immense amount of material available for this single volume, Fishel and Quarles have edited wisely with one significant exception which will be discussed later. Clearly printed on durable paper, sturdily bound, and effectively...