They Who Would Be Free: Black's Search for Freedom, 1830-1861 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS279 litionism. Cassius Clay, while proving that he could live in slave land and still oppose slavery, seems vaguely out of place among abolitionists who were also moral reformers. Benjamin Lundy bridges the gap between the old abolition and the new with his emphasis on amelioration and his willingness to embrace colonization. Hiram Wilson, the white minister to Blacks, determined to sacrifice himself to the cause—and to collect his tithe at the same time—represents one of the problems of do-good philosophy then and now. Of the Blacks, conservative Samuel E. Cornish and militant Henry Highland Garnet are used to depict some of the variations in the attitudes and endeavors of those tied to the slaves by physical bonds. The other individuals discussed, each for demonstration of an aspect of abolitionism with its own twist, are Stephen S. Foster, Elizur Wright, Joshua R. Giddings, and Samuel J. May. The value of this study lies strongly in reviewing abolitionism from a variety of viewpoints, and thereby is a complement to broader works on the subject. Of great importance to this understanding are chapters dealing with the setting of abolitionism, and with what amounts to the authors' own careful review of the period and its developments , and something of an analysis or evaluation of the movement. This work is not only highly valuable to students who are seeking quick and reliable information on a variety of abolitionists, but to scholars bent on reviewing the intricacies of a movement which seems always new. A useful bibliographical essay and adequate footnoting add materially to the value of the study. Howard H. Bell Morgan State College They Who Would Be Free: Bfock's Search for Freedom, 1830-1861. By Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease. (Atheneum, 1974. Pp. ix, 319. $10.00.) Although this study of antebellum reform activities of northern blacks generally parallels Benjamin Quarles' Bhck Abolitionists, its scope is wider than Quarles' and its emphases are different. Whereas Quarles narrated black participation in the evolving phases of the antislavery movement, the Peases expand their concern to "analyze the perceptions, attitudes, values, goals, and means of those northern Negroes who struggled within the abolitionist crusade —and frequently outside of it—to achieve a meaningful freedom for themselves and their brethren in slavery" (p. v). Accordingly, their account ranges considerably beyond the bounds of formal abolitionism to embrace (among other matters) efforts by blacks to end segregation and exclusion in the North, to gain access to economic opportunity, and to win political influence. The authors are keenly 280BOOK REVIEWS attune to the ambitions and the cultural values of the figures they study. Their work thus possesses a psychological dimension that only perceptive and sympathetic reading of the sources could produce . Where Quarles emphasized cooperation between black and white abolitionists, the Peases focus on discord and conflict. Where he found success or at least promise, they find frustration and defeat. Some years ago the authors discovered racial prejudice in the thought and action of prominent white abolitionists. Now they dwell on that trait as partial explanation for the manifold difficulties experienced by black proponents of abolition and equality. To that extent the present book fits a pattern set by J. C. Furnas' Goodbye to Uncle Tom (1956) and confirmed by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's Time on the Cross (1974), histories in which white abolitionists are judged partly responsible for the plight of blacks. Thus twentieth century scholars burden white abolitionists with guilt comparable in effect to the antipathy pro-slavery Democrats and Colonizationists directed against them in the 1830's, a curious circumstance that an historian of the antic may someday explain. They Who Would Be Free is based on a wide array of printed and manuscript materials, many of them elusive and hitherto little-used. The emphasis is on eastern sources, however, and thus on eastern activity, though with numerous glances toward the West. Zebina Eastman's long-lived and informative free-soil newspaper, the Chicago Western Citizen, is not cited, nor does so important a black figure as James Jones of Chicago appear. But if omissions of this sort occur, the inclusion of unusually full—and meticulously accurate...