Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South - Hardcover

Ford, Lacy K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019511809X ISBN 13: 9780195118094

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

A major contribution to our understanding of slavery in the early republic, Deliver Us from Evil illuminates the white South's twisted and tortured efforts to justify slavery, focusing on the period from the drafting of the federal constitution in 1787 through the age of Jackson.

Drawing heavily on primary sources, including newspapers, government documents, legislative records, pamphlets, and speeches, Lacy K. Ford recaptures the varied and sometimes contradictory ideas and attitudes held by groups of white southerners as they tried to square slavery with their democratic ideals. He excels at conveying the political, intellectual, economic, and social thought of leading white southerners, vividly recreating the mental world of the varied actors and capturing the vigorous debates over slavery. He also shows that there was not one antebellum South but many, and not one southern white mindset but several, with the debates over slavery in the upper South quite different in substance from those in the deep South. In the upper South, where tobacco had fallen into comparative decline by 1800, debate often centered on how the area might reduce its dependence on slave labor and "whiten" itself, whether through gradual emancipation and colonization or the sale of slaves to the cotton South. During the same years, the lower South swirled into the vortex of the "cotton revolution," and that area's whites lost all interest in emancipation, no matter how gradual or fully compensated.

An ambitious, thought-provoking, and highly insightful book, Deliver Us from Evil makes an important contribution to the history of slavery in the United States, shedding needed light on the white South's early struggle to reconcile slavery with its Revolutionary heritage.

About this title

About the Author

Lacy K. Ford is Professor of History, University of South Carolina.

Review

"Ford's study is a quick and enjoyable read. Students especially will welcome the way he sets up his argument in each section and then summarizes neatly at the end of each chapter...This should remain the definitive work for years to come on why white Southerners ultimately declined to deliver themselves from the evils of slavery."--Georgia Historical Quarterly

"Ford painstakingly unravels the divergent perspectives on slavery, making 'Deliver Us From Evil' required reading for anyone interested in the development of Southern society...In dismissing the stale notions that slaveholder paternalism developed from the ancient habit of noblesse oblige or from the peculiar conditions of Southern slavery, Ford makes his most important contribution to our understanding of the development of Southern society."--Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review

"[T]hrough depth, detail and focus, Ford's comprehensive study forges a fresh path...[T]he historical detail is engrossing...Ford's monumental book delineates a 'twisted and tortured' intellectual history; signs of his mastery of previous scholarship and his immersion in fresh primary sources abound...Ford's lucid prose and summary introductions illuminate the way. Lay readers will appreciate his guidance, and academic readers will find his revelations groundbreaking."--Publishers Weekly" (starred review)

"Ford's book...does provide an intricate, textured argument about the intellectual, social, and political interests shaping 'the slavery question'...Essential for all students of this subject."--Library Journal

"Rarely has anyone heard this case made with the force and detail that Lacy K. Ford, chairman of the University of South Carolina's history department, has pulled together in his important new work...Those seeking the slaves' perspective won't find much here, as the author readily notes up front, but there's arguably no single better book for anyone wishing to explore the mind-set that kept them in chains."--Charleston Post & Courier

"[A] long-awaited, heavily documented, and precisely argued study."--H-Law

"Ford's vitally important book reminds us of the complicated calculus employed by
white southerners to answer various 'slavery questions' over southern time and space."--North Carolina Historical Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 019511809X
• ISBN 13: 9780195118094
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 688