In Search of the Promised Land
In Search of the Promised Land

Author: John Hope Franklin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-09-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0190207604

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The matriarch of a remarkable African American family, Sally Thomas went from being a slave on a tobacco plantation to a "virtually free" slave who ran her own business and purchased one of her sons out of bondage. In Search of the Promised Land offers a vivid portrait of the extended Thomas-Rapier family and of slave life before the Civil War. Based on personal letters and an autobiography by one of Thomas' sons, this remarkable piece of detective work follows the family as they walk the boundary between slave and free, traveling across the country in search of a "promised land" where African Americans would be treated with respect. Their record of these journeys provides a vibrant picture of antebellum America, ranging from New Orleans to St. Louis to the Overland Trail. The authors weave a compelling narrative that illuminates the larger themes of slavery and freedom while examining the family's experiences with the California Gold Rush, Civil War battles, and steamboat adventures. The documents show how the Thomas-Rapier kin bore witness to the full gamut of slavery--from brutal punishment, runaways, and the breakup of slave families to miscegenation, insurrection panics, and slave patrols. The book also exposes the hidden lives of "virtually free" slaves, who maintained close relationships with whites, maneuvered within the system, and gained a large measure of autonomy.

America the Great
America the Great

Author: Edward Hawkins Sisson

Publisher: Edward Sisson

Published: 2014-06-22

Total Pages: 3136

ISBN-13:

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"America the Great" is the result of five years' research and writing that began in late 2009 in response to the contemporary American "tea party" movement and criticisms that the movement's participants did not know the history and theory of the original 1773 Boston Tea Party from which the modern movement takes its name. The extensive library of original books, newspapers, magazines, etc., now available (primarily via "google books") to anyone over the Internet, means that researchers have available to them the university libraries of the world. The availability of accurate original documents made it possible to expand the original scope of research into other historical events, and into other countries (primarily Great Britain), and enabled the work to develop into a more general examination of theories of human dignity, and of the differing conception of government that arises depending on the conception of human dignity that is characteristic of the people that is creating that government.