Southern Historical Association

Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation by Betty FladelandReview by: Richard B. DrakeThe Journal of Southern History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Aug., 1973), pp. 448-449Published by: Southern Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2206279 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 21:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Southern Historical Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheJournal of Southern History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.92 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:20:22 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

448 THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY

larly to Betty Fladeland's recent volume Men and Brothers. Tem- perley concludes his narrative with a short epilogue recounting Brit- ish antislavery after 1870. Three appendices complete the work: the first, a graph correlating sugar prices from 1835 to 1870 with slave imports into Brazil and Cuba; the second, a list of "Leading antislav- ery societies," 1783-1870; and the third, a historiographical discussion of Eric Williams's controversial thesis, in which the author supports the growing consensus that the Williams thesis requires serious modi- fication on a number of major and minor points.

As one would expect, Temperley's book suggests several questions for further investigation. Three projects in particular seem of crucial importance for the advance of antislavery historiography: a study of the African Institution, a history of Irish antislavery, and an exhaus- tive examination of the Williams thesis. The field of antislavery, though full of eager scholars, remains as yet uncrowded and ripe for new investigations.

Louisiana State University PATRICK C. LIpscomB III Baton Rouge

Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation. By Betty Fladeland. (Urbana, Chicago, and London: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Pp. xiv, 478. $11.50.)

This is an excellent study. If there was doubt that British and Amer- ican abolitionists were in close communication with one another, Ms. Fladeland's considerable researches and carefully built case for that cooperation should place the question to rest. Her account covers these antislavery connections in the English-speaking community on both sides of the Atlantic from the colonial period through the Civil War. Too long we have overemphasized the ties that the Revolution cut. Among abolitionists at least, the author makes clear that a sub- stantial community of interest persisted until the slave trade was abolished, then slavery itself was done away with, first in the British Empire and then in the United States.

Her case is made the stronger because her examples seldom crossed this reviewer's knowledge of the story. The part of the story and the individuals in this trans-Atlantic abolitionist community known to this reviewer come largely from the American Missionary Association Archives, a source Ms. Fladeland did not consult. This is to say, there- fore, that there is more material that she could have marshaled, yet her evidence is impressive enough.

She is at her best when she reaches the 1830s, where her story is more carefully documented and presented. Her treatment of John Quincy Adams's role in the abolitionist movement will surprise some. He was a very reluctant recruit, who held out against the movement until all his national ambitions had evaporated, a position in clear

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.92 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:20:22 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 449

contrast with the long-standing and straightforward positions of the abolitionist leadership in Parliament, especially of Wilberforce.

Although Ms. Fladeland was led to abolitionist research through Dwight L. Dumond, she rather demolishes the Barnes-Dumond po- sition of the sudden surging to life of the American antislavery move- ment in the 1830s. Instead, the story of long continuity, with admit- tedly frequent shifts in strategy and pace, is emphasized. She presents a picture of a movement built on Quaker foundations well laid during the colonial period by John Woolman and Anthony Benezet and carried forward with vast British and substantial American support when emancipation was finally proclaimed.

Nor is Garrison presented here as the raging and embarrassing fanatic who appears in the Barnes-Dumond treatment. The author admits that Garrison was often undercut by his better-organized aboli- tionist opponents, but it appears that in Britain at least the American abolitionist split actually strengthened the movement. Ms. Fladeland has given us a fine study, one that will be the standard for many years.

Berea College RicHARD B. DRAKE

Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislav- ery Movement. By Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease. Con- tributions in American History, No. 18. (Westport, Conn.: Green- wood Press, 1972. Pp. xviii, 334. $12.50.)

Jane and William Pease have removed the study of the abolitionist movement from the rigid framework of categories and classifications of groups or factions in which the movement has been considered and investigated during the last decade. Their objective is to take a fresh look at the abolitionists as individuals, without any attempt to view the antislavery advocates as members of competing factions or groups. The authors differ with historians who see the abolitionist movement as a unitary reform, fairly static in its means. They show that it was an unusually complex movement, whose advocates defined slavery in many ways and chose to act, speak, and work according to their in- dividual commitments.

The Peases refuse to accept the views of Kraditor and others who see the antislavery societies as tightly compartmentalized divisions consisting of conservative advocates of political action and radical ex- ponents of moral suasion. Instead, they see the crusade against slavery as a dynamic movement without well-established bounds. In their words, "some crusaders touched base in many societies and factions; others had contact with virtually none" (p. 4), and "Those who were united on one position often found themselves in opposite camps on another" (p. 27).

The authors even find it impossible to develop a neat progression of individuals from conservatives to radicals, because the "shifting

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.92 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:20:22 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions