Blight is careful to note where facts are uncertain, but some readers will grow weary of the narrative’s frequent speculation or heding, often accompanied by caveats such as “probably,” “likely,” and “may have.” Also noteworthy are Blight’s observations regarding Douglass’s relationships with his wife, Julia Griffiths and a German immigrant-journalist named Ottilie Assing.īut for all that this author was able to uncover as a result of his access to unpublished documents, there is much about Douglass’s personal life – and a non-trivial amount of his public life – that remains a mystery. Of particular note: accounts of Douglass’s interactions with John Brown (and the aftermath of his raid on Harpers Ferry), insights into Douglass’s perspective on the Civil War as well as his attitude towards Lincoln’s war-time actions and Douglass’s memorable White House encounter with Andrew Johnson. And throughout this thirty-one chapter epic there are countless gripping moments certain to fascinate, illuminate and enlighten. Readers hoping to encounter the vibrant scene-setting often found in biographies by McCullough or Chernow will discover that this author’s style is more reminiscent of a relatively concise Robert Caro.īlight’s account of Douglass’s early life as a slave and his escape to freedom at the age of twenty-one will capture the attention of everyone, however. This book is far more history than biography and the 764-page narrative demands an uncommon degree of focus and perseverance. Readers expecting a colorful and carefree journey through Douglass’s life are likely to be disappointed, however. What resulted is a weighty, thorough, meticulously thoughtful and incredibly penetrating analysis of Frederick Douglass’s life and times. He has written a half-dozen books focused on the Civil War and its aftermath.īlight’s biography was catalyzed by the author’s lifelong interest in Douglass and his access to a collection of privately-held documents covering the last decades of his subject’s life. Blight is Professor of American History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. In three parts posted below, Professor Blight addresses the defining role of the Civil War in American culture, the conflicting aims of healing and justice in the years after the conflict, and the role of the historian in contemporary debate.David Blight’s “ Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” was published in 2018 and received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2019. We caught up with Professor Blight at the American Historical Association meeting in Boston earlier this month, where he was kind enough to join us for a conversation on the Civil War’s importance in America’s past and present. Working on this new project, which examines the role of the Civil War at its Centennial, led him inevitably to consider its impact today, at the Sesquicentennial, a time when the constitutional questions raised by the Civil War churn as tumultuously as ever. Later this year we’ll publish a new book from Professor Blight, on four writers who were both shaping and reflecting American memory of the Civil War during the Civil Rights era – James Baldwin, Bruce Catton, Robert Penn Warren, and Edmund Wilson. Blight shows how Americans in both the North and the South, led by the Federal Government, focused on healing the nation at the expense of pursuing justice for the countless Americans impacted by the war, chief among them the four million former slaves. The book is about how the Civil War functioned for America in the fifty years after its end, through the immediate efforts to put the country back together, through the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of the Jim Crow system in the South. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which was recently recognized as one of the dozen best books ever written about the war. The Sesquicentennial, though, is also an opportunity for considering the role that the Civil War has played in American culture through these one hundred and fifty years.Ībout ten years ago we published David W. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have convened online panels to do just that, and there are countless other rich resources available for examining the conduct of the war. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the American Civil War, the commemoration of which provides an opportunity to look back on that great tragedy and retrace the conflict.
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