Gary B. Nash (1933–2021)

Warner Mifflin—energetic, uncompromising, and reviled—was the key figure connecting the abolitionist movements before and after the American Revolution. A descendant of one of the pioneering families of William Penn's "Holy Experiment," Mifflin upheld the Quaker pacifist doctrine, carrying the peace testimony to Generals Howe and Washington across the blood-soaked Germantown battlefield and traveling several thousand miles by horse up and down the Atlantic seaboard to stiffen the spines show more of the beleaguered Quakers, harried and exiled for their neutrality during the war for independence. Mifflin was also a pioneer of slave reparations, championing the radical idea that after their liberation, Africans in America were entitled to cash payments and land or shared crop arrangements. Preaching "restitution," Mifflin led the way in making Kent County, Delaware, a center of reparationist doctrine.

After the war, Mifflin became the premier legislative lobbyist of his generation, introducing methods of reaching state and national legislators to promote antislavery action. Detesting his repeated exercise of the right of petition and hating his argument that an all-seeing and affronted God would punish Americans for "national sins," many Southerners believed Mifflin was the most dangerous man in America—"a meddling fanatic" who stirred the embers of sectionalism after the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. Yet he inspired those who believed that the United States had betrayed its founding principles of natural and inalienable rights by allowing the cancer of slavery and the dispossession of Indian lands to continue in the 1790s.

Writing in beautiful prose and marshaling fascinating evidence, Gary B. Nash constructs a convincing case that Mifflin belongs in the Quaker antislavery pantheon with William Southeby, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet. - from the publisher show less

This is the definitive account of the political battle over the National History Standards of the 1990s, but that's not all it has to offer. Nash and his colleagues give historical perspective through accounts of other, similar battles over the teaching of history in the U.S. and abroad. It is indispensable to historians who are thinking of venturing into the public square to contribute to some current debate — something that I agree historians ought to do, but not naively.

I have held show more onto the book's evocative metaphor of the "sheepskin curtain," meaning the cultural gulf between professional (academic) historians and the public schools and museums. I suspect this book has played a role in helping, if not to tear down, then at least to draw aside this curtain since the '90s. show less

A sort of joint biography of Jefferson, Kósciuszko, and Agrippa "Grippy" Hull, a free black man who served Kósciuszko during the Revolution and went on to lead a successful life in Stockbridge, Massachusetts after the war. Nash and Hodges focus on the connections between the three men, though Hull by necessity gets short shrift given the dearth of surviving documentation of his life (and the authors do the thing that annoys me most when writing about someone in this situation: "supposing" show more that Hull "must have read" such and such, or presuming that he felt or acted in ways that we simply cannot know).

The bulk of the book is concerned with Jefferson's handling of Kósciuszko's will, which was designed to allow Jefferson to use the proceeds from Kósciuszko's American estates to fund the education and manumission of Jefferson's slaves and others. Jefferson decided he didn't want to abide by these terms, and spent several years trying to figure out how to extricate himself from the wishes of his longtime friend. The legal maneuvering was complex, and Nash and Hodges ably reconstruct the narrative of this period.

Imperfect, but very interesting nonetheless, and for its account of the Jefferson-Kósciuszko estate wranglings, quite worth a read. show less

Nash's retelling of the American Revolution focuses on the disenfanchised: women, Negroes (slave and free), Native Americans, and men of modest means--mariners, artisans, small merchants, farmers. He relates these people's stories to the received narrative to describe how the people that won the war may have lost the revolution, as a real possibility existed at the time for the abolition of slavery, enhancement of the rights of women (though probably not full citizenship), honorable show more treatment of the natives and construction of a political/economic system that did not privilege wealth.

Nash doesn't denigrate (nor do I) what was achieved in the American Revolution, but only recounts what may have been a series of lost opportunities. My take is that although the War for Independance has been over for centuries, the Revolution is still underway. I highly recommend this book. show less