The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South
by Kenneth M. Stampp
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"Prior to the Civil War southern slavery was America's most profound and vexatious social problem. More than any other problem, slavery nagged at the public conscience; offering no easy solution, it demanded statesmanship of uncommon vision, wisdom, and boldness. This institution deserves close study if only because its impact upon the whole country was so disastrous"--Preface.Tags
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This is a well research and almost incredible book about ante- bellum slavery. Many quotes from slaves, slaveowners, slave drivers. This is not the typical sterile history book about slavery. I've read a lot of history in my years and until I read this book, I'd never gotten a sense of what it really was like. An interesting sidelight is that the book was originally published in 1956. An excellent investment of one's time.
2093 The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, by Kenneth M. Stampp (read 9 Aug 1987) This is a 1956 book on slavery in the ante-bellum South and is well-done, drawing on considerable research. It is sobering to again be aware of the fact that in our country less than 150 years ago a system such as existed in the South could be held to be defensible. An excellent book.
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129 works; 14 members
Author Information
14+ Works 2,114 Members
A native of Milwaukee, Kenneth Stampp received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 and then taught at the University of Arkansas and the University of Maryland. In 1945 he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is currently Morrison Professor Emeritus of American History. Stampp has served as show more Harmsworth Professor at Oxford, Commonwealth Lecturer at the University of London, Fulbright Professor at the University of Munich, and visiting professor at Harvard University and Colgate University and Williams College. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, in 1993 he received the Lincoln Prize from the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute of Gettysburg College. Stampp touched off a revolution in the study of slavery with the publication of The Peculiar Institution (1956), which vigorously refutes the long-prevailing Dunning-Phillips interpretation and demolishes a host of myths about the master-slave relationship. His further works on the sectional conflict and its causes established him as a leading authority on that subject as well. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Vintage Books (V-253)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South
- Original publication date
- 1956
- People/Characters
- Frederick Douglass; Fanny Kemble; James Henry Hammond; Frederick Law Olmsted; Pierce Butler
- Important places
- Natchez, Mississippi, USA; Richmond, Virginia, USA; Charleston, South Carolina, USA; Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Savannah, Georgia, USA; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
- Dedication
- For my father and mother
- First words
- To understand the South is to feel the pathos in its history. This aura of pathos is more than a delusion of historians, more than the vague sensation one gets when looking down an avenue of somber, moss-draped live oaks lea... (show all)ding to stately ruins or to nothing at all. For Southerners live in the shadow of a real tragedy; they know, better than most other Americans, that little ironies fill the history of mankind, and that large disasters from time to time unexpectedly help to shape its course.
Their tragedy did not begin with the ordeal of Reconstruction, or with the agony of the civil war, but with the growth of a “peculiar institution” (as they called it) in ante-bellum days, whose spiritual stresses and unremitting social tensions became an inescapable part of life in the Old South.
Classifications
- Genres
- History, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 306.3620975 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Economic institutions Systems of labor Slavery Biography And History Biography And History North America Southeastern U.S.
- LCC
- E441 .S8 — History of the United States United States Revolution to the Civil War, 1775/1783-1861 Slavery in the United States. Antislavery
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 646
- Popularity
- 44,652
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.09)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 17
