Category: Excerpts

Excerpt: Southscapes: Thadious Davis on the work of Ernest Gaines

His writing recovers and preserves a culture and a place that is an exterior, realistic landscape but is also a representation of his own subjectively shaped interior life that is dependent on the space of the plantation as it existed in his youth. Continue Reading Excerpt: Southscapes: Thadious Davis on the work of Ernest Gaines

Mark E. Neely Jr: Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation – An Excerpt

Much has been lost by this failure to consider both of the American constitutions in the Civil War. Since the constitutions were markedly similar in content, the historian has the opportunity to see the document tested in two different societies at the same time. The opportunity for comparisons is unequaled in history. And ultimately our judgments on the role of the Constitution in war should appear doubly sound. Continue Reading Mark E. Neely Jr: Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation – An Excerpt

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers: Forging Freedom – An Excerpt

In this excerpt from ‘Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston,’ by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, we meet a family of free black women who possessed an unusual amount of wealth and autonomy. Continue Reading Amrita Chakrabarti Myers: Forging Freedom – An Excerpt