“Helper (1829–1909) was the antebellum South’s most militant antislavery radical. Bailey, in this able study of his career, describes him as `a statistical fanatic, abolitionist, militant racist, ardent patriot, and railway projector’ and might have added on the strength of evidence he has so skillfully organized, `imperialist, religious bigot, and chauvinist.’. . . These paradoxes may be treated as the attributes of a peculiar individual; to his credit, Bailey properly assigns them to Helper’s class and regional moorings.”
—The Nation
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“For more than a century Hinton Helper remained an enigmatic maverick, a human maladjustment always one step short of reality. . . . Bailey has brought a measure of understanding to Helper with a biography so sound that it is not likely ever to be challenged.”
—Civil War Times
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“As Professor Bailey points out in his careful study of Helper’s career, it is the rigidity of our own social and intellectual categories that keeps us from recognizing Helper as a fully plausible 19th-century type.”
—American Historical Review
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