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The compelling biography of a man whose opposition to slavery was matched only by the contradictions that defined his life.

Hinton Rowan Helper: Abolitionist and Racist by Hugh C. Bailey is a compelling scholarly biography of one of the most controversial and contradictory figures in nineteenth-century American history. Born in North Carolina and raised in the slaveholding South, Hinton Rowan Helper emerged as one of the era's most outspoken critics of slavery, arguing that the institution harmed the economic prospects of nonslaveholding white Southerners and hindered regional development. Yet despite his vigorous opposition to slavery, Helper also espoused deeply racist views, creating a paradox that has long challenged historians seeking to understand his place in American history.

Drawing on extensive research, Bailey examines Helper's career as an antislavery activist, political propagandist, reformer, and public intellectual while exploring the social, economic, and political forces that shaped his worldview. The biography traces Helper's influence on sectional tensions before the Civil War, his connections to the emerging Republican movement, and his later involvement in a variety of ambitious political and economic ventures.

More than a biography, this book offers a revealing study of the complexities of race, reform, and ideology in antebellum America. It remains an essential resource for understanding the contradictions that characterized both Helper and the broader society in which he lived.


 

A sweeping narrative history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas.
 
During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane conditions. Many of them died on the way, and those who survived had to endure further suffering in the violent conditions that met them onshore. Covering more than three hundred years, Humans in Shackles grapples with this history by foregrounding the lived experience of enslaved people in tracing the long, complex history of slavery in the Americas.
 
Based on twenty years of research, this book not only serves as a comprehensive history; it also expands that history by providing a truly transnational account that emphasizes the central role of Brazil in the Atlantic slave trade. Additionally, it is deeply informed by African history and shows how African practices and traditions survived and persisted in the Americas among communities of enslaved people. Drawing on primary sources including travel accounts, pamphlets, newspaper articles, slave narratives, and visual sources such as artworks and artifacts, Araujo illuminates the social, cultural, and religious lives of enslaved people working in plantations and urban areas, building families and cultivating affective ties, congregating and re-creating their cultures, and organizing rebellions.
 
Humans in Shackles puts the lived experiences of enslaved peoples at the center of the story and investigates the heavy impact these atrocities have had on the current wealth disparity of the Americas and rampant anti-Black racism.