Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship from the New York Academy of History.
In Liberty''s Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the Jay family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age. The Jays of New York were a preeminent founding family. John Jay, diplomat, Supreme Court justice, and coauthor of the Federalist Papers, and his children and grandchildren helped chart the course of the Early American Republic.
Liberty''s Chain forges a new path for thinking about slavery and the nation''s founding. John Jay served as the inaugural president of a pioneering antislavery society. His descendants, especially his son William Jay and his grandson John Jay II, embraced radical abolitionism in the nineteenth century, the cause most likely to rend the nation. The scorn of their elite peersand racist mobsdid not deter their commitment to end southern slavery and t
Trade Review
Scrupulously documented and lucidly written, this is an eye-opening look at the complex legacy of slavery in America.
* Publishers Weekly *
David Gellman's Liberty's Chain is an elegantly written study of slavery across several generations of the Jay family of New York, which offers an important intervention into several literatures on race and slavery in U.S. history
* Journal of the Early Republic *
Gellman is a crisp writer who directs both his central characters and his large supporting cast with clarity and economy without sacrificing intellectual heft or moral complexity.
* The Wall Street Journal *
David N. Gellman Liberty's Chain is an elegantly written study of slavery across several generations of the Jay family of New York, which offers an important intervention into several literatures on race and slavery in U.S. history.
* Journal of the Early Republic *
Gellman's account kept this reviewer—admittedly not always an enthusiastic reader of studies about white founders—engrossed to the very last page.
* William & Mary Quarterly *
Table of ContentsPrologue: Founding
Part One: Slavery and Revolution
1. Disruptions
2. Rising Stars
3. Negotiations
4. Nation-Building
5. Mastering Paradox
6. Sharing the Flame
Part Two: Abolitionism
7. Joining Forces
8. A Conservative on the Inside
9. Breaking Ranks
10. The Condition of Free People of Color
11. Soul and Nation
Part Three: Emancipation
12. Uncompromised
13. Parting Shots
14. Civil Wars
15. Reconstructed
Epilogue: Reckoning
