[Review of] John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Authors

Roland L. Guyotte

Orginal Publication Date

1981

Journal Title

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Volume

1

Issue

ess/vol1/iss1

First Page

21

Last Page

22

Abstract

During the past fifteen years a legion of scholars have turned their attention to the history of slavery and race relations in America. Mentioning such names as David Brion Davis, Eugene Genovese, Winthrop Jordan, Sterling Stuckey, Leon Litwack, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, or Willie Lee Rose simply reminds us of how far scholarhsip [scholarship] has advanced since the early 1960s. A characteristic of this work has been to shift attention back from the mid-nineteenth century to earlier times and to view American slavery in its international setting. One conclusion has been to underscore the depth of North American racism even in the era of the Declaration of Independence. As John Hope Franklin put it in 1976, ”For all its emphasis on natural equality and human liberty the ideology of the American revolution was not really egalitarian.”

Rights

Copyright, ​©EES, The National Association for Ethnic Studies, 1981