"We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists" -- Amos Lawrence, 1854 1/ Americans have fought kidnapping carried out by their government before. 2/

Learned late yesterday about the passing of Ira Berlin. I only had the pleasure of meeting him a few times, but he was one of those rare scholars whose body of work, from the first book to the last, profoundly shaped the entire field of slavery studies. A refresher course/bibliography, for those unfamiliar with Ira Berlin's contributions. To begin, "Slaves without Masters" (1974), a study of free black southerners. 1/

Charles Ball was born enslaved in Maryland around 1780. Enslavers tore his family apart when he was five years old. He remembered: “My mother had several children, my brothers and sisters, and we were all sold on the same day to different purchasers.” 1/ “Our new master took us away, and I never saw my mother, nor any of my brothers and sisters afterwards. This was, I presume, about the year 1785.” 2/

U.B. Phillips is the Gone with the Wind of slavery historiography, and he casts just as long and damaging a shadow. 1/ nytimes.com/2018/05/03/opi… He's best known, of course, for "American Negro Slavery," which imagined slavery as an unprofitable institution in which white people looked after and "civilized" supposedly primitive Africans. 2/