Liberty's Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York by David N. Gellman (review)

IF 0.8 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY
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Its main subjects are John Jay (1745–1829), William Jay (1789–1858), and John Jay II (1817–1894), allowing Gellman to focus on the history of slavery in the founding generation, through the era of gradual emancipation in the U.S. North, and [End Page 337] ultimately into the Civil War era. Across this long arc Gellman \"shed[s] new light on the transitions from the practice of gradual emancipation to the demand for immediate abolition, from the commitment to peace to the embrace of war, and on the waxing and waning of nationalism as a force for liberation\" (4). Each of the three sections is a masterful study in its own right, and by putting them together Gellman narrates the history of slavery and emancipation between U.S. independence and its Civil War like only a skilled scholar can, probing complex dimensions of gradual emancipation, immediate abolitionism, and the meaning of race in the nation at large. Gellman opens with the observation that \"the enslavement of millions of human beings and the founding of the nation are inextricably bound\" (2). He builds on a generation of scholarship on slavery in the founding generation and in the North, but charts new territory by foregrounding both the lives of the Jays and of the Black workers, free and enslaved, in their New York households. Using this framework he shows how relationships across race and gender lines in the domestic sphere shaped, or clashed with, the wider political landscape. His model approaches the history of slavery in the Jay family as a series of \"concentric circles\" and the \"personal relationships with actual slaves and former slaves formed the core,\" followed by the regional conditions, national policy, and then international forces and intellectual and cultural trends (74). This approach shows that the great national paradoxes were also personal ones, and it reveals how enslaved, indentured, and formerly enslaved African Americans shaped the wider political landscape across generations. Gellman opens his analysis in earnest in the Age of Revolutions, where John Jay stood out as one of the leaders of the Revolutionary generation. He charts both Jay's marriage into the Livingston family, affording him access to a powerful family network, and his rise in New York politics. Jay was an enslaver in these years, and enslaved people helped propel his upward mobility. Gellman foregrounds a paradox between \"the moral incompatibility of slavery with the nation's founding ideals\" stressing they clashed in ways that \"the Jays found impossible to ignore\" (5). Readers follow Jay to Paris where he helped broker the Treaty of Paris (1783), which required British agents to return enslaved people to their owners, or to provide compensation. During these critical years, Jay's father died, leaving him an inheritance of enslaved people, which only heightened the tensions between liberty and slavery (51). [End Page 338] That kind of political and personal paradox is not all that remarkable, except for the fact that Jay was a committed abolitionist. Jay was at the leading edge of gradual emancipation, and Gellman unpacks how the war years gave him the language to contemplate and articulate and alternative to a slaveholding world (29). In 1785 Jay became the president of the newly minted New York Manumission Society and supported the eventual passage of the 1799 Gradual Emancipation Law, which freed children of enslaved women after they served a twenty-eight-year indenture. 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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Reviewed by: Liberty's Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York by David N. Gellman M. Scott Heerman (bio) Keywords Slavery, Abolition, Jay family, John Jay, John Jay II, William Jay Liberty's Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York. By David N. Gellman. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 519. Cloth, $36.95.) 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. The book is divided into three parts, each focusing on one generation of the Jay family from the 1770s to the 1870s. Its main subjects are John Jay (1745–1829), William Jay (1789–1858), and John Jay II (1817–1894), allowing Gellman to focus on the history of slavery in the founding generation, through the era of gradual emancipation in the U.S. North, and [End Page 337] ultimately into the Civil War era. Across this long arc Gellman "shed[s] new light on the transitions from the practice of gradual emancipation to the demand for immediate abolition, from the commitment to peace to the embrace of war, and on the waxing and waning of nationalism as a force for liberation" (4). Each of the three sections is a masterful study in its own right, and by putting them together Gellman narrates the history of slavery and emancipation between U.S. independence and its Civil War like only a skilled scholar can, probing complex dimensions of gradual emancipation, immediate abolitionism, and the meaning of race in the nation at large. Gellman opens with the observation that "the enslavement of millions of human beings and the founding of the nation are inextricably bound" (2). He builds on a generation of scholarship on slavery in the founding generation and in the North, but charts new territory by foregrounding both the lives of the Jays and of the Black workers, free and enslaved, in their New York households. Using this framework he shows how relationships across race and gender lines in the domestic sphere shaped, or clashed with, the wider political landscape. His model approaches the history of slavery in the Jay family as a series of "concentric circles" and the "personal relationships with actual slaves and former slaves formed the core," followed by the regional conditions, national policy, and then international forces and intellectual and cultural trends (74). This approach shows that the great national paradoxes were also personal ones, and it reveals how enslaved, indentured, and formerly enslaved African Americans shaped the wider political landscape across generations. Gellman opens his analysis in earnest in the Age of Revolutions, where John Jay stood out as one of the leaders of the Revolutionary generation. He charts both Jay's marriage into the Livingston family, affording him access to a powerful family network, and his rise in New York politics. Jay was an enslaver in these years, and enslaved people helped propel his upward mobility. Gellman foregrounds a paradox between "the moral incompatibility of slavery with the nation's founding ideals" stressing they clashed in ways that "the Jays found impossible to ignore" (5). Readers follow Jay to Paris where he helped broker the Treaty of Paris (1783), which required British agents to return enslaved people to their owners, or to provide compensation. During these critical years, Jay's father died, leaving him an inheritance of enslaved people, which only heightened the tensions between liberty and slavery (51). [End Page 338] That kind of political and personal paradox is not all that remarkable, except for the fact that Jay was a committed abolitionist. Jay was at the leading edge of gradual emancipation, and Gellman unpacks how the war years gave him the language to contemplate and articulate and alternative to a slaveholding world (29). In 1785 Jay became the president of the newly minted New York Manumission Society and supported the eventual passage of the 1799 Gradual Emancipation Law, which freed children of enslaved women after they served a twenty-eight-year indenture. In these chapters, Gellman gives us a picture of how northern...
《自由的锁链:奴隶制、废奴和纽约的杰伊家族》,作者:大卫·n·格尔曼
关键词:奴隶制,废除,杰伊家族,约翰·杰伊,约翰·杰伊二世,威廉·杰伊自由的锁链:奴隶制,废除,和纽约的杰伊家族。大卫·n·格尔曼著。(伊萨卡,纽约州:康奈尔大学出版社,2022。519页。布,36.95美元)。大卫·格尔曼的《自由之链》是一部文笔优美的著作,研究了纽约杰伊家族几代人的奴隶制,它对美国历史上有关种族和奴隶制的几部文献提供了重要的干预。这本书分为三部分,每一部分都聚焦于从18世纪70年代到19世纪70年代的杰伊家族的一代人。它的主要主题是约翰·杰伊(1745-1829),威廉·杰伊(1789-1858)和约翰·杰伊二世(1817-1894),使格尔曼专注于奴隶制在建国一代的历史,通过美国北方逐渐解放的时代,并最终进入内战时代。在这个漫长的过程中,格尔曼“对从逐步解放的实践到立即废除的要求的转变,从对和平的承诺到对战争的拥抱,以及作为解放力量的民族主义的兴衰进行了新的阐释”(4)。通过把它们放在一起,格尔曼讲述了从美国独立到内战之间奴隶制和解放的历史,就像一个熟练的学者一样,探索了逐步解放、立即废除主义和整个国家种族意义的复杂维度。格尔曼以“数百万人的奴役与国家的建立有着千难万别的联系”(2)作为开篇。他建立在对建国一代和北方奴隶制的一代学术研究的基础上,但通过突出杰伊人和黑人工人在纽约家庭中的生活,无论是自由的还是被奴役的,开辟了新的领域。利用这个框架,他展示了家庭领域中跨越种族和性别界限的关系如何塑造或与更广泛的政治格局发生冲突。他的模型将杰伊家族的奴隶制历史视为一系列“同心圆”,“与实际奴隶和前奴隶的个人关系构成了核心”,其次是地区条件、国家政策,然后是国际力量以及知识和文化趋势(74)。这种方法表明,伟大的国家悖论也是个人悖论,它揭示了被奴役的、契约契约的和曾经被奴役的非裔美国人如何影响了几代人之间更广泛的政治格局。格尔曼在《革命时代》一书中认真地开始了他的分析,约翰·杰伊作为革命一代的领导者之一脱颖而出。他描绘了杰伊的婚姻与利文斯顿家族的关系,使他能够接触到强大的家庭网络,以及他在纽约政坛的崛起。这些年来,杰伊是一个奴隶,被奴役的人帮助他向上流动。格尔曼强调了“奴隶制在道德上与美国建国理想的不相容”之间的矛盾,强调两者之间的冲突是“杰伊夫妇无法忽视的”(5)。读者跟随杰伊来到巴黎,在那里他帮助促成了《巴黎条约》(1783年),该条约要求英国代理人将被奴役的人归还给他们的主人,或者提供赔偿。在这些关键的岁月里,杰伊的父亲去世了,留给他的遗产是被奴役的人,这加剧了自由和奴隶制之间的紧张关系(51)。这种政治和个人的矛盾并不那么引人注目,除了杰伊是一个坚定的废奴主义者这一事实。杰伊站在逐渐解放的前沿,格尔曼揭示了战争年代如何给了他思考和表达的语言,以及奴隶制世界的替代方案(29)。1785年,杰伊成为新成立的纽约解放协会的主席,并支持1799年《逐步解放法》的最终通过,该法案解放了被奴役妇女服役28年的孩子。在这些章节中,格尔曼向我们描绘了北方是如何……
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
70
期刊介绍: The Journal of the Early Republic is a quarterly journal committed to publishing the best scholarship on the history and culture of the United States in the years of the early republic (1776–1861). JER is published for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. SHEAR membership includes an annual subscription to the journal.
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