Comments on: Steven Hahn Gets It

By: Insurrection & Slave Rebellion in Civil War America « fugitive philosophy

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:54:47 +0000

[...] this respect, it is interesting to see other perspectives on the issue, such as this blog post by Kevin Levin, a Civil War historian, who interprets Hahn as saying (see pp. 55-57) that “we should [...]

By: Kevin Levin

Kevin Levin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:49:03 +0000

Thanks Peter. I will check it out.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:44:35 +0000

Hahn’s book, based on lectures as Mark says, came out several months ago. It is “The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom.”

By: Kevin Levin

Kevin Levin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:02:17 +0000

Mark,

Thanks for the comment. I didn’t see anything new on Amazon. I am familiar with DuBois’s _Black Reconstruction_ and will go back and find the references.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:08:51 +0000

I’ve not seen it yet, but i think Hahn already has a new book out, lectures, on which this essay is based. Two comments on the substance of Hahn’s thoughtful piece. First, Du Bois wrote of the Civil War as a being a large scale slave rebellion in BLACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA (1935), and I think plenty of scholars have accepted that argument in the last 7 decades. Second, there’s been a lot more scholarship on Garvey and Garveyism that Prof Hahn seems aware of; it’s hardly been neglected in the last 25 years. The bigger question is what the broad implications are for African American history once we look at Garveyism. That movement had more internal contradictions that a quick glance suggests.

By: Kevin Levin

Kevin Levin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:22:37 +0000

Thanks for the comments. It would have much preferred a much more detailed and lengthy essay by Hahn. Of course, he will flesh out all of his ideas in his next book, which will no doubt be a worthy follow-up to _A Nation Under Our Feet_.

By: Larry Cebula

Larry Cebula — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:15:31 +0000

Amen. But I dont think it goes far enough to say that we should understand the presence of black soldiers in Union ranks as a slave rebellion from the perspective of the white South. Surely it just plain WAS a slave rebellion–from the perspective of many present, but also from the perspective of the historian trying to describe what took place.

By: TF Smith

TF Smith — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:57:38 +0000

I read that article as well, and immediately thought of some of the work you have done here, Kevin; one thing that left me scratching my head a little was Prof. Hahns comment that the movement toward full emancipation in the US was more protracted than anywhere else in the Atlantic world, which disregards how long it took to abolish de jure slavery in Brazil and (IIRC) the Spanish colonies (Cuba, for example) in the Western Hemisphere.

Other than that, I thought he makes some great points.