audiobook The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States by Winthrop D. Jordan in History

Description

By his thirty-third birthday; Moncure Conway was a Virginian who had abandoned the South; a minister who had rejected Christianity; an aristocrat who had embraced radical abolitionism and feminism; and one of the first American expatriates. He would live another forty-two years as an important transatlantic writer; reformer; and freethought minister; but in his American years he had already lived a lifetime and made his mark. This study of the antebellum South's most radical upper-class white male; whose life--until now--has eluded capture by historians; illuminates the demands of the antebellum Southern gentry; the nature of the abolitionist movement; the boundaries of 19th-century organized Christianity; and the tragic personal impact of the American Civil War. D'Entremont recounts Conway's dramatic career as social reformer; religious radical; and associate of such luminaries as Emerson; Wendell Phillips; Theodore Parker; Walt Whitman; and William Dean Howells. The book climaxes with the Civil War; which saw Conway; an abolitionist with two brothers in the Confederate army; agonized by his conflicting commitments to emancipation and peace. A brilliant portrayal of one of the most intriguing public figures in American history; Southern Emancipator combines important contributions to Southern history; women's history; and the history of antebellum reform and the American Civil War.