wcaleb’s Twitter Archive—№ 19,025

This comparison of the debate between Wilentz et al. & #1619Project to recent debates among Civil War Era historians about the "freedom narrative" is interesting & apt. Aspects of the debate also resemble the fundamentalist/neo-revisionist conflicts over causes of the Civil War. @NicholasGuyatt/1220016798277558273
On twitter.com ♻️ 15 Retweets ❤️ 46 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -2 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
Fundamentalists argue that the free states & slaveholding South were diverging in early 1800s, making conflict inevitable, much as some argue that British metropole and British colonists were increasingly divergent societies on eve of the American Revolution.
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 6 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -1 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
Neo-revisionists, stressing ties b/w North and South, see coming of war as more contingent; they argue slavery was so deeply imbricated in all parts of American society, that a war over it was not inevitable.
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 4 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -7 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
What neither the fundamentalist or neo-revisionist questions, though, is that slavery was at the heart of the coming of the Civil War. Though I'm more familiar with the Civil War historiography than the Revolution scholarship, the debates seem similar.
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 9 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -7 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
The "neo-revisionist" side in the Revolution debates stresses contingency: they point out that British West Indian colonists reacted to antislavery threats & slave revolts by deepening their reliance on the Empire, instead of declaring independence (a choice that backfired) ...
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 4 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -5 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
... whereas the North American slaveholding colonists were confident enough in their power to preserve slavery that they risked independence from British empire. Dunmore enters here as a contingency that changed the dynamic ...
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 5 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -1 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
... though the slaveholding patriots' calculation ultimately proved more prescient than the BWI planters, since the independent U.S. was able to hold onto slavery for much longer than Jamaica, Barbados, etc.
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 4 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -3 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
As in the Civil War case, though, either side you choose in this debate ends up coming back to the point that slavery was ascendant in North America during the imperial crisis. Either you think a fundamental rift was opening between free Britain and slave US ...
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 6 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -10 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
Or you think that slavery had become so deeply rooted in the N.A. colonies that slaveholding patriots felt secure enough in its power to jump ship. Either way, you come back to the point that by 1776, what started in 1619 (or thereabouts) was crucial to the way the nation began.
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 3 Retweets ❤️ 10 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood -1 🙁

…in reply to @wcaleb
Which, as I understand it, is the main thing @nhannahjones wants her readers to get!
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 2 Retweets ❤️ 13 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood 0

…in reply to @wcaleb
@nhannahjones Put another way: seeming absence of concern about Somerset in N.A., relative to in, say Barbados, does not necessarily ==> "freedom narrative." It could show how confident the soon-to-be-independent planters were that they could hold out on their own. (See Ed Rugemer's new book.)
Permalink On twitter.com ♻️ 2 Retweets ❤️ 8 Favorites 2020 Jan 23 Mood +4 🙂