Kenneth M. Stampp "The Peculiar Institution" Limited Edition, Leather Bound Collector's Edition [Sealed]

Easton Press. Norwalk, CT. Kenneth M. Stampp "The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South". Limited Edition. The leather bound library of American History. Includes original Collector's Notes by the publisher. Luxuriously bound in full genuine leather with 22kt gold accents. Very Fine without any flaws. 

This edition is now OUT OF PRINT 

• The Leather-Bound Library of American History
• Notes From History
• Very Fine (Sealed)

About the book

The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South analytically describes all facets of slavery in the south, from the 1600s thru the mid-19th century, including demographics, slave/slaveholder lives, southern economics, slave trading, political issues & northern & abolitionist responses. Stampp analyzes how some slave owners were kind to their chattel. Some slaves had lives as good as or better than poor northern workers. He examines this issue mostly to show how in fact slaveowners used this behavior as a selfish strategy to ease the lives of some slaves to prevent dissent or possible legal action. This treatment did little to convince slaves that their lives were acceptable. Dissent & opposition were common.

Stampp's thrust is to counter the arguments of historians who'd characterized slavery as a benignly paternalistic tradition, helpful in many ways to slaves, which promoted racial harmony. Such stances are in fact identical to pro-slavery advocates prior to the Civil War. As well, certain critics of slavery adopt an erroneous position when they claim that "to the Negroes, slavery seemed natural; knowing no other life, they accepted it without giving the matter much thought. Not that slavery was a good thing, mind you--but still, it probably hurt the Negroes less than the it did the whites. Indeed, the whites were really more enslaved than were the Negro slaves". Stampp condemns such an argument and likens it to pro-slavery arguments before the Civil War, which were "based on some obscure & baffling logic".

Stampp held that the national debate over the morality of slavery was the focal point of the Civil War. As Stampp wrote, "Prior to the Civil War southern slavery was America's most profound & vexatious social problem. More than any other problem, slavery nagged at the public conscience; offering no easy solution". The book was for not only history but a necessary examination for Americans in the 1950s because "it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present," & "one must know what slavery meant to the Negro and how he reacted to it before one can comprehend his more recent tribulations". Later work by others qualified certain of Stampp's findings, but The Peculiar Institution remains a central text in the study of US slavery.

About the author

Kenneth Milton Stampp, Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction.