The Greatest Slave Rebellion
in Modern History:
Southern Slaves in the American Civil War
Southern Slaves in the American Civil War
Steven Hahn, University of Pennsylvania
Overview:
On October 21, 2004, Dr. Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette
P. Nichols Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, presented
the J. Harvey Young lecture for Emory University's Department of History.
The author of the award-winning Roots of Southern Populism (1983)
and co-editor of The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation
(1985), Professor Hahn has most recently written A Nation Under Our
Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the
Great Migration (2003) which won the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Merle
Curti Prizes in American History.
Video:
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Welcome and Introduction from Dr. Jonathan
Prude (5:23 min.)
Dr. Jonathan Prude of the Emory University Department
of History introduces Steven Hahn to deliver the J. Harvey Young
Lecture for 2004. |
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Dr. Steven Hahn, "The Greatest
Slave Rebellion in Modern History: Southern Slaves in the American
Civil War" |
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Part 1 (9:10 min.)
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Reconsidering the concept of slave "rebellion."
Why have historians been reluctant to address the possibility that
the Civil War witnessed a rebellion of southern slaves? |
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Part 2 (9:42 min.)
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How the slave rebellion grew. The background of local
understanding, the slaves' spatial networks of organizing and political
understanding. The circulation and function of rumor. |
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Part 3 (4:50 min.)
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"Like the coming of cities." Forms of slave
rebellion expressed by wartime fugitives. |
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Part 4 (2:06 min.)
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In the "contraband" camps. |
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Part 5 (2:50 min.)
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What of the slaves who stayed on plantations? |
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Part 6 (4:03 min.)
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Fugitives make their way into the Union army. |
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Part 7 (3:58 min.)
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Military service in the wartime Union army provided
former slaves with political education and literacy. |
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Part 8 (3:30 min.)
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Ex-slaves on the battlefield. |
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Part 9 (9:03 min.)
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Challenging historians' assumptions. The slaves' rebellion
in the United States South compared with other slave rebellions,
especially with that of St. Domingue (Haiti). |
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Question and Answer (2:27 min.)
An excerpt from the Question and Answer session:
Dr. Hahn discusses the persistence of African American political
struggle in one place over time through the example of Phillips
County, Arkansas. |
About the Speaker:
Steven
Hahn is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History at
the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD from Yale University
and is a specialist on the social and political history of the nineteenth-century
United States, on the history of the U. S. South, and on the comparative
history of slavery and emancipation. He is the author of Roots of
Southern Populism (1983), and co-editor (with Jonathan Prude) of
The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation (1985).
A Nation Under Our Feet (2004) received the Pulitzer Prize in
History, the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University, and the Merle Curti
Prize in Social History sponsored by the Organization of American Historians.
He is currently at work on the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures in African-American
History, to be delivered at Harvard University in 2007, and on a history
of the United States from 1840 to 1900, to be published in the Penguin
history of the United States.
