Race and Revolution Coming As Research Proposal

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This happened because blacks had learnt that they no longer had to obey the people that illegitimately enslaved them.

Slaves had been determined to fight for their freedom through any means possible, and, they took advantage of any opportunity that they had to become free. According to Nash, tens of thousands of slaves have left the American continent as the British forces advanced inland. Apparently, a great number of black people wanted the British to win the war, as they believed that such an event would set them free.

As Nash describes it, the people that wrote the Constitution hadn't considered the fact that they still had slavery present within the borders of their so-called free country. By the time of the Constitution, however, people had already begun to relate to other issues, believing that slavery had been too insignificant for them to give credit to. Consequent to the period, people began to pay lesser and lesser attention to slavery and to the dangers that it posed. Slavery, as it had been in the nineteenth century, is one of the main factors which lead to the racism existing in the twentieth century.

Nash considers both the supporters of slavery and the abolitionists from the Revolutionary War era to have supplemented each other, with no one actually expecting an outcome from the event. People preferred to leave the subject aside, as they believed slavery to be somewhat beneficial to the country. At the same time, they considered abolitionists to be eccentric people that encouraged revolutionary beliefs.

The colonists have gotten to the point where they regarded slavery as being a common thing. It did not matter to them that black people were obliged to work against their will, as they believed any low-skilled work to be equal to slave work. To the colonists, abolitionism had been threatening for the health of the newly formed country. Historians argued that colonists have had some reasons to fear that the union might be harmed by a potential abolitionism attack. Apparently, the Union would have risked secession if abolitionists were to put pressure on southerners in order for them to give up slavery. Nash, however, does not agree with abolition being avoided because fear of secession. In fact, the South would not risk declaring secession, as the southern colonies needed the North more than the latter needed them.

Slavery supporters constantly brought fear among abolitionists with stories regarding a great war between the races. Even if the Civil War did take place, it would have been less possible for it to take place as a result of slavery being abolished in the eighteenth century.

Nash appreciates the number of voluntary missions which have made great efforts in order to free slaves from the upper South. However, concurrently, the writer condemns the fact that the Northerners did not take their beliefs further into including a series of antislavery articles in the Constitution. According to Nash, the main reason for the North's reluctance to promote antislavery principles even more had been that the Northern leaders have also had economic interests.

When regarding the motives for slavery's continuity after the Revolutionary War in America, most traditional explanations point to the Lower South as being guilty. Nash demonstrates the fact that by pardoning Southerners for the fact that they made a compromise, Northerners have succeeded in masking the racism present in the North.

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Along with having abolitionist principles, numerous Northerners have also had racist convictions. They did not regard abolitionism as being something that would better the lives of the black people, but as something that would better their own lives and their country. What is curious is the fact that the whole country had ignored the fact that racism and slavery supporters had also been existent in the North.

Even if Nash's book appeared several centuries after the revolution, the information that it holds has been public the whole time. It seems that no one had shown any interest in gathering the data and presenting the world with the truth. Most of the documents used by Nash had been written between 1767 and 1813. In spite of the fact that Nash provided footnotes for his readers, he did not include all the sources that he used. Nash's main thesis revolves around the concept that people did not abolish slavery for the reason that they believed it would contradict "with the principles of the Revolution." (Nash, pp. 18)

Numerous generations have been taught that the American Revolution had nothing to do with slavery, and that there had been nothing that the Founding Fathers could do in order to stop it. In spite of the anti-slavery beliefs that many of the Founding Fathers had, they also had slaves as their property. Most people, including the blacks, had their own idea of what the outcome of the revolution should have meant for them personally.

This book certainly provides valuable information regarding the truth behind the creation of a perfect country in which freedom thrived on almost all levels. People reading it will most definitely change their minds regarding the purity that the Union has held during its early years. It should be made public that certain facts about slavery are wrong, and, that the North also holds great responsibility in institutionalizing slavery.

In Race and Revolution, Gary Nash goes at presenting the world with a completely different view of the American Revolution and of the people that created the Constitution. The period has been one in which people of diverse ethnicities all demanded for their rights. However, only the colonists have succeeded in accomplishing their goals, with the others suffering greatly from the event.

Nash is one of the few people that dared to confront topics considered by most to be sacred. He had been determined to shed some light regarding the way in which history has been falsely written.

It may be difficult for most Americans to take the book for granted because of the fact that it comes as a contradiction to facts that have been considered to be real for over two hundred years. Race and Revolution is a book that condemns the Founding Fathers and the North for having accepted slavery as a necessary institution and for the fact that they did not go through great efforts in order to end the torment that has lasted for almost another century, as they did in different other domains of the public life

In spite of the fact that slavery stood against everything that they fought for, the colonists preferred to go on with it, as they believed that the financial benefits that it brought overcame any other principles.

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