A lesson learned from MAKING SENSE OF SLAVERY: AMERICA'S LONG RECKONING FROM THE FOUNDING ERA TO TODAY, by Scott Spillman

 Historical injustices never make sense until you consider the full picture.

    Allowing the institution of slavery to persist decades after most of the rest of the modern world has long been acknowledged as America's original sin (along with the dispossession of Native American societies), and yet our society continues to struggle with and debate the legacy of the continuing impacts of slavery on our nation's politics and culture. As Scott Spillman explains in his excellent new book Making Sense of Slavery: America's Long Reckoning from the Founding Era to Today, such confusion over the topic is nothing new in American society, and indeed goes back to the earliest efforts to understand the institution of slavery even as it was still being practiced. Making Sense of Slavery is very much an historiography book (a term that explains the study of how the field of History is written over time), yet is surprisingly readable and accessible to anyone with a passing interest in the topic.

    Given its structure of analyzing the work of different historians, Spillman's book doesn't follow the usual format of most of the books I cover in this blog, and yet a fascinating story and lesson emerges as his book progresses. As he points out, early studies of slavery faced the huge inherent weaknesses that they largely paid attention to the only people who had left a detailed record of the practice--the slaveowners themselves. Many Southern communities forbid slaves from becoming literate, and while some secretly did so anyways a vast majority of slavery's written record came from the rose-colored glasses of those who perpetuated the institution. As a result, early studies on American slavery perpetuated the myth that it was a somewhat benevolent and tame institution, where many masters went out of their way to treat their slaves with kindness, and where the slaves themselves learned beneficial "civilization lessons" even as they somewhat suffered in their daily status. Eventually, black historians challenged these myths and demanded that the field pay more attention to the perspectives of the slaves themselves, and they had to fight with educational institutions to search for evidence beyond the written record (such as sociological and archaeological evidence).

    Eventually in the wake of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, the field of History made real progress in bringing in more modern and accurate understandings of the damaging effects of slavery, yet that reckoning has subsequently set up decades of cultural clashes. Even as historians gained a greater understanding of the permanent damage caused by centuries of slavery, ordinary Americans still clung to the earlier, happier myths of the institution perpetuated by prior generations (most notably by propaganda such as Gone With the Wind), and that generated increased resentment against historians trying to make changes to American educational curriculum. We live with these cultural resentments to this day, seen in the modern headlines about the government going out of its way to pull down tributes to African and Native Americans within our national parks and public spaces.

    Overall, Spillman's book is a fascinating and informative study of all the different ways the impact of slavery has been interpreted over the different generations of American History, and how historians to this day struggle to tell an honest and complete picture of the world of American slavery. It's a memorable reminder of the importance of analyzing all sources and perspectives on great historical injustices, so that we may understand them better and make efforts to ensure they do not continue to cause lasting damage to our society; the worst possible option is to simply try to romanticize and forget about it.

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