Review of Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery,
Emancipation and Human Rights

By Eric Foner
The Nation
August 10, 2011

http://www.thenation.com/article/162669/inhuman-bondage-slavery-emancipation-and-human-rights

This past spring, television viewers in Britain were treated to a six-part series called Civilization about the rise (and possible fall, if China has its way) of the West, hosted by the historian Niall Ferguson. One episode explored why after independence, the United States forged ahead economically while the nations of Latin America stagnated. In an unusual twist, Ferguson chose South Carolina, a state governed by a tight-knit planter oligarchy, as a model of Jeffersonian democracy resting on small property ownership, in contrast to the autocratic societies south of the border organized around large latifundia. Only after forty-five minutes of the one-hour show did Ferguson mention the existence of slaves-the majority of South Carolina’s population. When slavery was finally discussed, it was presented not as a crucial structural feature of early American society but as a moral dilemma, an “original sin” expiated by the election of Barack Obama.