Review of Shades of Freedom
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Shades of Freedom
Analyses of Ch. 1 My Forty Year Journey In Formulating The Precepts
The first chapter of the book Shades Of Freedom is titled My Forty Year Journey In Formulating The Precepts. As the title of this chapter implies, A. Leon Higgbotham Jr. states that hes read every published appellate case and statute on the subject of slavery from 1630 to 1865. The issue is whether there were beliefs or precepts of African American inferiority that preceded the condition of slavery. The claim of this chapter was that there was an incremental effort over time to codify into law the precepts that African Americans were inferior to European Americans.
The first premise that helps us see the claim of African American inferiority was in Higginbothams response to Orlando Pattersons comment on the normalcy of slavery since the dawn of time and in primitive and advance cultures. Higginbotham chooses the state of Virginia to make a case that the American form of Slavery was different than the form found in other cultures both primitive and modern. Virginia is chosen since the other colonies copied other aspects of Virginias policies and so followed its leadership and slavery law.
The second premise states that what started as mere notions became guiding principles or precepts, which were embedded in the antebellum from 1820 to 1865. It was at this time that slave holders made their most zealous defense of slavery. As professor Drew G. Faust observed, “Although pro-slavery thought demonstrated remarkable consistency from the 17th century and on, it became in the South of the 1830s, 40s, and 50s more systemic and self-conscious.
Therefore, Higginbotham shows that this nation, from the time of its birth to 1865, instituted in a gradual manner the belief and practice that slavery was a normal part of how this nation would develop. The precepts of American slavery showed the values and assumptions of this society and how they were able to write and interpret laws relating to African-American slaves. Although there was no encompassing book on slavery, altogether these precepts would become the laws that would be looked at as to how African-Americans were to be treated.