In-depth Reading

Here’s a resource for additional books by historians.



Berlin, Ira and Ronald Hoffman, eds.
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983.


Blackburn Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848. London: Verso, 1988.


Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of the Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.


Ericson, David F. Slavery in the American Republic: Developing the Federal Government, 1791-1861. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011.


Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996.

Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1974.


Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2015.


Gellman, David N. Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.


Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1974.


Greene, Jack P. All Men Are Created Equal: Some Reflections on the Character of the American Revolution: An Inaugural Lecture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.


Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.


Kornblith, Gary. Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early American Republic, 1776-1821. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.


Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.


MacLeod, Duncan J. Slavery, Race and the American Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.


McKitrick, Eric L. Slavery Defended: The View of the Old South. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963.


Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975.


Nash, Gary B. The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of RevolutionCambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.


Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982.


Van Cleve, George William. Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.


Wolf, Eva Sheppard. Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.

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