Adam Rothman

Elsa Barraza Mendoza

A microcosm of the history of American slavery in a collection of the most important primary and secondary readings on slavery at Georgetown University and among the Maryland Jesuits Georgetown University's early history, closely tied to that of the Society of Jesus in Maryland, is a microcosm of the history of American slavery: the entrenchment of chattel slavery in the tobacco economy of the Chesapeake in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the contradictions of liberty and slavery at the founding of the United States; the rise of the domestic slave trade to the cotton and sugar kingdoms of the Deep South in the nineteenth century; the political conflict over slavery and its overthrow amid civil war; and slavery's persistent legacies of racism and inequality. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. Important primary sources drawn from the university's and the Maryland Jesuits' archives document Georgetown's tangled history with slavery, down to the sizes of shoes distributed to enslaved people on the Jesuit plantations that subsidized the school. The volume also includes scholarship on Jesuit slaveholding in Maryland and at Georgetown, news coverage of the university's relationship with slavery, and reflections from descendants of the people owned and sold by the Maryland Jesuits. These essays, articles, and documents introduce readers to the history of Georgetown's involvement in slavery and recent efforts to confront this troubling past. Current efforts at recovery, repair, and reconciliation are part of a broader contemporary moment of reckoning with American history and its legacies. This reader traces Georgetown's "Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Initiative" and the role of universities, which are uniquely situated to conduct that reckoning in a constructive way through research, teaching, and modeling thoughtful, informed discussion.

A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation

Facing Georgetown's History

Rothman explores how slavery flourished in a new nation dedicated to the principle of equality among free men, and reveals the enormous consequences of U.S. expansion into the region that became the Deep South.

American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South

Slave Country

Most historians of the American Civil War have reached a vague agreement on slavery -- that it somehowcaused the American Civil War. In this essay, Adam Rothman takes a look at recent historiography that attempts to clarify not only how exactly this came about, but also why the Confederacy lost and slavery ended.

Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

Michael Kazin

Rebecca Edwards

Contains 150 articles that provide information about significant topics in American political history, including ideas, philosophies, movements, economics, religion, and more.

The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History

After Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862, Rose Herera’s owners fled to Havana, taking her three children with them. Adam Rothman tells the story of Herera’s quest to rescue her children from bondage after the war. As the kidnapping case made its way through the courts, it revealed the prospects and limits of justice during Reconstruction.

Adam Rothman

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