Coming for to Carry Me Home

Race in America from Abolitionism to Jim Crow

By (author) J. Michael Martinez

Publication date:

22 December 2011

Length of book:

334 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442214989

Coming for to Carry Me Home examines the history of the politics surrounding U.S. race relations during the half century between the rise of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s and the dawn of the Jim Crow era in the 1880s. J. Michael Martinez argues that Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in Congress were the pivotal actors, albeit not the architects, that influenced this evolution. To understand how Lincoln and his contemporaries viewed race, Martinez first explains the origins of abolitionism and the tumultuous decade of the 1830s, when that generation of political leaders came of age. He then follows the trail through Reconstruction, Redemption, and the beginnings of legal segregation in the 1880s. This book addresses the central question of how and why the concept of race changed during this period.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Prologue: "We Have the Wolf by the Ear"

1. “The Crimes of This Guilty Land Will Never Be Purged Away but with Blood”
2. “Mr. President, You Are Murdering Your Country by Inches”
3. “The Bondsman’s Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Unrequited Toil
Shall Be Sunk”
4. “An Ungrateful, Despicable, Besotted, Traitorous Man—An Incubus”
5. “The Progress of Evolution, from President Washington to President Grant,
Was Alone Evidence Enough to Upset Darwin”
6. “Radicalism Is Dissolving—Going to Pieces, but What Is to Take Its Place,
Does Not Clearly Appear”
7. “We Have Been, as a Class, Grievously Wounded, Wounded in the House of
Our Friends”

Epilogue: “We Wear the Mask That Grins and Lies”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

After the long and agonizing struggle of the Civil War, with its lukewarm resolution of the issue of slavery, why did the nation fail in its efforts to take the next steps toward full citizenship for the formerly enslaved? Martinez examines the politics of race relations in the nineteenth century, from Lincoln’s struggles with his personal conscience and with the Radical Republicans to economic, social, and political factors that contributed to unfulfilled promises of Reconstruction and the political atmosphere that resulted in severe injustices codified into law. Martinez focuses on the Radical Republicans, particularly Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Benjamin Wade, and a host of fiery figures who fomented the issue of racial justice, including William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass. This is a compelling look at the heat and vituperation still evident in contemporary politics, with historical particularities of the nineteenth century, and the underlying issues of race that resonate today. Photos and illustrations, including political cartoons, offer a feel for the political sensibilities of the time.