Beyond Garrison Antislavery and Social Reform [Hardcover]

This 2005 book asky why Massachusetts has gained a reputation for racial intolerance despite formerly beneficient behavior towards African-Americans.Massachusetts's reputation for racial intolerance, reflected in the controversy over school bussing in the 1970s, is grounded in relatively recent experience. Bay Staters before the Civil War compiled a more enlightened record on race relations, if not on toleration for immigrants or support for the working people. They tended to be paternalists, not egalitarians, when it came to race. Beyond Garrison explains why that was and why the same people who extended a paternal hand to African-Americans showed no such charity for Irish immigrants.Massachusetts's reputation for racial intolerance, reflected in the controversy over school bussing in the 1970s, is grounded in relatively recent experience. Bay Staters before the Civil War compiled a more enlightened record on race relations, if not on toleration for immigrants or support for the working people. They tended to be paternalists, not egalitarians, when it came to race. Beyond Garrison explains why that was and why the same people who extended a paternal hand to African-Americans showed no such charity for Irish immigrants.Why was Massachusetts one of the few Northern states to grant African-American males the right to vote? Why did it pass personal liberty laws, which helped protect fugitive slaves from federal authorities in the two decades immediately preceding the Civil War? Beyond Garrison finds answers to these important questions in unfamiliar and surprising places. Its protagonists are not the noble supporters of American abolitionism grouped around William Lloyd Garrison, but, rather, ordinary men and women in country towns and villages, encouraged by African-American activists throughout the state. Bruce Laurie's approach focuses on the politics of such antislavery advocates and demonstrates their leanings toward third-party politics. Bruce Laurie is ló