Kolchin: Slavery In America

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Kolchin reviews slavery in America starting from when the first settlers arrived in the New World, bring slaves with them around 1619. He proceeds thought the American Revolution and then into the antebellum period, which started after the Revolutionary War and lasted until sometime after the Civil War.
Kolchin covers the hardships the slaves had to endure in America along with Social and Religious issues. He compares many aspects of slavery to other counties such as the Caribbean, South America, and the serfdom in Russia but he doesn’t stop there, he even compares southern slavery to northern slaves and upper south to lower south slaves. By comparing different regions and counties, he was able to show that the lives of slaves varied greatly in how they lived and worked. Kolchin discussed the master’s role in the lives of the slaves and how it shaped them. The thesis of the book …show more content…
This book however went into a whole different realm on slavery. Kolchin did an awesome job of gathering the facts on slavery that stretched roughly 250 years and packing all those facts into a book approximately 315 pages. However, this caused the book to be very boring for the most part. I could only read about 15 pages in one sitting before almost dosing. If he would have included a picture here and there along with a slave’s particular story, or a newspaper article once in a while this would have helped make the book more enjoyable. I would have liked the book to have elaborated more on Northern slavery than what it did, particularly around 1619 until after the American Revolutionary War, since the north was starting to do away with slavery. I think from a reader’s standpoint or at least my view, being able to compare and contrast issues the north faced with what the south later faced in greater details would have helped make the book not as dry of a read as
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