Image of crossed swords

Read the Witcher

Bind Us Apart

How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation

Bind Us Apart Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Nicholas Guyatt

Formats and Prices

Price

$20.99

Price

$26.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $20.99 $26.99 CAD
  2. Hardcover $32.00 $40.00 CAD

Also available from:

Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that “all men are created equal”? The usual answer is racism, but the reality is more complex and unsettling. In Bind Us Apart, historian Nicholas Guyatt argues that, from the Revolution through the Civil War, most white liberals believed in the unity of all human beings. But their philosophy faltered when it came to the practical work of forging a color-blind society. Unable to convince others-and themselves-that racial mixing was viable, white reformers began instead to claim that people of color could only thrive in separate republics: in Native states in the American West or in the West African colony of Liberia.

Herein lie the origins of “separate but equal.” Decades before Reconstruction, America’s liberal elite was unable to imagine how people of color could become citizens of the United States. Throughout the nineteenth century, Native Americans were pushed farther and farther westward, while four million slaves freed after the Civil War found themselves among a white population that had spent decades imagining that they would live somewhere else.

Essential reading for anyone disturbed by America’s ongoing failure to achieve true racial integration, Bind Us Apart shows conclusively that “separate but equal” represented far more than a southern backlash against emancipation-it was a founding principle of our nation.

Genre:

On Sale
Apr 26, 2016
Page Count
416 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465065615

You May Also Like

Plentiful Country
Plentiful Country $32.50 $41.50 CAD
The Ledger and the Chain
The Ledger and the Chain $21.99 $28.99 CAD
Civil War by Other Means
Civil War by Other Means $30.00 $38.00 CAD
Unsettled Land
Unsettled Land $35.00 $44.00 CAD
The Hated Cage
The Hated Cage $32.00 $40.00 CAD

Nicholas Guyatt

About the Author

Nicholas Guyatt is professor of American history at the University of Cambridge and the author of five previous books, including Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation. He lives in Cambridge, UK.

Learn more about this author