Greek Slave

American historians refer to the period of the late 1820s to about 1850 as the Jacksonian Era, a way of indicating the importance of the polarizing figure of Andrew Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837, in nearly every aspect of politics, culture, and society in the United States during these years. Jackson was a leader like no other the young nation had seen. The first six presidents had all been...

The fictions that whites built about the black people in their midst were very different from those they constructed about one another. In the eyes of almost all the dominant citizens who put themselves at the center of the body politic, scheming Yankee farmers and vaguely disreputable Westerners might be of dubious commercial malleability or low social standing, but they were indisputably in the competitive race that linked citizens across the electorate. African-Americans, however, were not. …