Coming for to Carry Me Home: Race in America from Abolitionism to Jim Crow

(Paperback)

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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.

Reviews

In this unflinching portrait, personalities come alive; the policies, philosophies, visions, aspirations, and foibles of political leaders provide high drama as well as compelling history. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the history of politics during a critical half century of changing race relations. -- Orville Vernon Burton, Creativity Professor of Humanities, Professor of History, Pan African Studies, and Sociology, Clemson University and author The Age of Lincoln
J. Michael Martinez, in Coming for to Carry Me Home, offers a sweeping yet incisive history of the politics of race in the tumultuous years between the rise of abolitionism and the advent of Jim Crow. The strength of Martinezs narrative is the rich mixture of ways the author invites readers to feel the tensions and experience the ambiguities of known and unknown Americans who struggle with the nations most enduring moral dilemma. -- Ronald C. White Jr., author of A. Lincoln: A Biography
Martinez succeeds in his effort to place Lincoln and Radical Republicanism in a broad historical context. His background in law and political science are evident as the bulk of the book raises constitutional questions and examines political struggles, compromises, and legal batters in the Supreme Court that fundamentally affected U.S. race relations from 1830 to 1880. Martinez reminds us of the failures of Reconstruction and provides a political context for the period using sources that will be of benefit to future scholars. * The Journal of African American History *

Author Bio

J. Michael Martinez is an attorney and author of numerous articles and four books, including Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire during Reconstruction.