Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827. By David N. Gellman. Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Pp. [xiv], 297. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3174-9.)
Slavery in New York has become a hot topic. As numerous academic studies and ongoing museum exhibits at the New-York Historical Society illustrate, northern bondage was anything but marginal--particularly during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when debates over abolition prefigured discussions of race and nation in the postbellum South. David N. Gellman steps into this crowded field with Emancipating New York: The ...