Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner's Rebellion. By Eva Sheppard Wolf. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Pp. [xxiv], 284. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3194-7.)
Eva Sheppard Wolf traces white Virginians' debates over emancipation from the post-Revolutionary period through Nat Turner's rebellion. Though she concludes that slavery's foes never stood much of a chance, she nonetheless uses the debates both to make important arguments about the nature of manumission and the roots of proslavery ideology and to provide illuminating examples of the construction of racial identities.
Wolf presents a ...