Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America

'[A] bracingly original book.' Harold Holzer, Wall Street JournalHow a band of antislavery leaders recovered the radical philosophical inspirations of the first American Revolution to defeat the slaveholders oligarchy in the Civil War.This is a story about a dangerous ideaone which ignited revolutions in America, France, and Haiti; burst across Europe in the revolutions of 1848; and returned to inflame a new generation of intellectuals to lead the abolition movementthe idea that all men are created equal.In their struggle against the slaveholding oligarchy of their time, Americas antislavery leaders found their way back to the rationalist, secularist, and essentially atheist inspiration for the first American Revolution. Frederick Douglasss unusual interest in radical German philosophers and Abraham Lincolns buried allusions to the same thinkers are but a few of the clues that underlie this propulsive philosophical detective story. With fresh takes on forgotten thinkers like Theodore Parker, the excommunicated Unitarian minister who is the original source of some of Lincolns most famous lines, and a feisty band of German refugees, philosopher and historian Matthew Stewart tells a vivid and piercing story of the battle between Americas philosophical radicals and the conservative counterrevolution that swept the American republic in the first decades of its existence and persists in new forms up to the present day. In exposing the role of Christian nationalism and the collusion between northern economic elites and slaveholding oligarchs, An Emancipation of the Mind demands a significant revision in our understanding of the origins and meaning of the struggle over slavery in Americaand offers a fresh perspective on struggles between democracy and elite power today.