Group Berlin Paper
In the book, Generations of Freedom, author Ira Berlin helps both the amateur and experienced
reader in slave cultures to better understand North American slavery from beginning to end. Berlin
looks into both the differences of geographic regions and of eras, dividing the book into five
“generations” of slave culture, each of which have been reviewed by a different writer for this review.
Charter Generations explores the world of the Creoles, those of mixed Atlantic cultures, and
how they arrived first to North America under bondage but not that of chattel slavery. Berlin explains in
the Prologue of the differences between societies with slaves and slave societies. Berlin’s masterful
explanation is a theme that continues through the book, with the Charter Generations, acting within all
of North America as a society with slaves. Berlin does continue to use the Charter Generation as a tie-in
throughout the section; he breaks the different geographic regions into different subsections and
different types of societies with slaves with different types of cultural impacts. The Chesapeake’s Creole
culture had barely a moment in time before being wiped out by chattel bondage while the Lower
Mississippi Valley owned by the French and Spanish continues to ring of Creole diversity. Berlin is
detailed and concise with the Charter Generation, drawing on multiple examples and speaking in a
language that is very readable. This chapter explains a part of American slavery long forgotten that
should be brought forward as Berlin has so eloquently done.
The Plantation Generation is a great example on how Berlin writes using imagery to depict
the way of life for most African Americans at the time. Berlin separates different regions of America
and how slaves were apart of each their culture very well in this chapter. Berlin, in the beginning,
does a great job showing the reader that before slaves were property of another they were
indentured servants. What a reader may also like about the way Berlin writes is the way he paints a
very descriptive picture of a specific event, condition, or person in to their mind. Countless times
throughout the chapter they will see a black mutilated slave hobbling across the land by just
reading the descriptions given upon the page. What the reader will also find very pleasant are the
facts given are not those that everyone already knows but rather eye opening facts. For example,
how dominant the slave population was at the time with a ratio of 15-1 at times. As the reader
moves further on in the book into the more they become part of it because of the excellent
description given.
Revolutionary Generations basically depicts what slavery consisted of before, during, and after
the American Revolution. Among these depictions was a great enlightenment on what the relationships
between slaves and their masters consisted of and how they were altered due to the presence and
course of the war. Aside from the starkness that slaves were treated poorly by their owners, slaves
eventually gained the power of reasoning with their masters due to the chaos and destruction which
followed the war. Farms were burnt, plantations were in rubble, and there wasn’t a market for anything
during and after the war. Eventually, slaves were paid for extra labor they put in; although it was in an
effort to jump start the cotton economy. Slaves were also granted larger gardens and allowances to take
part in open trade in local markets which consisted of both whites and blacks. From this point on, slaves
constantly negotiated with their masters, who tolerated it because such fair treatment helped delay the
process for the abolition of slavery as a whole. Berlin definitely gives an insight to the lives and
relationships of slaves and their owners of the Revolutionary period.
Migration Generations elaborates the period of slavery coinciding with the Antebellum
Age in the United States. Berlin details for this period, in particular, the subjects of slavery’s
spread to previously underexploited regions, and slave culture. The plenitude of the detailing of
these subjects, among others, in discussion and sources, coinciding with this chapter’s length,
gives the impression that Berlin is emphasizing this period to the reader. An example of this is
the map Berlin uses in this chapter, featuring the U.S. in 1850, at its beginning (Berlin 160). The
regions covered in this chapter (Southern Interior, Seaboard South and the North) are more
detailed, compared to the other maps Berlin uses, illustrating this period’s significance to
slavery. Emphasis is prevalent throughout the text and includes, as part of detailing the
particular subjects, discussion of the internal slave trade (labeled as the Second Middle
Passage) and its dismay upon slaves and their families, especially children, who’s accounts of
what they saw and experienced are cited, in the Southern Interior. The emphasis of this period,
done in an engaging and cunning manner, makes it senseless, for the reader, to neglect
Migration Generations.
In Freedom Generations, Berlin summarizes the events of emancipation and slave assimilation
into free culture in a quick twenty pages. However, within this small textual window, Berlin is able to
inform the reader with the large strides made by the “Freedom Generation” effectively and abundantly.
For instance, Berlin explains to the reader the different avenues used by emancipated slaves to exert
their new freedom; whether those avenues were through the application of military code regarding
subordinate treatment or building a foundation for education in African-American communities, Berlin is
effective.
Despite this effectiveness, Berlin disregards salient issues during the time period that he writes
about. The lack of attention on emancipated slaves after 1865 is a major hole in his historical account.
What about the treatment of emancipated slaves during Reconstruction or even the period after
Reconstruction? While Berlin does hint to these injustices, he does not expand upon them. As a book
that tells of small historical victories for slave generations but atrocious acts committed against them it
is as if Berlin missed an opportunity to celebrate the resilience of this generation.