Sean Wilentz Interview: The Contradiction of Slavery & Democracy
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- Historian Sean Wilentz examines the contradictory idea of slavery and democracy coexisting in the 1800s and discusses how the consequences of emancipation, and the consequences of the Civil War are "still very much with us.“
Sean Wilentz studies U.S. political and social history. He received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University after earning bachelor’s degrees from Columbia University and Balliol College, Oxford University. His many books include Chants Democratic (1984), The Kingdom of Matthias (1994) and The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His study, No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding (2018), was the recipient of the annual Thomas A. Cooley Book Prize for the best book on the Constitution, awarded by the Georgetown University Law Center. He was formerly a contributing editor to The New Republic, and currently a member of the editorial boards of Dissent and Democracy, he lectures frequently and has contributed some four hundred articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, The American Scholar, The Nation, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel. He has also given congressional testimony, notably before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998. His writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems Taylor-ASCAP awards.
The Apple TV+ series "Lincoln's Dilemma," features insights from journalists, educators and scholars, as well as rare archival materials, that offer a more nuanced look into the life of the Great Emancipator. Set against the background of the Civil War, "Lincoln's Dilemma" also gives voice to the narratives of enslaved people, shaping a more complete view of an America divided over issues including economy, race and humanity, and underscoring Lincoln's battle to save the country, no matter the cost. The series is narrated by award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright ("Angels in America") and features the voices of actor Bill Camp ("The Night Of") as Lincoln and Leslie Odom Jr. ("Hamilton") as Frederick Douglas.
To view the entire series please visit:
tv.apple.com/us/show/lincolns...
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Sean Wilentz, Historian, Princeton University
Interview Date: December 10, 2020
Interviewed by: Jackie Olive and Barak Goodman
© Apple Video Programming, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
#SeanWilentzInterview #kunhardtfilmfoundation - Krátké a kreslené filmy
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Thank you. An amazing understanding of history and life.
I tuned into this and have been fascinated by the details of the struggles over slavery, and the politics. It's an era I know something about but not that much. Also, it is clear to me from the conversational style of Sean Wilentz, that he is both thoughtful and knowledgeable, and, most importantly, that these events are live to him, and not just in the past.
My grandma great told me of standing on a hill watching Lincoln’s funeral train go by. She cried every time she told us about it.
Did she tell you he was a black man? Because he was. Just google Abraham Lincoln’s personal description of hisself.
@@TheCulture. you read it wrong. He did not say he was a black man. He said he was a black man's president. notice the apostrophe s?
@@pulsar22 Abraham Lincoln was black ma friend. Google “Abraham Lincoln personal description of himself”
@@TheCulture. A lot of people think that Barack Obama is Black. But we all know that he had a Black Father and a White Mother. If you concede that what I am saying is true, just think for a moment of the power of Blackness, to preempt and usurp and take over and "win the race" in just ONE GENERATION! How WEAK is the argument for what you define as "Whiteness" such that in one equal mixing, it is literally GONE? Or rather, how much does that mean that you actually confer more STRENGTH upon the Black race, if it be so powerful that it can erase in one-fell-swoop?! Or is "race" just mostly just a mental construct that you use to promulgate your own self-importance? - j q t -
@@TheCulture. what you’re talking about is when Lincoln once described himself as a slave because his own father used to sell his son for services for 31 cents a day to neighboring farms. This enraged him as a kid. He felt compassion for the plight of the slave.
Wonderful, it is amazing how much there is still to be learned about Slavery, the Civil War, what people fought over I the 1960’s and later. I thought I knew a lot. After all, I was there/here and heard all the speeches. But now I have heard this and need to go back and hear it again with years of living with the results still leaking down the years. Mr Willetz and I are the same age, but our lives have run to different places and learning. Mr Willetz is amazing!
Well done.
It was difficult but necessary to listen to *un*emotionally.
He brings up points, opinions and alternative approaches that are valid, if not exactly what are necessarily completely in agreement with or how others might interpret them.
This is definitely worth "reading", re-reading, and re-reading again.
It also deserves to be included into school curricula as "another viewpoint" to the standard.
Well done, Mr. Wilentz, well done, Sir.
Prof. Sean Wilentz's argument that slavery was a dilemma activated into a constitutional crisis by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is contained in the section that begins at 1:17:34 ("The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850") and ends at 1:29:35 ("Lincoln's misunderstood anti-slavery commitment"). What Prof. Wilentz says regarding Lincoln is that he represented one of many abolitionist orientations that achieved political power in the 1860 Election, and that for Lincoln and other abolitionists of his orientation, the dilemma was: how does one preserve the Constitution and get rid of slavery at the same time, given slavery was, in fact, constitutional? Other abolitionists-- whether politicians or regular citizens-- did not have that dilemma because for them the constitution (and therefore the Union) was less important, so that for them it was either/or. Not for Lincoln. whose only fundamental change in thinking had to do with deciding to emancipate by executive order in order to preserve the Union and end the constitutional crisis.
I happen to think that when Gen. Pierre Beauregard's troops attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, the constitutional crisis became moot; a federal installation of the U.S. government had been attacked and there would be a response-- and the Civil War began. The crisis would be resolved by winning or losing the war. If the United States of America had lost the war, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation would not have meant anything for the Confederate States of America, which would have solidified its independence and maintained its slave economy.
excellent summary....esp. for younger students who are need to appreciate the complexities of the arguments in any political and social conflict. How important it is to try to sort out
the deep and wide complexities in such a situation before any working understanding can occue.
I’m glad he talks fast enough
🌿🇺🇲🌿 Clearly, it's an ongoing fissure. What a fantastic commentary. 🌿🇺🇲🌿
This Is Fantastic. People should learn about this because of how cool the anti-slavery movement is. Tell DeSantis.
Bump
"A person successful in their own time leaves very little mark in history."
Canadian import @ 1963 5 years old and had never seen a black person. Still had Men. women. And Colored bathrooms at the local gas station. And drinking fountains. Things got better. Now things are going in reverse . Maybe it’s time to move back to Canada
We still have slavery, only in the form of economic slavery, slave wages, the ownership of land has always been the symbolic symbol of economic wealth and freedom, the wealth gap has never been greater than it is today, even immigration threaten this idea of democracy and Christianity, especially white Christian nationalism as education threaten them in todays division between the left and the right, which in many ways is hate labels, like right mean conservatism fascism and left mean liberal communism or socialism, another civil war is in no one best interests, there will be no winners if the radical extremists succeed in turning back the hands of progress etc etc…
This is a really brilliant talk/interview. Sean is very eloquent and some of his language is very moving. Excellent.
Lincoln and Seward both gave speeches at Tremont Temple in Boston in 1848. After listening to Seward speak, Lincoln who at the time was stumping for pro slavery Whig candidate Zachary Taylor told Steward he needed to reexamine his position on slavery (at the time it was mostly stop the spread to the territories)
Wonderful lecture
Andy and Amos gottta go!!!!!!!!!!!!
The dudes in the make up with the fake accents?????
thank you!
You can see the sadness in his face when talking about Lincoln's death.
Thanks!
Fascinating!!
Happy Black History Month
I’m from Greene County and I’m sure my ancestors are descendants of Tuscarora Nation
This is brilliant.
😮
The South was the south don't muddy the waters with a numerical fraction when you speak of the United States
?
So, who are going to be the slaves.
Who shall be the slaves? That's Easy: _The Poorly Educated!_ - j q t -
My first meeting of a black person.
1960s. Milwaukee WIS. 8 yrs old. First time in a hospital. First time having a surgery. Emergency surgery. Woke up and people (the nurse) were suddenly black. My parents weren’t in the room. Confused and terrified. Not of the nurse herself. I just didn’t understand how people suddenly were black. WISCONSIN was not then nor is it now hugely diversified. Many areas of WIS have very few minorities. At the time, we lived in a rural area, 35 miles west of Milwaukee. Had to drive to the city for a hospital. My mother’s explanation was the usual pathetic story by a parent. God (another “story”) over-baked some people when he created them. Or something to that effect. Yeesh. And we wonder why our planet is all “f” up. 😂
I truly can't listen to this it's disgusting how easy disgusting salvage people are, to do to human beings but at the same time think they are greater to put people in money bondage. 😔
🤔huh? what??
@@roringusanda2837 I apologize I was very sleepy.
@@foxfire1894 "salvage people" ??
Slavery wasn't abolished. It went from private to federalization of slavery...SLAVERY IS STILL LRGAL
Slavery and race . . . religion. Read Frederick Douglass' Appendix. Or listen to it. Very damning.
Which text? Name? Thx. Should be free to download as it's probably in the public domain, I would imagine.
Am unable to listen to the conversation in this Video.
Has Professor Wilentz ever read DuBois or Douglass? He could use a different lens/perspective on the Civil War, imho.
Historical truths he seems to strategically omit, so as to stick to his own narrative:
1.) There were two slave states, Maryland & Delaware, fighting on the union side.
2.) There were thousands of free Black slave owners in the Southern states.
I hate the modern trend of trying to minimize Lincoln’s contribution because he didn’t say or do exactly what they thought he should have by today’s standards.
It saddens me that Ibram X Kendi and George Floyd are held in higher esteem than Lincoln today. Neither were ever concerned with the health and unity of our entire nation.
You are comparing the goals of a historian and a working man to a president? Make it make sense.
Floyd isn’t held as a personal hero, it’s the struggle that his death symbolises that is famous. It highlighted that black men were still being murdered by police. That’s all. Doesn’t matter if he was a truly great American. He was brutally murdered for nothing but being black. And that’s why his name continues on. He started a new movement.
@@dizzylemongaming2175😊
There is no comparison except the fact that you are trying very hard to make it. Nonsense.
Wonderful!
Um, um, um, um, aarrgghhbb
Let’s get rid of the entire Bible and see how far we can go.
-In the Big Inning- _No More Baseball!_ - j q t -
By the way, he is speaking on American history and race. I am led to believe his people immigrated here after black Americans were emancipated.🤔 because other than being a racist why take up a neutral approach?
Because Abraham Lincoln was a black man. He says it out his own mouth. Just google Abraham Lincoln’s personal description of himself, he says he’s a “Dark skinned” man.
His people?
He is an educator. This is a very academic view.
The reason I said when I said is because there is no need to get giggly and giddy about this subject that has still gone unresolved.
@@TheCulture. Abraham Lincoln with his debate of Democratic candidate, Douglas stated that he is not for a quality of Black people and that he would assign the superior role to the white race. So he was either a sellout or a white supremacist 🚫 🧢
Enjoyed this but lost me at John Lewis.
He mentions everything about Lincoln but manages to keeps out the biggest fact that Abraham Lincoln was a BLACK MAN. Lincoln tells you this fact in his own description of hisself in his own words. “ If anything describes me I’m a dark skinned man with no brands of recollection” that’s the short version but it’s a simple google search of Abraham personal description of himself.
Lincoln struggled with setting the slaves free. He wrote about it in his papers. The Lincoln papers. Being dark skinned in my opinion is irrelevant as many self described/identifiable whites/Europeans are darker skinned. However, in own Lincoln's own words he lamented. He was troubled over the issue of freeing the slaves. Quite possibly he only did it because it was time, and/or the times we were living under. Don't google pull his papers from the Library of Congress. His writings are worth reading.
Stop posting this everywhere. It’s silly. We have many photos and pictures of Lincoln. And we know his entire lineage. He’s not black. If you seriously think American back then would have voted a black man as president, then you know even less about history than this post would suggest. Lincoln was poetic and to take ONE description from a single time and make your claims is silly, especially with the weight of evidence contradicting you.
@@daviebananas1735 America has ALWAYS been “black” ding bat! We are indigenous the aboriginals, THE REAL AMERICAN INDIANS. The definition of America is the home of the COPPER COLORED PEOPLE aka black people. It’s called White washing dude, you guys did A LOT of it. George Washington was a “black” man as well and I’m sure others but I know those two for a fact! Don’t get mad at me, your “America” is not what you think‼️
He wasn't black. Geez.
@@daviebananas1735 America has ALWAYS been black. We are the aboriginals aka the REAL INDIANS. How about you do some REAL RESEARCH and not this white supremacy narrative! You can put pictures on anything. It's called WHITE WASHING, I guess that's not a thing ether right? The man said it out his own mouth!!! George Washington was also black aka Indian!!
What should be center is that this was the end of slavery. Not the beginning.
So interesting when so-called experts discuss the North as though there was no enslavement in the North, as though it was only a “Southern” sin. This from a “Princeton” professor…wow.
He was talking about the 1850s and 1860s. It's not news to him that slavery existed in northern colonies and states.
I don't believe he said there wasn't anything in the north . He seemed to focus more on Honest Abe and those years before and until his death and his personal experience.
'Lincolns Dilemma' was not slavery in the north or the north seceding from the union. It was the south's reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation and their secession from the Union AND the south using the same Constitution of The United States, adding that Slavery is necessary to the life and well being of the confederacy.
Wow.
Sure sounds like a real Dilemma for Lincoln.
In 1861, the south seceded to preserve slavery where it was at the time and to expand it into the territories where it was not. A war started as a result. The slaveholders in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaaware didn't break up the country, southern slaveholders did.
It's really not that hard.
@deliberatedmind: if you watch and listen through minute 5:35 - 6:12, you will hear Prof. Wilentz talk about how during the 1787 Constitutional Convention the southern delegates, particularly from South Carolina and Georgia, had concerns that the abolition of slavery in northern states ("as early as 1780 in Pennsylvania") would make slavery in the south vulnerable during negotiations.
@@sup8857here here
Hate people who speak in theatrical fashion
He’s talking as if slavery in the north never existed, and didn’t only end 50 years prior to the south. And he’s a historian, OK strong privilege here.🚫🧢
Referring to: 3:52
his idea that we have gone backwards or are still a raciest society is garbage. i would love to debate him on that idea.
One never knows what one doesn't know. You, clearly, don't know a lot. Look at mortgages, financing, loans,schools, hospitals, locations of toxic chemical handling facilities, etc. Look at the indigenous peoples. What in your life would break if you looked around with an honest eye at the country in which you were accidentally born?
@@jeffreysmick821 so you are letting the world know you will not move on. so sad, the rest of us have moved on but you will not or cant. just to what? keep us fighting and devided
@gman_flgman_fl2700 I am awake. I am aware. I look reality in the face. Current events do not surprise me. I want truth, equality, and justice for all. You, otoh, are happy with inequality, injustice, and current events constantly surprise you because you have no understanding of them. For you, the world is a deranged merry-go-round that you don't understand and wonder when you get to get off. Good luck with that. You attacking me saying I want all these horrible things is merely you hiding from your own ignorance.
~12% of U.S. population is black. About 6% is male. About 2/3 of that 6% are post pubescent. That means male black teens and adults comprise ~4% of the U.S population. ~35% of the U.S prison population is black. That's almost 9 times what is proportional. And if incarceration is not enough, mostly around the U.S, felons cannot vote!! What a fantastic way to take black men out of the population, use them to feed the prison-corporate complex via YOUR tax dollars, and take away their god-given right to participate in our American republic. Explain that without sounding racist. GO!!!
Explain the obscenely gerrymandered voting districts legislated by Republican state houses across the U.S. without sounding racist. GO!!!
Slavery in the United States was unique. Human slavery had always existed somewhere, in some shape, but never elsewhere under the same conditions that were impressed upon it by American white people. The speaker passively tries to justify American slavery by stating slavery has always been around, without talking about the devilishness of American slavery.
That guy doesn't have to justify it, he didn't live back then & he's not the spokesperson for white people, Im not even white or black, so I speak objectively here, just using the elementary principles of logic, based on the laws of reason&rationality .
Granted, he LOOKS like the spokesperson for white people..but still. Try to focus a bit more on the submission of feeling to thought.
Them pyramids weren't built by willing hands
No. The first real sl. ves in America became that way because a ⚫man wanted his American indentured servants to be his property just like it was in Africa, his original homeland.the American system was imported from Africa and African ideals.
Another payed liar by the system.
What is he lying about?
Sir, if what are saying were true, we would have much more harmony than discourse today, and the civil rights movement would not have been necessary. You have romanticized everything to suite your psyche...
If Lincoln had not happened the civil rights movement would never have been possible. Think about that.
The Civil Rights Movement would have happened without Lincoln because the banks wanted to use slaves as collateral for bank loans. Why? Because slaves were killing themselves when they begin to understand how important money wise their bodies were to slave holders bank loans. The banks no longer wanted to accept the slave bodies for bank loans. Black slaves were taking their freedom by killing. And freeing themselves.
He is romanticizing or you have been radicalized? 🤔 the hate today is pushed by the same people. But it's the same hate lol. And explains how those people back then were convinced that their hatred of another group was justified. It was an agenda. As a young girl when learning about slavery it was unreal to me that adults could be convinced to be so mean but it's been fascinating to see it unfold over the past 5 years in real time. And to see how justified and moral it feels to all of you.
@@222lanna I’m not a radical by any means. I don’t remember the content I was commenting on anymore, but in response to your comment I’m so sorry to tell you that slavery is alive and well. In the US the second most profitable “industry” is child slavery 💔💔 And it is closing in on the drug market to take the lead! In general we are very sick, and I’m not hating either. I love God with my whole heart. And I know we are breaking His…
To but it bluntly this man is no historian.
People don't listen to this show , this is Dems talking point
yawn
reality is boring to you, is that right?
@@Yausbro no, just the rote deification of Lincoln...an authoritarian who ended states' rights and cemented the tyranny of the federal government.
Stellar
😮
This is ridiculous