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The Roving Editor: Or Talks With Slaves in the Southern States, by James Redpath

Amazon.com Price:  $11.95 (as of 06/05/2019 03:34 PST- Details)

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Description

A new edition of a major abolitionist work that confirms the authenticity of newspaperman James RedpathÂ’s interviews with slaves all over the mid-nineteenth century.

“John McKivigan has done a splendid job of editing this paperback volume. . . . This little-known book, largely overshadowed heretofore by Frederick Law Olmsted’s famous The Cotton Kingdom, will now, in this fine reprint, take its rightful place some of the many volumes that enable us to gain some sense of the reality of American slavery and of the extremes to which Americans were driven to be rid of it.”—Georgia Historical Quarterly

“No other text about slave opinion before the Civil War exists. This new edition of RedpathÂ’s book makes a welcome addition to our understanding of how blacks felt about the abnormal institution on the eve of its demise.”—Clarence E. Walker, University of California, Davis

While a reporter at Horace GreeleyÂ’s New York Tribune, James Redpath developed a strong curiosity about slavery and determined that he would shuttle south “to see slavery with my own eyes.” Redpath interviewed slaves, recorded their opinions, and collected these letters into book form, publishing them in 1859 as The Roving Editor. Even as some historians over the years have utilized RedpathÂ’s book, many have treated it as merely another shuttle account of the antebellum South, dismissing the interviews as the fabrication of a radical abolitionist.

John R. McKivigan has uncovered important historical records that certify for the first time the authenticity of RedpathÂ’s interviews; he presents here the original newspaper articles that supply the places and times of some of the slave encounters, which Redpath had edited out of the book. Furthermore, the usage of RedpathÂ’s unpublished correspondence, McKivigan verifies his residence in southern communities at the times these interviews were reported to have taken place, making The Roving Editor one of the vital valuable and compelling sources of the slavesÂ’ own testimony regarding their remedy in the late antebellum period.

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