In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives
By: Kenneth C. Davis / Narrated By: Kenneth C. Davis, Frankie Faison, Keith David, JD Jackson, Adenrele Ojo, Adam Lazarre-White, Dion Graham, Mark Bramhall
Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
Behind our great men? An army of enslaved men, women, and children… Happy Presidents Day, y’all…
How better to honor America’s great men, Presidents of the United States, our founding fathers, than by telling the stories of the individuals they kept enslaved? Huzzah, and hurray to America?
Rather sobering, isn’t it? But the truth remains that our founding fathers, all calling for Liberty and Independence, squawked mightily of being slaves to the British when they themselves felt no particular compunction about running their homes, their estates, off the backs of individuals given neither Liberty nor Independence.
And these such times are what Kenneth C. Davis writes about here in In the Shadow of Liberty. Yes, be prepared for a history of people being stolen and sold from Africa, for a very graphic depiction of what it was like to be chained up in a slave ship (And tell me if you, even knowing all you know, aren’t mightily horrified by women used as food for sharks, all in a bid for keeping order and power over groups of the newly enslaved). But mostly be prepared for compelling stories about incredible individuals who were slaves during some really momentous times in our nation’s history.
The audiobook covers Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and that crazy man, Jackson and the men and women who they kept enslaved. Please excuse me for conTINually repeating “enslaved”, but David posits that “enslaved” tells of a condition thrust upon the people, whereas the term “slave” depersonalizes the individual, dehumanizes him/her. And this book is nothing if not meant to right a wrong to at least a few of the people who were kept in servitude.
It’s jolly that Jefferson thought of his slaves as a little “family”, and it’s fine and appropriate that Jackson should come to see men of color for the able and capable fighting men they could be, and it’s just precious that Washington was all avuncular about his “well-treated” people, but that they kept them at all (And that after all was said and done, Jackson should promise then deny the freedom of those fighting men after New Orleans/War of 1812) is deplorable. Another reviewer thought that Davis was being an apologist and excused the Presidents’ choices/actions, but I dunno: I thought they all came out looking like simply MASSive hypocrites. It comes through loud and clear in the writing, I felt, and if you’re weary of White-Bashing, stay away from this work because our Presidents earned the (Well, okay, maybe it was a biiiiiit mild) knocks.
What I found most fascinating is the way our attitudes of people of color haven’t changed much at all throughout the intervening decades upon decades. You could take white liberals now and see in them the echoes of George Washington’s wife wailing about Ona Judge’s decampment as a betrayal of all the goodness she bestowed upon the enslaved woman—as tho’ a good turn here and there, a hand extended with a pittance given makes everything okay, even when there’s little true respect behind it. And you can DEFinitely take white conservatives now and see in them the echoes of all four Presidents with their cry of: It’s the economy, stupid—just can’t run an estate on a cost-effective basis withOUT slave labor.
The narration is top notch with a multitude of narrators, and I’m grateful to say that Dion Graham did well and did NOT sing (See: the woeful Another Country where the man warbles his way through a tune).
The writing is indeed, I believe, aimed towards a younger audience, but I don’t think that’s Davis being patronizing; I think he just knows we’re all idiots when it comes to the history of our own country, and we have the attention spans of gnats (Or at least I do… wait! what’s that shiny object over there…?!!…), and I think he’s doing his very best to educate all of us, and to maybe even capture the attention of the young. Don’t expect a high-handed treatise.
Rather, these are engaging stories of Billy Lee, Ona Judge, Isaac Granger (The most compelling of the lot, in my estimation), Paul Jennings, and Alfred Jackson—All known only because of the times and the great men who owned them.
Otherwise? They’d be, quite simply, as nameless, as faceless, as the other millions of others back then.
See? Rather sobering…
And Happy Presidents Day, everyone…
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