Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/504

 relating the many incidents connected with the leading churchmen and ecclesiastical organizations interested in the uplift of the Negro since the Civil War. This narrative, moreover, shows how the Negro minister, in keeping with the exigencies of the time, often had to be drawn into politics in self defense and that in the case of unselfish service like that of Dr. Fisher, he may come out of the controversy untarnished.

This is the most recent volume of Professor Channing's eight volume History of the United States from the very beginning of our history to the present time. This particular volume covers the years from 1815 to 1848 and is entitled "The Period of Transition." It is written in keeping with the standard of thoroughness characteristic of the author and is made further informing by the use of ten valuable maps illustrating important facts in American History.

In this volume the author engages the attention of the reader with an account of the wonderful century in which he writes. He then discusses the westward movement of the population, urban migration, the rise of labor unions, giving more attention to economic matters than his predecessors have been accustomed to do in the treatment of this period. A study of the documentary history of the United States has convinced the author that these important factors in the making of this country have been neglected. His treatment, therefore, is a change in the point of view in American historical writing.

This volume does not show the usual interest in slavery and abolition. Only one chapter of this large work is devoted primarily to the plantation life and abolitionism. The author discusses the lot of the slave, accounting for his tendency to escape from bondage, the traffic in human flesh, the free people of color, the colonization movement in the South, and abolition in the North. This chapter culminates in a discussion of the efforts of William Lloyd Garrison, the agitating editor of the Liberator, of Wendell Phillips, the abolition orator, of Prudence Crandall, the sacrificing worker, and of Elijah Lovejoy, the martyr in the cause. Prof. Channing does not go into details as to the achievements of the abolitionists. His account is merely sufficient to connect this movement with other forces at work in the country at that time.