psa: I skimmed some of the book.

Manisha Sinha does considerable work with The Slave’s Cause. Sinha tasks herself with showing the reader that abolitionism was primarily driven by enslaved and free blacks. In every chapter, Sinha does her utter best to show how African Americans led the charge for their own freedom. The sheer size and information in the book leave the reader something to be in awe over after they have finished the work.

Sinha explains abolition as occurring in different waves in American history. The layout of the abolition movement in The Slave’s Cause is linear, starting in 1781 and ending with the Emancipation Proclamation. Sinha forces readers to rethink how American history and the abolition period has been taught to them. Shifting the narrative from the white savior lens to the lens of African Americans, who she claims, did the gritty base work of the abolition movement.

Manisha Sinha displays the duality of Christianity in American society and in the abolition movement. Sinha says, “the ideological underpinnings of black antislavery lay in an antiracist construction of Christianity” (37). The deconstruction of weaponized Christianity from racists by Anglo-Americans and African Americans through the Great Awakenings helped give life to those who struggled with the racist message of slaveholding Christianity. Sinha shows abolition’s religious beginnings were not just with the white church but religious African Americans helped lead the way as well.

Hammering the point of African Americans leading the abolition movement in the United States, Sinha explains in “the first wave of Anglo-American abolition was not, as is commonly thought, an all-white movement” (138). African Americans added credibility and shouldered the movement and would continue to do some until emancipation. The explanation of African Americans helping the movement provides clarity for how it spread and kept going until the emancipation of the slaves. Emancipation might have occurred naturally over time but the constant drive and unwavering determination of African Americans sped the process up in American history. Black abolitionists led the charge for racial solidarity and “highly critical public voice against the persistence of enslavement and discrimination” (139).

Women play an important role in the abolition movement. Manisha Sinha states women carried the abolition movement. They were “most effective foot soldiers” and “African American women played a crucial part in the rise of militant black abolitionism” (275). Women are often overlooked in historical narratives, but Sinha prepares an entire chapter to the influence of women in abolition and how abolition influenced women. Never shirking from the main narrative, Sinha pushes black women being at the “forefront of female abolitionism” (279). The idea of women leading the charge in abolition can be mind-boggling for modern readers but Sinha presents careful evidence of how and why they guided the movement effectively.

I believe Sinha opens a new chapter in the historiography of abolition. She lays out abolition history in way I have not been exposed to before; the idea of African Americans being the driving force of abolition is not something I was taught. Hammering home the idea of African Americans as the primary leaders behind abolition is new to me. Showing the various characters who helped push abolition in its different waves was overwhelming to me. Familiar faces like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs were comforting. However seeing so many lesser-known and unnamed African Americans who played their part in pioneering the abolition movement made me realize Sinha is doing a revisionist work, and perhaps other historians should look at doing the same thing. Manisha Sinha’s book is worth reading multiple times to glean all the information in it.