Summary of Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Abraham Lincoln was a critic of slavery from his youth, and he grew up in a world where slavery was a prevalent presence. He had only sporadic contact with black people, slave or free, until well into his life.

#2 Lincoln was born in 1809 in a one-room Kentucky log cabin. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River to southwestern Indiana, where Lincoln spent the rest of his childhood. In 1830, when Lincoln was 21 years old and about to strike out on his own, his father moved the family to central Illinois.

#3 Lincoln’s family owned slaves, but they were not very involved in reform movements that aimed to better the conditions of this world. They were strict Calvinist predestinarians who believed that one’s actions had no bearing on eventual salvation.

#4 The Old Northwest was a borderland where Native Americans and various people of English, French, and American descent lived. The defeat of the British and their ally Tecumseh erased any doubt about who would control the region. But a new borderland quickly emerged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822521339

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Abraham Lincoln was a critic of slavery from his youth, and he grew up in a world where slavery was a prevalent presence. He had only sporadic contact with black people, slave or free, until well into his life.

#2

Lincoln was born in 1809 in a one-room Kentucky log cabin. When he was seven, his family moved across the Ohio River to southwestern Indiana, where Lincoln spent the rest of his childhood. In 1830, when Lincoln was 21 years old and about to strike out on his own, his father moved the family to central Illinois.

#3

Lincoln’s family owned slaves, but they were not very involved in reform movements that aimed to better the conditions of this world. They were strict Calvinist predestinarians who believed that one’s actions had no bearing on eventual salvation.

#4

The Old Northwest was a borderland where Native Americans and various people of English, French, and American descent lived. The defeat of the British and their ally Tecumseh erased any doubt about who would control the region. But a new borderland quickly emerged.

#5

While slavery was theoretically illegal in Illinois, it was difficult to enforce this law, and many settlers brought their slaves there. The early settlers wanted Indiana and Illinois to be free of any black presence.

#6

Lincoln’s first encounter with slavery was when he helped transport farm goods for sale in New Orleans in 1828 and 1831. The market revolution was simultaneously consolidating the national economy and heightening the division between slave and free societies.

#7

Lincoln made two trips to New Orleans, which was the largest city he had ever seen. He could not have avoided contact with slaves, who worked on the huge cotton and sugar plantations that lined the Mississippi River.

#8

Lincoln’s visit to the New Orleans slave market had a profound impact on him, and he spoke about it with friends. But his letter to Speed, in which he described the sight of slaves being transported from Kentucky to a farm farther south, was a different story.

#9

Lincoln’s relationship with the Speeds illustrated the close connection his circle of friends in Springfield had with slavery. His wife grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in the heart of bluegrass country, a major slave-trading center.

#10

Lincoln had lived in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, all of which had histories of slavery and severe laws that effectively denied black people the rights of citizenship. He had seen the small-scale slavery of Kentucky and the plantations and slave markets of the Mississippi Valley.

#11

The end of slavery came about through gradual emancipation accompanied by some sort of recognition of the owners’ legal right to property in slaves. In the United States, court decisions in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the 1780s declared slavery incompatible with new state constitutions that affirmed mankind’s natural right to liberty.

#12

The end of slavery in the North did not imply political or social equality for blacks. While the Constitution contained several protections for slavery, many of the nation’s founders hoped that slavery would eventually die out.

#13

Until around 1830, the majority of antislavery activism in the North took place under the rubric of colonization,