One of the world's leading historians of race relations, George Fredrickson in his newest book probes the history of racial and ethnic diversity in the United States and other parts of the world. Diverse Nations explores recent interpretations of slavery and race relations in the United States and introduces comparative perspectives on Europe, South Africa, and Brazil. Notably, the book features groundbreaking work comparing ethnoracial pluralism in France and the United States. In contrast to the similarities of race relations in the United States and South Africa, which both drew rigid domestic color lines, the United States and France have historically diverged greatly in their approaches to racial difference. Yet both are influenced by a common heritage of revolutionary republicanism, extensive immigration, and cultural pluralism. Fredrickson's rich comparisons provide stimulating new insights into the continuing impacts of slavery and beliefs about race upon our increasingly pluralistic societies....

“Cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves.” Abraham Lincoln was, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, “big enough to be inconsistent.” Big enough, indeed, for every generation to have its own Lincoln—unifier or emancipator, egalitarian or racist. In an effort to reconcile these views, and to offer a more complex and nuanced account of a figure so central to American history, this book focuses on the most controversial aspect of Lincoln’s thought and politics—his attitudes and actions regarding slavery and race. Drawing attention to the limitations of Lincoln’s judgment and policies without denying his magnitude, the book provides the most comprehensive and even-handed account available of Lincoln’s contradictory treatment of black Americans in matters of slavery in the South and basic civil rights in the North.

George Fredrickson shows how Lincoln’s antislavery convictions, however genuine and strong, were held in check by an equally strong commitment to the rights of the states and the limitations of federal power. He explores how Lincoln’s beliefs about racial equality in civil rights, stirred and strengthened by the African American contribution to the northern war effort, were countered by his conservative constitutional philosophy, which left this matter to the states. The Lincoln who emerges from these pages is far more comprehensible and credible in his inconsistencies, and in the abiding beliefs and evolving principles from which they arose. Deeply principled but nonetheless flawed, all-too-human yet undeniably heroic, he is a Lincoln for all generations.

(20080218)...