Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

"From the nation’s founding, the American creed included the idea that “all men are created equal.” Kate Masur shows how from the Revolution to the Civil War, there was an eight-decade fight for equality – an effort to make those words more than notional. Free Blacks were subjected to kidnapping and imprisonment. The petition movement available to all would be challenged by states with laws superseding individual freedom in the absence of federal law. This is the story of the drive for racial equality in civil and political rights and the effort to nationalize that fight for the full rights of citizenship. It is an illuminating and compelling read thanks to detailed, but approachable, research."