Contracts

Black Man’s Burden

After the Civil War, as national leaders hurried to consolidate and expand their reunited empire, Congress approved the largest standing force the United States had fielded in its history. This regular army included, for the first time, African American regiments—the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry, and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry— initially filled with hundreds of formerly enslaved men who were otherwise maligned in almost every corner of American society. As armed representatives of the state, the “Black regulars” found unusual equality in the army and performed critical roles in service to the country’s military aspirations. They helped secure United States empire in the transcontinental West and along the Mexican border, and then in the Caribbean and the Pacific. They became heroes in the Black press, and indeed,to many of their white officers, who endorsed them for combat decorations and sang their praises. For half a century, Black regulars aided in the enlargement of what expansionists by 1900 were calling the Greater United States.

But what might have been a path to equal treatment and patriotic credibility for Black soldiers instead inflamed white supremacist outrage. Over time, the fact of armed African Americans proved intolerable to many white people, from local citizens to military officials to some officers in the four regiments. Here was the uniformed Black man’s burden—he was both agent and target of white supremacy and state authority. And when bigotry and violence became unbearable, some Black regulars took on a third role as rebels against Jim Crow. In the worst but not first rupture of these impossible contradictions, men in the Twenty-Fourth Infantry staged a deadly uprising against police brutality and racism in Houston, Texas, in July 1917.

Black Man’s Burden: Jim Crow and Mutiny in an Age of Empire tells the epic, globe-spanning story of the rise and fall of the Black regiments. The book centers them in a revised history of American empire and military growth during a pivotal half-century for both, following the Black regulars as they abetted settler colonialism in the West; hemispheric dominion in Cuba and Mexico; and global empire in Hawai’i and the Philippines. For five decades, these men projected American power, attracted white supremacist violence, and responded with acts of both accommodation and resistance.Their story ends in Houston, where the rebellion of infantrymen in the Twenty-Fourth led to the largest murder trial inUnited States history and the execution of nineteen Black soldiers.

A Madman’s Will

The untold saga of John Randolph’s 383 slaves, freed in his much-contested will of 1821, finally comes to light.

Few legal cases in American history are as riveting as the controversy surrounding the will of Virginia Senator John Randolph (1773-1833), which—almost inexplicably—freed all 383 of his slaves in one of the largest and most publicized manumissions in American history. So famous is the case that Ta-Nehisi Coates has used it to condemn Randolph’s cousin, Thomas Jefferson, for failing to free his own slaves. With this groundbreaking investigation, historian Gregory May now reveals a more surprising story, showing how madness and scandal shaped John Randolph’s wildly shifting attitudes toward his slaves—and how endemic prejudice in the North ultimately deprived the freedmen of the land Randolph had promised them. Sweeping from the legal spectacle of the contested will through the freedmen’s dramatic flight and horrific reception in Ohio, A Madman’s Will is an extraordinary saga about the alluring promise of freedom and its tragic limitations.

An Honest Man

John Adams’s presidency hasn’t gotten a lot of respect. He is admired for other accomplishments, but his term as the second president tends to be treated as an exception. It would have been difficult for anyone to follow George Washington, and Adams’s various foibles, and some decisions he made in office, have consigned him to being remembered as one of the least effective presidents.

But as presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky argues in An Honest Man: The Inimitable Presidency of John Adams, Adams’s presidency served to save a divided nation. He took office with little guidance from his predecessor, and was soon faced with an intense partisan divide, debates over immigration and citizenship, fears of political violence, potential for foreign conflict, and a citizenry unconvinced that the presidency could even function without Washington.

Adams would keep the nation on an even keel domestically and in world affairs. He defended the integrity of elections, helped to define the role of the president for future administrations, and participated in a peaceful transition of power from one party to another even when it cost him his political future.

Every once and so often there is a chance to refurbish a president’s reputation and it is past time to reconsider Adams’s term as president, which has largely been considered the low point of his political career. An Honest Man challenges that perception, suggesting that it was Adams’s ability to lead the country through disorder and disruption – and his determined actions to protect the executive branch and establish its authority – that preserved the presidency for posterity.

The Wandering Mind

It is easy to imagine that our constant state of distractedness is peculiar to the digital age, but distraction has been a concern in every era—perhaps never more so than for Christian monks living in Ireland, Iran, and the places in between, from 300 to 900 CE. Though they quit the world for lives of seclusion, monks still struggled to concentrate, and they came to perceive distraction as a fundamental problem.

As Jamie Kreiner argues in The Wandering Mind, we are obsessed with distraction today in large part because they were. Exploring the sophisticated techniques they developed in their endless quest to concentrate—from unforgiving sleep regimens to massive meditational construction projects—Kreiner demonstrates that their insights, remarkably, can still be useful to us now.

Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty account of human fallibility that bridges a distant era and our own.

Moving the Needle

The dynamics of the current tight labor market have gotten a good deal of coverage, but what is missing from the conversation is any discussion about the widespread social effects of today’s employment landscape. Given that the effects of the opposite trend – high unemployment and joblessness – are widely believed to have led to persistent poverty and its associated social costs, this is particularly surprising.

In Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs propose that today’s tight labor market is a critical and unmatched opportunity. As communities that have been blocked from the labor market are now gaining access, they are benefitting in unprecedented ways from the economic expansion that has previously been out of reach. And some of these benefits may persist even after the inevitable changes in the unemployment numbers.

As labor markets tighten, hiring managers have no choice but to give a chance to job candidates who would otherwise be kept out of the labor market. And when workers have more options, unpredictable hours and wages are no longer sustainable. The implications go well beyond improved financial profiles, as changes to families, neighborhoods, and communities reflect the benefits of better jobs, better working conditions, and the ability to plan for a different future.

Moving the Needle is an overdue look at the social implications of today’s changing labor market, and a call to consider ways that better labor practices might make some of these advances permanent. It is a call to understand the current economic climate in the broadest possible way.

Contracts

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