American Negro Slavery

American Negro Slavery (1918) is a sweeping study of plantation slavery in the colonial and antebellum South, drawing heavily on plantation records, correspondence, and economic data. Written in a confident, archival, and ostensibly empirical style, it helped define early twentieth-century slavery historiography. Yet its interpretation is deeply marked by paternalist assumptions and racial prejudice, portraying enslavers too sympathetically and enslaved people with grave distortion. Its importance lies as much in its influence-and its limitations-as in its documentation. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934), a Georgia-born historian trained in the professionalizing academy of the Progressive Era, wrote from within the intellectual climate of the Dunning School and the Jim Crow South. His access to plantation manuscripts and interest in institutional history shaped the book‘s evidentiary richness. At the same time, his regional background and racial ideology led him to minimize violence, resistance, and the humanity of enslaved African Americans. This book is recommended not as a trustworthy moral or interpretive guide to slavery, but as an essential historiographical text. Readers interested in how scholarship is shaped by evidence, ideology, and historical context will find it indispensable when read critically alongside later historians who challenged and overturned Phillips‘s conclusions.