Atlantic Bonds A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa

• Main Author: Lindsay, Lisa A. (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina Press 2016
• Series: H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series
• Subjects: History of the Americas; African history; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; James Churchwill Vaughan; Lagos, Nigeria; Camden, South Carolina; Liberia; Ijaye War, Nigeria; African diaspora; American Colonization Society; Southern Baptist missionaries; Ebenezer Baptist Church, Nigeria; return to Africa; historical memory; Atlantic world; black Atlantic; comparative slavery; meaning of freedom; comparative racism; colonial Nigeria; colonial racism; Reconstruction in South Carolina; Martin Robeson Delaney; Robert Campbell; Marshall Hooper; Joseph Harden; Samuel Harden; Mojola Agbebi; Edward Wilmot Blyden; Abeokuta, Nigeria; Thomas Jefferson Bowen; William Clarke; Ibadan, Nigeria; William David; William Colley; Moses Strother Cook; Moses Ladejo Stone; Yoruba cultural nationalism; Yorubaland; Jewel Lafontant; Ayo Vaughan-Richards; country marks; Samuel Ajayi Crowther; Kofo Ademola; Dr
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Summary

A decade before the American Civil War, James Churchwill Vaughan (1828-1893) set out to fulfill his formerly enslaved father's dying wish that he should leave America to start a new life in Africa. Over the next forty years, Vaughan was taken captive, fought in African wars, built and rebuilt a livelihood, and led a revolt against white racism, finally becoming a successful merchant and the founder of a wealthy, educated, and politically active family. Tracing Vaughan's journey from South Carolina to Liberia to several parts of Yorubaland (present-day southwestern Nigeria), Lisa Lindsay documents this "free" man's struggle to find economic and political autonomy in an era when freedom was not clear and unhindered anywhere for people of African descent. In a tour de force of historical investigation on two continents, Lindsay tells a story of Vaughan's survival, prosperity, and activism against a seemingly endless series of obstacles. By following Vaughan's transatlantic journeys and comparing his experiences to those of his parents, contemporaries, and descendants in Nigeria and South Carolina, Lindsay reveals the expansive reach of slavery, the ambiguities of freedom, and the surprising ways that Africa, rather than America, offered new opportunities for people of African descent.

Physical Description

1 electronic resource (328 p.)

ISBN

9781469631134_Lindsay
9798890851703
9781469631127
9781469652153
9781469631134

Access

Open Access