Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation

Why did the Founding Fathers fail to include blacks and Indians in their cherished proposition that all men are created equal"? The usual answer is racism, but the reality is more complex and unsettling. In Bind Us Apart , historian Nicholas Guyatt argues that, from the Revolution through the Civil War, most white liberals believed in the unity of all human beings. But their philosophy faltered when it came to the practical work of forging a colour-blind society. Unable to convince others,and themselves,that racial mixing was viable, white reformers began instead to claim that people of colour could only thrive in separate republics: in Native states in the American West or in the West African colony of Liberia. Herein lie the origins of separate but equal." Decades before Reconstruction, America's liberal elite was unable to imagine how people of colour could become citizens of the United States. Throughout the nineteenth century, Native Americans were pushed farther and farther westward, while four million slaves freed after the Civil War found themselves among a white population that had spent decades imagining that they would live somewhere else. Essential reading for anyone disturbed by America's ongoing failure to achieve true racial integration, Bind Us Apart shows conclusively that separate but equal" represented far more than a southern backlash against emancipation,it was a founding principle of our nation.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Prehistory of "Separate but Equal" Part I: Degradation 1. Becoming Good Citizens 2. A Few Bad Men 3. Correcting Ill Habits 4. One Nation Only Part II: Amalgamation 5. To the Middle Ground 6. We Shall All Be Americans 7. The Practical Amalgamator Part III: Colonization 8. Of Color and Country 9. The Choice 10. Opening the Road 11. In These Deserts Epilogue: An Enterprise for the Young

About the Author :
Nicholas Guyatt is a university lecturer in history at the University of Cambridge. He is a regular contributor to the Nation, London Review of Books, and Guardian. Guyatt lives in Cambridge, England.

Review :
Washington Post "Offer[s] a grim vision of America and of human nature, but one consistent with an era when the prison warden has supplanted the slave master, and when Black Lives Matter is the latest incarnation of a civil rights movement that has no reason to stop moving... The greatest service... Guyatt provide[s] is the ruthless prosecution of American ideas about race for their tensions, contradictions and unintended consequences." Wall Street Journal "Provocative... Mr. Guyatt makes many convincing arguments in this book... [An] engaging narrative." New York Times Book Review "A detailed account of early national policies towards Indians and blacks... Guyatt's juxtaposition of attitudes and policies relating to Indians and blacks yields important insights." New Republic "[A] brilliant and provocative new book... By demonstrating that segregationist ideas began at the founding, were sanctioned by well-intentioned white liberals, and had spread across the nation, Guyatt has written a remarkable history that matches the gravity of the problem." Choice "Ambitious, intriguing... this is a useful, fascinating revisionist examination of US views and policies on race before the Civil War... Highly recommended." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Read this after listening to your 'Hamilton' cast recording." Kirkus Reviews "[A] compelling work of wide research... A nuanced study of the illusory, troubling early arguments over emancipation and integration." Library Journal "[A] compelling monograph." Publishers Weekly "A timely and instructive look at how deeply racism is embedded in America's past." Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law and Professor of History at Harvard University "Whether, or on what terms, Indians, Europeans, and Africans could live together on the North American continent has been a vexed question from the very beginning of the American experiment. Bind Us Apart complicates the traditional narrative about the supposedly fixed contours of racial thinking during the early American republic. Nicholas Guyatt offers an elegant and illuminating analysis of the winding and tortured path to the separate and unequal society we recognize even today. This is a must read for all who are interested in the origins of America's troubled racial landscape." Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University, author of Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era "Nicholas Guyatt's well-meaning citizens of the early American Republic believed in human equality and sought to bring it about. But they could not overcome their own or their society's limitations, or understand that Native and African-Americans wanted to determine their own futures. Bind Us Apart contributes mightily to understanding how the Republic besmirched its highest and boldest visions with racism and exclusion." Ari Kelman, McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University and author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek "Nicholas Guyatt is a master storyteller and a brilliant scholar. With Bind Us Apart, he has written a provocative and counter-intuitive--but never contrarian or glib--account of the origins of segregation in the United States. This book is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the racial fault lines that continue to divide this country today." Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood "Nicholas Guyatt brilliantly captures the tragically unintended consequences of liberal reformers' efforts to create a just and enlightened multiracial society in the new United States. Dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence ultimately led reformers to embrace both the colonization of former slaves and the removal of Native Americans. Sympathetically engaging with his well-intentioned subjects, Guyatt compels us to engage with what it has meant--and still means--to be American. Powerfully argued and beautifully written, Bind Us Apart is essential reading." Christina Snyder, author of Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America "Connecting Indian removal and the African colonization movement to early US liberalism, Nicholas Guyatt offers a new origins story for American segregation. Brilliant and engrossing, Bind Us Apart reinterprets a formative era, while identifying legacies that continue to shape the present."