Burin, Eric

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of North Dakota, Merrifield 221-B, Grand Forks, ND 58202. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, assistant professor, 1999—.

WRITINGS:

Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eric Burin is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He has researched the African Colonization Society (ASC), which was founded in 1816 in order to help black slaves emigrate from the United States to Liberia. The ASC actually helped found the country expressly for the purpose of becoming a Christian democracy hospitable to manumitted blacks. Burin's book, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society, examines the failure of the organization, which received federal funding for its first decade, to achieve widespread manumission of slaves and free black persons from the United States to Africa. By 1860, nearly 4.25 million African Americans lived in the United States, but the ACS had sent only 11,000 to Liberia. One surprising reason for this low number is that freed slaves overwhelmingly chose to remain in the United States, in relative proximity to their family and friends. Other slaves rejected offers of freedom that would come with emigration, even when their passage would have been paid for. Fear of the unknown led many slaves to choose the familiar over possibly even more hostile circumstances in Liberia. In fact, some Liberian émigrés returned to the United States, citing disease, political corruption, difficulties in farming, and culture clashes. Furthermore, abolitionist leaders saw the ACS as antithetical to its goal of outlawing slavery completely. Despite these issues, the organization survived until 1904.

Burin's book focuses on the difference between rural and urban areas of the United States and their approach to sending blacks to Africa. Southern slave owners, for instance, had a complicated relationship with the ACS. They did not want to lose their slaves, but beyond that fact the situation was full of nuances, both personal and political, that defy easy comprehension. Moral beliefs and practical concerns led to a myriad of opinions among slave owners, non-slave owners, rural residents, city dwellers, slaves and freed blacks, the result of which was that widespread emigration to Africa never really got off the ground. "Slavery and the Peculiar Solution is a gem," wrote Cheryl A. Wells in a review for the Historian, that is "rooted in impressive archival research." Burin's research is "balanced, accessible, and thorough," wrote Hilary Moss in a review for the Journal of African American History.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 2006, Bruce Dorsey, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society, p. 1515.

Choice, July-August, 2006, M. Morrison, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 2058.

Civil War History, March, 2007, Mark Andrew Huddle, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 65.

Historian, spring, 2007, Cheryl A. Wells, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 103.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 2005, Nan Sumner-Mack, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 8.

International History Review, December, 2006, Manisha Sinha, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 840.

Journal of African American History, spring, 2007, Hilary Moss, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 294.

Journal of American History, September, 2006, Claude A. Clegg III, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 514.

Journal of Southern History, November, 2006, Amos J. Beyan, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 930.

Journal of the Early Republic, spring, 2007, Bryan Rommel-Ruiz, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 184.

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, summer, 2007, Patrick H. Breen, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 451.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 2006, Lou Tanner, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution, p. 310.

ONLINE

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (September, 2006), Kirt von Daacke, review of Slavery and the Peculiar Solution.