Jubilee's Experiment

Dexter J. Gabriel''s Jubilee''s Experiment is a thorough examination of how the emancipated British Caribbean colonies entered into the debates over abolition and African American citizenship in the US from the 1830s through the 1860s. It analyzes this public discourse created by black and white abolitionists and African Americans more generally in antebellum America as both propaganda and rhetoric. Simultaneously Gabriel interweaves the lived experiences of former slaves in the West Indies their daily acts of resistance and struggles for greater freedoms to further augment but complicate this debate. An important and timely intervention Jubilee''s Experiment argues that the measured success of former slaves in the West Indies became a crucial focal point in the struggle against slavery in antebellum North America.