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The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America * Gordon S. Barker * Kent, Ohio: Kent State Universiry Press, 2010 * xx, 170 pp. * $39.95
The Imperfect Revolution by Gordon Barker is an engaging book that examines the 1854 Anthony Burns fugitive slave case and seeks to place the event into the larger context of the sectional crisis. The author has multiple goals: first, he wants to restore Anthony Burns to "his rightful place" in American history as "a remarkable man who demonstrated strength of character, ingenuity, and agency"; second, Barker wishes to counter the scholarly interpretation that Burns's capture and extradition from Massachusetts to Virginia intensified abolitionist sentiment throughout the North; and, third, he assesses the crisis in terms of "the coming of the Civil War" and finds that "one of the most significant impacts . . . was on the white South, not the North" (pp. xii, xvi-xvii).
Barker's first two chapters narrate Anthony Burns's early life as a Virginia slave and successful escape to Boston in the spring of 1854. An...