Assignment:
Paraphrase the detail below and with no grammar error:
This book is pretty dense and long, but it's a brilliant and even somewhat disturbing argument. Morgan's thesis is that the free, egalitarian Virginia that emerged in the 18th century had that freedom and stability largely because of slavery. In other words, the freedom of most white Virginians rested upon the slavery of most black Virginians.
No other book I've encountered presents such a clear and illuminating narrative on the development of institutional racism while the leaders of the same society grandly tout ideals of "inalienable rights"
This is one of the most amazing pieces of history I have ever read. Morgan's thesis is this:
"Racism made it possible for white Virginians to develop a devotion to the equality that English republicans had declared to be the soul of liberty...[B]y lumping Indians, mulattoes, and Negroes in a single pariah class, Virginians had paved the way for a similar lumping of small and large planters into a single master class" (386).
This statement is on the second to last page, and for the first 14 chapters, it's not clear where Morgan was going. He details the early history of the Virginia colony, stuff I was barely aware of. But he emphasizes from the beginning the central problem the idea of Virginia had solved for its mother country, England: the problem of the poor.