Freedom's Dominion
By Jefferson Cowie
- Genre
- History, Society & Current Affairs
- Publisher
- Basic Books (Hachette)
- Publication year
- 2022
- ISBN
- 9781541672802
Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power is a work of history by Jefferson Cowie, published by Basic Books in November 2022. Through the history of one Alabama county, it examines how appeals to 'freedom' justified white domination. It won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Whose freedom? Jefferson Cowie's Freedom's Dominion answers by excavating two centuries of a single Alabama county, Barbour, where 'freedom' repeatedly meant the freedom of white citizens to dominate Black ones without federal interference. From the dispossession of Native peoples through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil-rights era, Cowie shows how a potent American idea - liberty as freedom from government - was wielded again and again to defend racial power. It is intellectual history grounded in vivid local detail, tracing a rhetoric whose echoes remain instantly recognizable. intendle recommends it for anyone trying to understand the deep roots of contemporary fights over federal authority and states' rights. Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for History, it is rigorous, unsettling and clarifying. By focusing so tightly on one place, Cowie illuminates a contradiction at the heart of the whole American experiment.