Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet is the most comprehensive account yet of black politics in the rural South before, during and after the Civil War ... One of the most important works in American social history to appear in recent years ... There is massive evidence in the book of such interclass white solidarity, but it is not analyzed or explained ... But whatever one concludes about Hahn’s underlying assumptions and conceptual boundaries, this book remains a major achievement and a landmark in African-American history.
Bold and extensively researched ... [Hahn] is at his strongest chronicling the hidden history of slave resistance...and spends less time on the extent and dimensions of psychological slavery ... While the book's prose is often congested, the research is formidable, bringing to the fore intricate histories of unknown but significant struggles ... Original and deeply informed.
