Two Ships

“In this brilliant, provocative book, David S. Reynolds resurrects the metaphor of the two ships to offer an origin story of America’s deep divisions. Two Ships marks a major intervention in the study of early American history by explaining how the American people—Black and white, enslaved and free—conceptualized these divisions before, during, and after the Civil War. It’s essential reading for today’s polarized times.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“This is a brilliant conceit, wonderfully executed. By telling the story of the White Lion and of the Mayflower, David S. Reynolds has found a new and compelling way to explore the infinite complexities of the American story—complexities that shape us still.” —Jon Meacham

“With his characteristic verve and insight, David S. Reynold recovers the powerful legend of a Puritan New England of freedom pitted against a Cavalier South of slavery in an existential struggle for American identity. In selective, propulsive memories, legends became real enough to justify a civil war that still resonates within our national culture.” —Alan Taylor

“Combining intellectual sweep with precise and vivid detail, our preeminent cultural historian, David S. Reynolds, has limned the revolutionary origins of the Civil War—in the English Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s as much as the American Revolution of 1776. Emphasizing the essentially monarchical character of American slavery, Two Ships traces the legendary distinction between Yankee Puritans and Southern Cavaliers as a cultural fact. Many historians pride themselves on exposing received truths about America as oppressive myths; Reynolds finds profound truths inside received myths, and he does so brilliantly.” —Sean Wilentz

“David S. Reynolds’s eloquent and clear-eyed history of those two ships, the White Lion and the Mayflower, and the metaphors they inspired sheds light on the difficult, painful, contested American past—then and now. A dazzling, beautifully rendered, and wholly relevant book, Two Ships stands tall on any shelf about enslavement, despair, equal rights, and, finally, national unity: a bravura heritage for our times.” —Brenda Wineapple