Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation and the American Civil War

Cover
Cambridge University Press, 29.09.1989 - 317 Seiten
No series of events had a more dramatic impact on the course of American history than the Civil War and the emancipation of four million slaves. This book examines the economic and political factors that led to the attempt by Southerners to dissolve the Union in 1860 and the equally determined effort of Northerners to preserve it. A central thesis of the book is that slavery not only "caused" the Civil War by producing tensions that could not be resolved by compromise; the slave system also played a crucial role in the outcome of the war by crippling the Southern war effort at the same time that emancipation became a unifying cause for the North. The author looks at a century of sectional conflict over slavery and reveals a great irony of the American Civil War. The South suffered a bitter defeat in a war to protect the institution of slavery, even though it is likely that the Constitution of the United States offered the best protection for a slave system. And, despite the abolition of slavery in the United States, equality for Black Americans remained a distant dream.
 

Ausgewählte Seiten

Inhalt

Historical Puzzles
1
Writing and Rewriting Civil War History
2
Economics and Politics in the Civil War Era
6
Slavery War and Emancipation
12
Slavery and Freedom
18
Slavery and Freedom
19
Slavery Moves West
22
Slaves and the Constitution
27
Republican Triumph and Southern Secession
155
A Final View
166
Appendix Tables
168
Slavery and the War
172
Military Strategy in the North and the South
175
From Shiloh to Chattanooga
181
Men Slaves and Money
189
The Question of Emancipation
204

The Missouri Crisis of 1819
33
The Economics of Slavery
41
Did Slavery Pay? The Slave as an Economic Asset
42
Economic Growth in the Antebellum South
47
The South and Western Land
53
Slave and Free Farms
60
Who Will Pay? The Economics of Emancipation
68
Samples of Farms
72
The Politics of Slavery
82
The Genesis of the SecondParty System
84
The Question of Slavery Revisited
92
The Wilmot Proviso
97
Presidents and Slavery
100
The Armistice of 1850
109
Appendix Table
120
The Politics of Compromise
121
Overturning the Missouri Compromise
123
Immigrants Nativism and KnowNothings
127
Free Labor Free Soil and the Slave Power
138
Dred Scott and Kansas
146
Total War and Unconditional Surrender
209
Appendix Table
214
The Impact of Emancipation
216
Blacks Reaction to Freedom
219
Whites Reaction to Emancipation
225
Breaking Up the Plantation
234
Cotton Corn and Credit
240
The Failure of Radical Reconstruction
246
Appendix Table
252
After the War
253
Industry and Agriculture in the North
255
Saving and Investment
264
Tariffs Banks and the West
268
The Triumph of Industrial Capitalism
279
The Second Reconstruction
284
Appendix Tables
286
Bibliography
289
Index
305
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