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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35.1 (2004) 157-158



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Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. By William A. Link (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2003) 387 pp. $45.00

In this provocative book stressing the 1850s, Link demonstrates that multiple factors must be taken into account to understand why Virginia announced its secession from the Union in April 1861. Link addresses social, legal, political, economic, and cultural factors, making a persuasive case for how they interacted to contribute to Virginia's secession.

Link holds that during the 1850s, slaves in Virginia were more likely to be hired out, gaining employment in towns and cities and living more independently than ever before. During that decade, slaves found ways to resist and show their dissatisfaction at being enslaved. Whites responded more often by taking slaves accused of crimes to court. Records of trials reveal slaves accused of violence against whites, threats against them, and destruction of their property. Link discusses selected court cases to indicate their political and social ramifications. Slave resistance made slaveowners increasingly uncomfortable by the time of the United States presidential election of 1860.

Moreover, Link builds a case that by the national election of 1860, Virginia's slaveowning political leaders had become concerned about threats to the very existence of slavery, not only from northern abolitionists, such as John Brown, but also from fellow Virginians willing to dispute slaveowners' advantages in society. For example, nonslaveholders, especially those in Virginia's western and northwestern counties, wondered why they had to pay taxes on all chattel property, but slaveowners had no taxes placed on their slave property until the slaves reached twelve years of age. Link analyzes the formation of the Virginia Republican party in 1856, based in the northwestern counties, as a clear threat to slaveowners' social and economic advantages, and to slavery itself.

Link affirms that all-white male suffrage brought more nonslaveholders into politics—both voting and office holding. According to Link, by 1860, many nonslaveholders no longer assumed that slaveowners should always decide Virginia's policies. Such a challenge by Virginia voters to slaveowners' status and dominance in Virginia's society and economy reached a high point just as other slave states decided to secede. Which political leaders (the slaveowning minority or nonslaveholding majority?) would control Virginia politics, and which political leaders (southerners or northerners?) would have the greatest influence in national politics? Tidewater and Piedmont slaveowners cast distressed looks beyond the Shenandoah Valley to southwest and northwest Virginia, where the opposition was growing.

Link supports his study by exemplary research in a variety of primary sources and reference to an abundance of secondary studies. His book benefits from well-crafted maps and many illustrations, including evocative photographs of Virginia Democratic and Whig politicians [End Page 157] whose leadership and ideology the author delineates. Several tables visually present data and information on such matters as urban growth, slave population, court cases and convictions, voting patterns, and political party strengths in various Virginia counties.


Texas A&M University, College Station


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