In this Book
- Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860
- Book
- 2021
- Published by: University of South Carolina Press
Explores the South's paradoxical devotion to liberty and the practice of slavery
The recipient of high praise—and considerable debate for its provocative thesis—William J. Cooper, Jr.'s sweeping survey of antebellum southern politics returns to print for classroom and general use with this new paperback volume. In Liberty and Slavery Cooper contends that southerners defined their notions of liberty in terms of its opposite—slavery. He suggests that a jealous guardianship of the peculiar institution unified white southerners of differing economic, social, and religious standing and grounded their debates on nationalism and sectionalism, agriculture and manufacturing, territorial expansion and Western settlement. Cooper assesses how the South's devotion to liberty shaped its response to major legislation, judicial decisions, and military actions, and how abolitionism, in the eyes of white southerners, threatened the destruction of local control and the death of liberty.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Prologue: The Call
- pp. 1-2
- 1. Colonial Antecedents
- pp. 3-27
- 2. The Impact of the Revolution
- pp. 28-46
- 3. Creating a New Political Arena
- pp. 47-69
- 5. Politics and Power
- pp. 96-119
- 6. The Attractions and Perils of Nationalism
- pp. 120-147
- 7. Change and Continuity
- pp. 148-169
- 8. The Jackson Party and Southern Politics
- pp. 170-191
- 9. Two-Party Politics
- pp. 192-212
- 10. The Territorial Issue
- pp. 213-247
- 11. Political Revolution
- pp. 248-281
- Epilogue: Into the Confederacy
- pp. 282-287
- Bibliographical Note
- pp. 297-306
- Art Credits
- p. 312
- About the Author
- p. 313