Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments As I wrote this book I benefited immeasurably from the sage advice of friends and colleagues. Keith Poulter was the first one to read the whole manuscript draft through—and his keen eye caught and corrected many infelicities of style and substance. Richard Newman and David Waldstreicher read the sections on the early republic and provided me with a wealth of insights and suggestions; they have helped me, as has my a≈liation with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, appreciate just how crucial the ‘‘founding’’ decades are to understanding sectional tensions between North and South. I owe my greatest editorial debt to Gary W. Gallagher and T. Michael Parrish, the Littlefield series editors, whose careful and generous attention to my manuscript modeled just how peer review, ideally, should work. Their comments, along with those of an anonymous ‘‘outside’’ reader, opened up new analytic vistas for me and charted a course for my revisions. I thank Stevie Champion for her thorough copyediting of the manuscript. And UNC Press editor-in-chief David Perry gracefully guided me through the publication process. My colleagues at Temple University, too, shaped this book; working alongside them has made me a better and happier historian. I am especially grateful to two successive department chairs, Richard Immerman and Drew Isenberg, and to our former dean, Susan Herbst, for their support. Thanks to the city of Philadelphia’s matchless historical resources, it was a pleasure to research this book. I relied on the kind o≈ces and expert assistance of the sta√s of Temple’s Paley Library and its Charles L. Blockson AfroAmerican Collection, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library, the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum, and the Friends’ Histori- xii Δ Acknowledgments cal Library of Swarthmore College. I had productive stints at the New York Public Library and the Wellesley College Rare Book Collection as well. And I thank Temple’s reference librarian for history, David Murray, for introducing this former technophobe to the vast universe of electronic databases, and my research assistant, Valerie Buickerood, for helping me track down some key documents. My husband, Will Hitchcock, and our children, Ben and Emma, have been so unfailingly delightful that I never lost heart, even when the challenges of writing this book seemed most daunting. They are each working day’s sweet reward. Will and my brother Jeremy helped me find the right words to frame this project, and I feel so fortunate that we have our own little family writers’ circle. Our guiding spirit is my father Bension, to whom I dedicate this book. Since my mother Barbara passed away, his strength and joie de vivre have, more than ever, inspired and sustained me. He lives, as my family does, in the warm glow of my mother’s love—and for me, she lives on in him. Thank you, Dad—for everything. e.r.v. wynnewood, pa. Disunion! This page intentionally left blank ...