The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South CarolinaIn this comprehensive analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina, Manisha Sinha offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. Challenging works that portray secession as a fight for white liberty, she argues instead that it was a conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery. Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum era--including nullification, the conflict over the expansion of slavery into western territories, and secession--and offers an important reevaluation of the movement to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. In the process she reveals the central role played by South Carolina planter politicians in developing proslavery ideology and the use of states' rights and constitutional theory for the defense of slavery. Sinha's work underscores the necessity of integrating the history of slavery with the traditional narrative of southern politics. Only by taking into account the political importance of slavery, she insists, can we arrive at a complete understanding of southern politics and the enormity of the issues confronting both northerners and southerners on the eve of the Civil War. |
Contents
The Problem of South Carolina Revisited | 1 |
The Genesis of the Political Ideology of Slavery | 9 |
The Discourse of Southern Nationalism | 63 |
Copyright | |
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African slave trade American Antebellum antislavery argued Armistead Burt Atlantic slave trade Baton Rouge Benjamin F Calhoun Camden Journal Carolinian planter politicians Carolinian secessionists Chapel Hill Charleston Daily Courier Charleston Mercury Civil Columbia Confederacy Congress Constitution cooperationists Crisis delegates democracy District disunion election federal Georgia Greenville Hamilton Hayne Henry Hammond Papers Huger ideology Jacksonian James Henry Hammond John July June Keitt legislature lowcountry Lower South Magrath majority Memminger Milledge Luke Bonham Mississippi National Democrats North northern nullification Perry Papers Petigru Pickens political president proslavery reopening Republican resolutions Rhett Robert Barnwell Rhett SCDAH Seabrook secede secession Secession Movement sectional Senate separatists Sept Simms slave society slave South slave trade laws slaveholders slavery South Carolina southern nationalism southern nationalists Southern Rights Speech Spratt state's Sumter tariff territories tion Trescot Union unionist Virginia vote Washington William Porcher Miles wrote York