A major contribution to our understanding of slavery in the early republic, this book illuminates the white South's twisted and tortured efforts to justify slavery, focusing on the period from the drafting of the federal constitution in 1787 through the age of Jackson. Drawing on primary sources, including newspapers, government documents, legislative records, pamphlets, and speeches, this book recaptures the varied and sometimes contradictory ideas and attitudes held by groups of white southerners as they debated the slavery question. The book conveys the political, intellectual, economic, an ... More

A major contribution to our understanding of slavery in the early republic, this book illuminates the white South's twisted and tortured efforts to justify slavery, focusing on the period from the drafting of the federal constitution in 1787 through the age of Jackson. Drawing on primary sources, including newspapers, government documents, legislative records, pamphlets, and speeches, this book recaptures the varied and sometimes contradictory ideas and attitudes held by groups of white southerners as they debated the slavery question. The book conveys the political, intellectual, economic, and social thought of leading white southerners, vividly recreating the mental world of the varied actors. The book also shows that there was not one antebellum South but many, and not one southern white mindset but several, with the debates over slavery in the upper South quite different in substance from those in the deep South.