ePub Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson in History

Description

Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states; the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was; in William Freehling's words; "a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream." It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers; where the egalitarian spirit sweeping the North seeped down through border states already uncertain about slavery; where even sections of the same state (for instance; coastal and mountain Virginia) divided bitterly on key issues. It was the world of Jefferson Davis; John C. Calhoun; Andrew Jackson; and Thomas Jefferson; and also of Gullah Jack; Nat Turner; and Frederick Douglass. Now; in the first volume of his long awaited; monumental study of the South's road to disunion; historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise; the Nullification Controversy; the Gag Rule ("the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy"); the Annexation of Texas; the Compromise of 1850; and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis; illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way; he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850; and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism; Jeffersonian states' rights; Jacksonian democracy; and the causes of the American Civil War. But for all Freehling's brilliant insight into American antebellum politics; Secessionists at Bay is at bottom the saga of the rich social tapestry of the pre-war South. He takes us to old Charleston; Natchez; and Nashville; to the big house of a typical plantation; and we feel anew the tensions between the slaveowner and his family; the poor whites and the planters; the established South and the newer South; and especially between the slave and his master; "Cuffee" and "Massa." Freehling brings the Old South back to life in all its color; cruelty; and diversity. It is a memorable portrait; certain to be a key analysis of this crucial era in American history.