Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America

(Hardback)

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This book is a narrative history of the thirty-year struggle to outlaw slavery, starting with the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1834 and extending until the abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War. The core of the book consists of two sections: 1) the 20-year political struggle to restrict slavery through a succession of anti-extensionist parties starting in 1840 with the founding of the Liberty Party, extending through the Free Soil Party (1848-54) and ending with Abraham Lincoln being elected president as a Republican on the same basic platform as the Liberty Party in 1844. 2) The struggle by abolitionists to use the outbreak of the Civil War as a chance to rid the country of slavery using the executive wartime powers of the presidency.

Reviews

This history of the abolitionist movement in the United States focuses on the successes and failures of the movement within the electoral arena and, upon the electoral success of the Republican Party and the outbreak of the Civil War, within the political arena of government. It thus looks at the failures of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party/Free Democrats to achieve successes as third parties due to the nature of the American political system, party strategies, and political exigencies and the contrasting success of the more internally coherent Republicans to become a replacement second party for the Whigs, partly due to an atmosphere where Northerners felt more threatened by the Slave Power than in prior times and partly because they had a broader range of issues with which to attract supporters. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

Thomas G. Mitchell is the author of Indian Fighters Turned American Politicians: From Military Service to Public Office (Greenwood, 2003), Liberal Parties in Settler Conflicts (Greenwood, 2002), Native vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa (Greenwood, 2000).