"The American Debate over Slavery, 1760–1865 will be a superb resource for teachers and students of early American history. Editors Lubert, Hardwick, and Hammond have carefully assembled and introduced a rich collection of significant documents that bring the slavery debate into sharp and illuminating focus. This is easily the best book in its field." --Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello)

From James I's Address Before Parliament (1610) to Joseph R. Biden, Jr.'s Learned Hand Dinner Address Before the American Jewish Committee (2005), this two-volume set offers an unparalleled selection of key texts from the history of American political and constitutional thought.

The evidence is overwhelming that the protection and expansion of slavery was a primary reason for the secession of the Confederate states and the Civil War that followed. While slavery undoubtedly was important, a more fundamental cause was a belief system held in common among the ruling elite. The antebellum South was not only a slave society but also an authoritarian society, shaped by a view of the world as dangerous/competitive, an us vs. them mentality, a dominance/obedience orientation, and closed-mindedness. The authoritarianism of the founding elites, in combination with the travails they experienced on the Southern frontiers, led to oppression, racism, and corruptions in thinking, emotion, and behavior. It also perpetuated the practice of slavery, sparked the Civil War, and left a difficult legacy. In a unique application of contemporary social psychological theory and research to the interpretation of history, this book traces the evolution of Southern authoritarianism from the founding of Virginia in 1606 to the secession of the Confederate states in 1861. In doing so, it examines how belief systems become embedded in a society, act as both consequences and causes of historical events, and have effects that reverberate far into the future.

Millions of Africans were enslaved and transported to the Americas in the eighteenth century. Europeans--many of whom viewed themselves as enlightened--endorsed, funded, legislated, and executed the slave trade. This atrocity had a profound impact on philosophy, but historians of the discipline have so far neglected to address the topics of slavery and race. Many authors--including enslaved and formerly enslaved Black authors--used philosophical ideas to advocate for abolition, analyze racist attitudes, and critique racial bias. Other authors attempted to justify the transatlantic slave trade by advancing philosophical defenses of racial chattel slavery. Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Eighteenth Century explores these philosophical ideas and arguments, with a focus on the role race played in discussions of slavery. In doing so, author Julia Jorati reveals how closely associated Blackness and slavery were at that time and how many White people viewed Black people as naturally destined for slavery. In addition to examining well-known authors like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jorati also discusses less widely studied philosophers like Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Lemuel Haynes, and Olympe de Gouges. By revealing important aspects of debates about slavery in North America and Europe, this book and its companion volume on the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries are valuable resources for readers interested in a more complete history of early modern philosophy.

This volume is an annotated collection of journalistic writings by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from 1856 to 1862 that focused on imperialism.

When Abraham Lincoln was sworn into office, seven slave states had preemptively seceded rather than recognize the legitimacy of his election. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln replied to the secessionists and set forth a principled defense of majority rule as “the only true sovereign of a free people.” His immediate purpose was to argue against the legitimacy of a powerful minority forcibly partitioning the United States because it was dissatisfied with the results of a free, constitutionally conducted election. His wider purpose was to make the case that a deliberate, constitutionally checked majority, though by no means infallible, was the appropriate ultimate authority not only on routine political questions but even on the kind of difficult, deeply divisive questions—like the future of slavery—that could otherwise trigger violent contests. Sovereign of a Free People examines Lincoln’s defense of majority rule, his understanding of its capabilities and limitations, and his hope that slavery could be peacefully and gradually extinguished through the action of a committed national majority. James Read argues that Lincoln offered an innovative account of the interplay between majorities and minorities in the context of crosscutting issues and shifting public opinion. This story is particularly timely today as a new minority of dissatisfied voters has threatened and enacted violence in response to a valid election. Read offers the first book focused on Lincoln’s understanding of majority rule. He also highlights the similarities and differences between the threats to American democracy in Lincoln’s time and in our own. Sovereign of a Free People challenges common assumptions about what caused the Civil War, takes seriously the alternative path of a peaceful, democratic abolition of slavery in the United States, and offers a fresh treatment of Lincoln and race.

Winner of the Jules and Frances Landry Award Historians have long considered the diary of William Johnson, a wealthy free Black barber in Natchez, Mississippi, to be among the most significant sources on free African Americans living in the antebellum South. Timothy R. Buckner’s The Barber of Natchez Reconsidered reexamines Johnson’s life using recent scholarship on Black masculinity as an essential lens, demonstrating a complexity to Johnson previously overlooked in academic studies. While Johnson’s profession as a barber helped him gain acceptance and respectability, it also required his subservience to the needs of his all-white clientele. Buckner’s research counters earlier assumptions that suggested Johnson held himself apart from Natchez’s Black population, revealing instead a man balanced between deep connections to the broader African American community and the necessity to cater to white patrons for economic and social survival. Buckner also highlights Johnson’s participation in the southern performance of manliness to a degree rarely seen in recent studies of Black masculinity. Like many other free Black men, Johnson asserted his manhood in ways beyond simply rebelling against slavery; he also competed with other men, white and Black, free and enslaved, in various masculine pursuits, including gambling, hunting, and fishing. Buckner’s long-overdue reevaluation of the contents of Johnson’s diary serves as a corrective to earlier works and a fascinating new account of a free African American business owner residing in the prewar South.