Contesting slavery

Scholars have recently reshaped how historians view slavery in American politics from 1776 to 1840. This collection of new essays extends that work by examining the Revolutionary era and the early republic in their own context, rather than as a prelude to the Civil War. It shows that slavery and antislavery meant different things to different groups, including free and enslaved Black Americans, defenders of slavery, northern farmers, women reformers, minor party officials, and national leaders such as Henry Clay.

The essays also trace how slavery fueled both agreement and conflict in local, regional, and national politics, and how sectional divisions shaped public life well before 1840. By doing so, the book challenges long-held assumptions about where slavery stood in the political life of the period and how much weight it carried.

The volume gathers work by fifteen contributors: Rachel Hope Cleves, David F. Ericson, John Craig Hammond, Matthew Mason, Richard Newman, James Oakes, Peter S. Onuf, Robert G. Parkinson, Donald J. Ratcliffe, Padraig Riley, Edward B. Rugemer, Brian Schoen, Andrew Shankman, George William Van Cleve, and Eva Sheppard Wolf.