Roots of Secession

by Link, William A.

• ISBN13: 9780807827710
• ISBN10: 0807827711
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Offering a provocative new look at the politics of secession in antebellum Virginia, William Link places African Americans at the center of events and argues that their acts of defiance and rebellion had powerful political repercussions throughout the turbulent period leading up to the Civil War.An upper South state with nearly half a million slaves--more than any other state in the nation--and some 50,000 free blacks, Virginia witnessed a uniquely volatile convergence of slave resistance and electoral politics in the 1850s. While masters struggled with slaves, disunionists sought to join a regionwide effort to secede and moderates sought to protect slavery but remain in the Union. Arguing for a definition of political action that extends beyond the electoral sphere, Link shows that the coming of the Civil War was directly connected to Virginia's system of slavery, as the tension between defiant slaves and anxious slaveholders energized Virginia politics and spurred on the impending sectional crisis.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(10)
Prologue To Make Ourselves Slaves, That You Might Defend Yours: Slavery and Constitutional Reform	11	(18)
A Slave Society: Virginia in the 1850s	29	(34)
Boastful and Belligerent Champions of Southern Institutions: Slavery and Politics, 1851--1854	63	(34)
A Uniform Spirit of Lawlessness: The Problem of Runaways	97	(24)
A Spirit of License in the Guise of Liberty: The Survival of Opposition, 1854--1856	121	(28)
The Darkest and Most Perilous Hours of Our National Existence: The Deepening Sectional Crisis, 1856--1859	149	(28)
A Black Demon of Fanaticism: Harpers Ferry and the Election of 1860	177	(36)
To Light the Torch of Servile Insurrection: The Secession Crisis	213	(32)
Epilogue The Rending of Virginia	245	(10)
Notes	255	(98)
Bibliography	353	(20)
Index	373