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West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

byKevin Waite

Kevin Waite reveals how Southern slaveholders pursued a transcontinental empire across the American West before the Civil War. Through migration, political alliances, federal policy, violence, and commercial expansion, they extended proslavery influence into California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and connections to the Pacific. The book shows that slavery's power did not stop at familiar sectional boundaries and that western development was deeply tied to Southern ambitions. Waite recasts the conflict over the territories as a struggle involving Indigenous lands, racial hierarchy, transportation, and the future geography of an expanding slave republic.

Publisher

University of North Carolina Press

Publication date

2021

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9781469663197