Liberty Power

Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics

Corey M. Brooks (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

312 Seiten

2020
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-71716-6 (ISBN)

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Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party was the first party built on opposition to slavery to win on the national stage—but its victory was rooted in the earlier efforts of under-appreciated antislavery third parties. Liberty Power tells the story of how abolitionist activists built the most transformative third-party movement in American history and effectively reshaped political structures in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

As Corey M. Brooks explains, abolitionist trailblazers who organized first the Liberty Party and later the more moderate Free Soil Party confronted formidable opposition from a two-party system expressly constructed to suppress disputes over slavery. Identifying the Whigs and Democrats as the mainstays of the southern Slave Power’s national supremacy, savvy abolitionists insisted that only a party independent of slaveholder influence could wrest the federal government from its grip. A series of shrewd electoral, lobbying, and legislative tactics enabled these antislavery third parties to wield influence far beyond their numbers. In the process, these parties transformed the national political debate and laid the groundwork for the success of the Republican Party and the end of American slavery.

Corey M. Brooks is assistant professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania. He is coeditor of Their Patriotic Duty: The Civil War Letters of the Evans Family of Brown County, Ohio. He resides in Baltimore.

Introduction

Chapter One
Political Abolition and the Slave Power Argument, 1835–1840

Interlude One
“Bowing Down to the Slave Power”: Northern Whigs, Slavery, and the Speakership, 1839

Chapter Two
Agitating the Congress: Abolitionist Lobbying and Antislavery Alliances, 1836–1844

Interlude Two
“A Temporary ‘Third Party’”: Antislavery Whig Dissidents in the 1841 Speakership Contest

Chapter Three
Building Third-Party Electoral Power, 1841–1846

Chapter Four
Antislavery Upheaval in the Capitol: The Wilmot Proviso Debates and the Widening Sectional Divide, 1846–1848

Interlude Three
“Let the Lines Be Drawn”: Conscience Whig Insurgency and the 1847 Speakership Election

Chapter Five
Liberty Men and the Creation of an Anti–Slave Power Coalition, 1846–1849

Interlude Four
“Glorious Confusion in the Ranks”: The Free Soil Balance of Power, 1849

Chapter Six
Free Soil Politics and the Twilight of the Second Party System, 1849–1853

Chapter Seven
The Nebraska Outrage and the Advent of the Republican Party, 1853–1855

Interlude Five
“A New Era in Our History”: The Longest Speakership Contest in American History and the First Republican National Victory, 1855–1856

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	17.03.2020
Reihe/Serie	American Beginnings, 1500-1900
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
ISBN-10	0-226-71716-X / 022671716X
ISBN-13	978-0-226-71716-6 / 9780226717166
Zustand	Neuware