Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War

by Bruce Levine

Overview

Revised Edition
With a New Preface and Afterword

In a revised edition, brought completely up to date with a new preface and afterword and an expanded bibliography, Bruce Levine's succinct and persuasive treatment of the basic issues that precipitated the Civil War is as compelling as ever. Levine explores the far-reaching, divisive changes in American life that came with the incomplete Revolution of 1776 and the development of two distinct social systems, one based on slavery, the other on free labor—changes out of which the Civil War developed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809053537
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	05/11/2005
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	414,660
Product dimensions:	6.35(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Bruce Levine, James G. Randall Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a co-author of Who Built America? and the author of The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of Civil War and Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free Slaves during the Civil War.

Table of Contents

	Preface to the Revised Edition	ix
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Introduction: Freedom, Slavery, and the Legacy of the American Revolution	3
1	"Our Laborers Are Our Property": The Southern Slave Economy	17
2	"Each Person Works for Himself": The Ideal and Reality of Free Labor	46
3	"A Complete Revolution in Social Life": Cultural Change in the Antebellum North	71
4	"The Anointed Lords of Creation": Culture and Society in the Antebellum South	95
5	"Called by the Same Name": The Many Meanings of Liberty	121
6	To "Fight Against the Serpent": Antislavery and Its Early Progress	145
7	"A Firebell in the Night": The Struggle Escalates	160
8	"Keep It Within Limits": Western Lands and Free Soil	177
9	"Anti Nebraska Feeling Is Too Deep": Origins and Triumph of Republicanism	199
10	"The Inexorable Logic of Events": Secession, War, and Emancipation	225
	Afterword: On Popular Mobilization in the Civil War Era	243
	New Bibliographical Essay	257
	Index	313

Editorial Reviews

In this vigorously argued narrative tracking the causes of the Civil War, Levine tries to explain what drove so many working people to commit themselves to the cause of freedom--Southern slaves by their efforts to resist bondage and Northern farmers, mechanics, and factory laborers by their support for free soil and free labor principles. By Levine's reckoning, the slavery issue overrode ethnic and economic concerns and made sectional differences almost irreconciliable within the framework of the Union. Levine succeeds in giving fresh views of the social lives of immigrants, slaves, and working people generally, but his preoccupation with the politics of slavery overwhelms his social history and makes disunion seem more predestined than it really was. Still, this is an eminently readable, intelligent book recommended for use in college courses and for purchase by college/university libraries.-- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal