Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood

Mastering America recounts efforts of “proslavery nationalists” to navigate the nineteenth-century geopolitics of imperialism, federalism, and nationalism and to articulate themes of American mission in overtly proslavery terms. At the heart of this study are spokesmen of the Southern “Master Class” who crafted a vision of American destiny that put chattel slavery at its center. Looking beyond previous studies of the links between these “proslavery nationalists” and secession, the book shed...