Synopses & Reviews
In this comprehensive analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina, Manisha Sinha offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. Challenging works that portray secession as a fight for white liberty, she argues instead that it was a conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery.
Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum eraincluding nullification, the conflict over the expansion of slavery into western territories, and secessionand offers an important reevaluation of the movement to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. In the process she reveals the central role played by South Carolina planter politicians in developing proslavery ideology and the use of states' rights and constitutional theory for the defense of slavery.
Sinha's work underscores the necessity of integrating the history of slavery with the traditional narrative of southern politics. Only by taking into account the political importance of slavery, she insists, can we arrive at a complete understanding of southern politics and the enormity of the issues confronting both northerners and southerners on the eve of the Civil War.
Review
This is the best account to date of the militant defense of slavery and state sovereignty that put South Carolina in the vanguard of the southern secession movement. (George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University)
Review
This book belongs in the front ranks of scholarship on the politics of slavery. (Civil War History)
Review
Finely written and compelling.
American Historical Review
Review
The Counterrevolution of Slavery is a provocative revisionist history of slavery's profound influence on politics and ideology in the vanguard of secession, making clear that the Confederates in the attic of antebellum South Carolina were the state's political leaders, who said what they meant and meant what they said. (Michael Johnson, Johns Hopkins University)
Review
Likely to become the definitive account of antebellum political culture and ideology in South Carolina.
Journal of American Studies
Review
This deeply researched and well-crafted study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the causes of the Civil War.
George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University
Review
Well researched, clearly written, and forcefully argued.
Journal of Southern History
Review
Sinha's book will create much excellent debate and her study should be required reading for historians of the United States.
Journal of the Early Republic
Synopsis
This analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. The author argues that secession was a conservative movement to protect and perpetuate slavery, not a fight for white liberty as others have proposed.
Synopsis
Finely written and compelling.
American Historical Review Likely to become the definitive account of antebellum political culture and ideology in South Carolina.
Journal of American Studies Well researched, clearly written, and forcefully argued.
Journal of Southern History Sinha's book will create much excellent debate and her study should be required reading for historians of the United States.
Journal of the Early Republic This deeply researched and well-crafted study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the causes of the Civil War.
George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University