Synopses & Reviews
Robert Pierce Forbes goes behind the scenes of the crucial Missouri Compromise, the most important sectional crisis before the Civil War, to reveal the high-level deal-making, diplomacy, and deception that defused the crisis, including the central, unexpected role of President James Monroe. Although Missouri was allowed to join the union with slavery, Forbes observes, the compromise in fact closed off nearly all remaining federal territory to slavery. Forbes's analysis reveals a surprising national consensus against slavery a generation before the Civil War, which was fractured by the controversy over Missouri.
Review
The book represents a major contribution to the history of antebellum American political culture, with thought-provoking implications for political life today.
Iver Bernstein, Washington University in St. Louis
Review
"A compelling case study of the centrality of slavery to early national America."
Journal of Southern History
Review
"Certain to become essential reading on the era of good feelings and the origins of the second-party system. . . .Extremely rich and complex. . . . Important and intriguing."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Review
"This is an important book that only begins to untangle the shifting political alliances, issues, and ideologies that sustained debates over slavery during the 1820s."
Journal of the Early Republic
Review
"Forbes's account of the sectional conflict from the time of the Missouri crisis is well written and thoroughly researched and will repay a reader's careful and thoughtful consideration."
Journal of American History
Review
"An important book offering the first systematic reinterpretation of the Missouri Compromise and its aftermath in more than a generation. . . . A brilliant and an essential reconsideration of an important episode in American history. It is a work of thorough scholarship and penetrating insights."
American Historical Review
Review
"Lively and engaging . . . [Forbes] succeeds in rendering the debates the narrates vivid and dramatic."
-- Register of the Kentucky Historical Review
Review
"Forbes's analysis of the Missouri Compromise . . . is the best history of that landmark political decision for several decades."
International History Review
Review
"[Forbes's] ability to question the depths of a proslavery 'consensus' before 1819 is intriguing."
The Virginia Quarterly Review
About the Author
Robert Pierce Forbes is lecturer in history at Yale University. He is coauthor of Francis Kernan, Esq.: The Life and Times of a Nineteenth-Century Politician from Upstate New York.