Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America - Softcover

May, Robert E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521132525 ISBN 13: 9780521132527

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics challenges the way historians interpret the causes of the American Civil War. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly from evidence that slaveholders, with Douglas's assistance, planned to follow up successes in Kansas by bringing Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into the Union as slave states. A skeptic about "Manifest Destiny," Lincoln opposed the war with Mexico, condemned Americans invading Latin America, and warned that Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine would unleash U.S. slaveholders throughout Latin America. This book internationalizes America's showdown over slavery, shedding new light on the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry and Lincoln's Civil War scheme to resettle freed slaves in the tropics.

About this title

Book Description:

This book reinterprets the causes of the American Civil War, especially the controversy in the West that led to the South's withdrawal from the Union. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly because of evidence that slaveholders planned to make Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into new slave states.

About the Author:

Robert E. May is a Professor of History Emeritus at Purdue University and author of works about American territorial expansion, the causes of the Civil War, and U.S. foreign relations. His books include: "Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics"; "Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America"; "John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader"; "The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861"; and a coauthored book (with his wife Jill P. May) about the famous American illustrator Howard Pyle. He also edited a pathbreaking work on Civil War diplomacy--"The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim." "Slavery, Race, and Conquest," his most recent work, was a finalist selection for the 2014 Gilder Lehman Lincoln Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0521132525
• ISBN 13: 9780521132527
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310