Half Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition: The Roots of Civil War - Softcover

Levine, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809053535 ISBN 13: 9780809053537

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A concise and clear treatment of the diverse issues and social changes that precipitated the Civil War. Working largely with the results of recent scholarship on the antebellum period, Levine (American History/Univ. of Cincinnati; ed., Who Built America?, 1990) argues that the American Revolution occurred in two distinct stages. The first, liberation from Britain, came about only through a fragile alliance between separate social orders, one based on servile labor and the other on free labor--but the compromises between these systems (an integral part of the fabric of the Constitution), Levine tells us, failed to hold up as America expanded westward. The Civil War was the second stage, the result of friction that grew increasingly heated as other factors came into play. Changes in work life and cultural life in the North and South, Levine says, led to clearer class distinctions, sharpening the perceptions of laborers who toiled as free men and as slaves. Assessing the contribution to the debate from free blacks in both regions, from abolitionists and proslavery rabble-rousers, and especially from the hard-working German and Irish immigrants who had little use for plantation society, Levine sees the polarization in attitudes manifesting in specific political platforms, most notably in the rise of Republicanism in the 1850's as Whigs, Democrats, Know-Nothings, and other parties proved unequal to the task of curbing slavery. Intelligent, eminently readable sociopolitical history. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0809053535
• ISBN 13: 9780809053537
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336