Race and the Early Republic: Racial Consciousness and Nation-Building in the Early Republic

By 1840, American politics was a paradox-unprecedented freedom and equality for men of European descent, and the simultaneous isolation and degradation of people of African and Native American descent. Historians have characterized this phenomenon as the 'white republic.' Race and the Early Republic offers a rich account of how this paradox evolved, beginning with the fledgling nation of the 1770s and running through the antebellum years. The essays in the volume, written by a wide array of scholars, are arranged so as to allow a clear understanding of how and why white political supremacy came to be in the early United States. Race and the Early Republic is a collection of diverse, insightful and interrelated essays that promote an easy understanding of why and how people of color were systematically excluded from the early U.S. republic.

James Brewer Stewart, James Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, is the author of Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics; Wendell Philips: Liberty’s Hero; and William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation.