West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

by Kevin Waite

Overview

When American slaveholders looked west in the mid-nineteenth century, they saw an empire unfolding before them. They pursued that vision through diplomacy, migration, and armed conquest. By the late 1850s, slaveholders and their allies had transformed the southwestern quarter of the nation – California, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah – into a political client of the plantation states. Across this vast swath of the map, white southerners defended the institution of African American chattel slavery as well as systems of Native American bondage. This surprising history uncovers the Old South in unexpected places, far beyond the region's cotton fields and sugar plantations.

Slaveholders' western ambitions culminated in a coast-to-coast crisis of the Union. By 1861, the rebellion in the South inspired a series of separatist movements in the Far West. Even after the collapse of the Confederacy, the threads connecting South and West held, undermining the radical promise of Reconstruction. Kevin Waite brings to light what contemporaries recognized but historians have described only in part: The struggle over slavery played out on a transcontinental stage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469663203
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Series:	The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	392
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Kevin Waite is assistant professor of history at Durham University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With a sure hand and an excellent pen, Kevin Waite examines how chattel slavery in the South intersected with multiple forms of labor coercion in the West to create a system of bondage spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Understanding the interactions and dynamics between these different types of enslavement is essential, and Waite has shown us the way."—Andres Resendez, University of California, Davis

This is an innovative book that beautifully illustrates what more scholars are coming to recognize: that slaveholders did not cling to the past and resist change. Rather, they championed vast projects for technological and commercial expansion that placed them among the most imaginative and visionary capitalists of the period.—Stacey L. Smith, Oregon State University

Kevin Waite has given us a highly provocative look at one of the more contested questions around one of the most pivotal periods in American history.  Engagingly and smoothly written, West of Slavery should be read by all who are drawn to this disturbing but fascinating chapter in our national story."—Elliott West, University of Arkansas

Kevin Waite does a remarkable job interweaving numerous historical literatures—U.S. South, U.S. West, slavery, the era of the Civil War—to tell an important story that is larger than each of them, all in the most accessible and delightful prose.—Andrew J. Torget, University of North Texas

Editorial Reviews

Waite provides vivid detail in this readable narrative, as well as abundant documentation of primary and secondary sources and helpful maps and illustrations. . . . Readers interested in the South and Confederacy will benefit from this fine work that broadens our understanding of this important era of American history."—Library Journal

Corrects oversights on Western slavery that are rooted in familiar mythology. . . . By showing how slavery was integral to the development of the Southwestern territories, Waite brings much-needed energy to the study of Western history, which has for too long regarded the region as special and alien to the controversies that divided the rest of the country. This is a critical contribution to our understanding of why slavery poisoned the whole nation and not merely a portion."—Los Angeles Review of Books

Waite succeeds admirably in showing the arbitrariness of our contemporary historiographical divisions and how much can be gained by placing southern and western history in dialogue with one another." —Karl Jacoby, Journal of the Early Republic

An important entry into the study of the region during this critical nation-building period, Waite's work reveals how the fight to ensure the continuation of slavery in the United States spread from coast to coast, providing an absorbing perspective on the road to civil war." — Civil War History

West of Slavery recovers how a vast region dominated by scrupulous ruling elites, blessed by federal powerbrokers, and regulated by militant racial violence played critical roles in the sectional crises of the 1850s, the transnational aims of the slaveholding Confederacy, and the devastating white "redemption" of the Reconstruction era. In spanning the entire Civil War era, Waite compels scholars to reconsider their prior assumptions."—Andrew F. Lang, Missouri Historical Review

Waite's statement that 'slaveholders lusted after a transpacific dominion' is vividly supported by this book. . . . Kevin Waite is not only a determined scholar. He is also a wonderful writer."—Boom California

Readers may be shocked to learn that no other free state has more Confederate monuments than California. Waite's map of their locations in the Epilogue would be a particularly effective teaching tool for historians of the West and Civil War memory. West of Slavery is engaging and convincing." —Megan Kate Nelson, Southern California Quarterly

A significant achievement of scholarship. . . . As the scholarship on the Civil War in the West continues to develop, West of Slavery should long stand as a critical intervention in the literature."—Civil War Monitor

Waite demonstrates that, from Thomas Jefferson on, the South had big plans for the West. . . . [This] enlightening book provides details of the Southern strategy to 'own' the West."—Crosscut

...a clear and energetic account that is eminently readable and teachable. It is a bold case for the importance of the West in up-to-date Civil War and Reconstruction histories, and for taking seriously the influence of slavery's partisans in the U.S. West and beyond." – Western Historical Quarterly

From the Publisher

02/12/2021

Historian Waite clearly demonstrates that the ambition of a slave-based American society extended to the Pacific Ocean, far beyond the states that eventually seceded. According to this carefully structured and well-argued book, decades leading up to the Civil War witnessed efforts to expand slavery to territories from Texas west to California, into regions very different from the South. California, with its economic promise and coveted access to Asian markets for Southern cotton, proved a tempting goal. Democratic politicians and businessmen in that state were friendly to slavery. In Washington, efforts to secure territory for a southern route of a transcontinental railroad were part of a broader plan to advance interests of slaveholders that included overland mail and travel routes through territories of the Southwest to the Pacific. Democratic Party control in Washington during the 1850s raised hopes of broadening slaveholding into regions very different from the South. Waite provides vivid detail in this readable narrative, as well as abundant documentation of primary and secondary sources and helpful maps and illustrations. VERDICT Readers interested in the South and Confederacy will benefit from this fine work that broadens our understanding of this important era of American history.—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

Library Journal