Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521763837)

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.

Author: Robert E. May
ISBN-10: 0521763835
ISBN-13: 9780521763837
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/07/2013
Pages: 310
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2014 pg. 329