Hardcover in very good condition. The plastic protected jacket is lightly marked and edgeworn with a slight nick on the spine head. Label on front pastedown. Pages are clean; text is clear. CM

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln declared his hatred for the institution of slavery, likening his feelings of opposition to those of the abolitionists. Although the fact that Lincoln always disliked slavery is indisputable, the idea that he always opposed it with the zeal and fervor of the abolitionists remains questionable. Only four years prior to his bold declaration, Lincoln admittedly paid little attention to slavery, viewing it as only a minor issue. But in the six years preceding his presidency, his antislavery stance underwent dramatic change. Fueled by political ambition, Lincoln’s argument against slavery and his prescription for dealing with it moved from what he initially labeled a middle-ground stance to a more radical position. Robert W. Johannsen’s Lincoln, the South, and Slavery traces the political dimension of Lincoln’s antislavery stance as it evolved from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 to his election as president in 1860. Whereas previous scholars have largely ignored the political character of Lincoln’s antislavery argument, Johannsen sees Lincoln as an astute and ambitious politician whose statements where shaped and directed by the time’s ever-changing political exigencies and considerations. Johannsen does not demean the quality of Lincoln’s sincerity or downgrade the importance of his moral convictions on the slavery issue, but he does suggest that politics played a larger role than previously acknowledged in the form these convictions took. The four chapters that compose this work connect Lincoln’s position with his attitude toward the South and Southerners, from his initial appeal to Southerners at a time when he sought to revitalize the dying Whig party, through his deepening involvement in the Republican party, to his final belief that the South and Southern interests no longer needed to be considered as factors determining his national political success. Johannsen focuses on Lincoln’s debut in 1854 as an antislavery speaker, on the development of his stand for the ultimate extinction of slavery, on his espression of the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict, and finally on Lincoln’s and the South’s perceptions of each other in 1860. As no other work has done, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery shows how Lincoln, in response to the demands of politics, became increasingly anti-slavery and anti-Southern during the 1850s. It will be a welcome contribution to the ongoing debate about the enigma of Lincoln and about his role in the coming of the Civil War.

In this groundbreaking study, Charles W. Ramsdell explores the causes of the South's defeat in the Civil War. Finding traditional military explanations insufficient, he argues that deficiencies on the homefront were fundamental to the collapse of the Confederacy. According to Ramsdell, the war raised economic and social problems that the southern people were unprepared to solve. Financially weakened and demoralized, the civilian population could not adequately support its armies, causing the Confederacy to break down from within long before the military situation appeared desperate.

The term “conversion narrative” usually refers to a particular form of expression that arose in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century. In that sense―the purely religious―the conversion narrative belongs to a rather remote history. But in this lucid, pathbreaking work, Fred Hobson uses the expression in another sense―in the realm of the secular―to describe a much more recent phenomenon, one originating in the American South and marking a new mode of southern self-expression not seen until the 1940s. Hobson applies the term “racial conversion narrative” to several autobiographies or works of highly personal social commentary by Lillian Smith, James McBride Dabbs, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Sarah Patton Boyle, Will Campbell, Larry L. King, Willie Morris, Pat Watters, and other southerners, books written between the mid-1940s and the late 1970s in which the authors―all products of and willing participants in a harsh, segregated society―confess racial wrongdoings and are “converted,” in varying degrees, from racism to something approaching racial enlightenment. Indeed, the language of many of these works is, Hobson points out, the language of religious conversion―“sin,” “guilt,” “blindness,” “seeing the light,” “repentance,” “redemption,” and so forth. Hobson also looks at recent autobiographical volumes by Ellen Douglas, Elizabeth Spencer, and Rick Bragg to show how the medium persists, if in a somewhat different form, even at the very end of the twentieth century. But Now I See is a study both of this particular variety of the southern impulse to self-examination and of those who seem to have retained the habit of seeking redemption, even if of a secular variety. Departing from the old vertical southern religion―salvation-centered with heaven as its goal―these racial converts embrace a horizontal religion which holds that getting right with man is at least as important as getting right with God. A refreshingly original treatment of racial change in the South, Hobson’s provocative work introduces a new subgenre in the field of southern literature. Anyone interested in the history and literature of the American South will be fascinated by this searching volume.

It is beyond dispute that slavery has always been abhorrent and, wherever it still exists, should be abolished. Where most scholarly writing on slavery in the past has concentrated on examining slaves as victims, recent writings have taken a more nuanced view of slavery in focusing on the slaves themselves and their cultural and psychological accomplishments in captivity. Also, studies of the system's profitability have shown that, from an economic perspective, slavery worked for the slaveholders and their society.In Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom, the distinguished scholar Stanley Engerman succinctly synthesizes current scholarship and addresses questions that are critical to understanding the nature of Why did slavery arise, and how, why, where, and when did it legally end? What impact did slavery have on the enslaved? Was the impact lingering or was it reversed by the provision of freedom?Engerman begins his study by discussing slavery from a global perspective. He reminds us of the ubiquity of slavery throughout the world, challenging the stereotype that it was only the American South's "peculiar institution." Using the same broad comparative and temporal approach to discuss emancipation, he shows how emancipation in the southern states, several decades after it began in other parts of the world, both differed from and mirrored abolition around the globe. Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom is an important confrontation with America's and the world's past and present. Both the breadth and depth of this brief, incisive treatise demonstrate why Engerman is considered one of America's most insightful and respected scholars.

Following World War II, chemical companies and agricultural experts promoted the use of synthetic chemicals such as DDT, which had been developed to help the military fight typhoid and malaria abroad, as pesticides on weeds and insects. It was, Pete Daniel points out, a convenient way for companies to apply their wartime research to the domestic market. In Toxic Drift, Daniel documents the particularly disastrous effects this campaign had on the South's public health and environment, exposing the careless mentality that allowed pesticide application to swerve out of control over twenty-five years. Millions of tons of highly toxic chemicals spread over the South, much of them from crop dusters. The quest to destroy pests, Daniel contends, unfortunately outran research on insect resistance, ignored environmental damage, and downplayed the dangers of residue accumulation and threats to fish, wildlife, domestic animals, and humans. He tells a story of bureaucratic perfidy, scientific hubris, and corporate irresponsibility as he relates specific cases of chemical exposure and poisoning - including fish kills in the Mississippi River, ducks falling dead from the sky, and farm animals destroyed by bungled, overzealous attempts to wipe out fire ants. Daniel explains how the Agricultural Research Service, a Federal entity charged with regulating pesticides, allowed dangerous formulations to be sold and often failed to enforce proper labeling. Objections to the undisciplined use of synthetic pesticides from Rachel Carson, Clarence Cottam, and other critics went unheeded. The consequences for human health were death and severe debilitation. Using legal sources, archival records, newspapers, and congressional hearings, Daniel constructs a fact-filled account of the use, abuse, and regulation of pesticides from World War II until 1970. Toxic Drift recounts an important episode in ecological history as it cautions against not only the continued threat of pesticides but also the dangers surrounding newer issues such as "mad cow" disease and genetic engineering.

In The Southern Political Tradition, the distinguished southern historian Michael Perman explores the region's distinctive political practices and behaviors, primarily resulting from the South's perception of itself as a minority under attack from the 1820s to the 1960s. Drawing on his extensive research and understanding of southern politics, Perman singles out three features of the area's political history. He calls the first element The One-Party Paradigm, a political system characterized by one-party dominance rather than competition between two or more. The second feature, The Frontier and Filibuster Defense, illustrates a dramatic, preemptive response within Congress to any threat to the region's racial order. And in the third, The Over-Representation Mechanism, Perman describes the skillful manipulation of institutional mechanisms in Congress that resulted in greater influence than the region's relatively small population warranted. This anomalous tradition has all but disappeared since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Southern Political Tradition offers an insightful and provocative perspective on the South's political history.

During the Civil War, southerners produced a vast body of writing about their northern foes, painting a picture of a money-grubbing, puritanical, and infidel enemy. Damn Yankees! explores the proliferation of this rhetoric and demonstrates how the perpetual vilification of northerners became a weapon during the war, fostering hatred and resistance among the people of the Confederacy. Drawing from speeches, cartoons, editorials, letters, and diaries, Damn Yankees! examines common themes in southern excoriation of the enemy. In sharp contrast to the presumed southern ideals of chivalry and honor, Confederates claimed that Yankees were rootless vagabonds who placed profit ahead of fidelity to religious and social traditions. Pervasive criticism of northerners created a framework for understanding their behavior during theof battle, it confirmed the Yankees reputed physical and moral weakness. When the Yankees achieved military success, reports of depravity against vanquished foes abounded, stiffening the resolve of Confederate soldiers and civilians alike to protect their homeland and the sanctity of their women from Union degeneracy. From award-winning Civil War historian George C. Rable, Damn Yankees! is the first comprehensive study of anti-Union speech and writing, the ways these words shaped perceptions of and events in the war, and the rhetoric s enduring legacy in the South after the conflict had ended."

In Jefferson and the Virginians, renowned scholar Peter S. Onuf examines the ways in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians―George Washington, James Madison, and Patrick Henry―both conceptualized their home state from a political and cultural perspective, and understood its position in the new American union. The conversations Onuf reconstructs offer glimpses into the struggle to define Virginia―and America―within the context of the upheaval of the Revolutionary War. Onuf also demonstrates why Jefferson’s identity as a Virginian obscures more than it illuminates about his ideology and career. Onuf contends that Jefferson and his interlocutors sought to define Virginia’s character as a self-constituted commonwealth and to determine the state’s place in the American union during an era of constitutional change and political polarization. Thus, the outcome of the American Revolution led to ongoing controversies over the identity of Virginians and Americans as a “people” or “peoples”; over Virginia’s boundaries and jurisdiction within the union; and over the system of government in Virginia and for the states collectively. Each debate required a balanced consideration of corporate identity and collective interests, which inevitably raised broader questions about the character of the Articles of Confederation and the newly formed federal union. Onuf’s well-researched study reveals how this indeterminacy demanded definition and, likewise, how the need for definition prompted further controversy.

In The Last Fire-Eater, renowned historian of the American South William A. Link examines the life of Roger A. Pryor, a Virginia secessionist, Confederate general, and earnest proponent of postwar sectional reconciliation whose life involved a series of remarkable transformations. Pryor's journey, Link reveals, mirrored that of the South. At times, both proved puzzling and contradictory. Pryor recast himself during a crucial period in southern history between the 1850s and the close of the nineteenth century. An archetypical southern-rights advocate, Pryor became a skilled practitioner in the politics of honor. As a politician and newspaper editor, he engaged in duels and viewed the world through the cultural prism of southern honor, assuming a more militant and aggressive stance on slavery than most of his regional peers. Later, he served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of brigadier general and seeing action across the Eastern Theater. Captured late in the conflict, Pryor soon after abandoned his fiery persona and renounced extremism. He then moved to New York City, where he emerged as a prominent lawyer and supporter of the sort of intersectional detente that stood as a central facet of what southern boosters labeled the "New South." Dramatic change characterized Pryor's long life. Born in 1828, he died four months after the end of World War I. He witnessed fundamental shifts in the South that included the destruction of slavery, the defeat of the Confederacy, and the redefinition of manhood and honor among elite white men who relied less on violence to resolve personal grievances. With Pryor's lifetime of remakings as its focus, The Last Fire-Eater serves as a masterful history of transformation in the South.