University of North Carolina Press West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History)

Review Waite's mapping of the White southern expansionist imagination and politico-cultural network is a significant achievement. Scholars can no longer satisfy themselves with the kind of limits-of-slavery environmental determinism famously advanced by Charles Ramsdell, nor can they dismiss the Far West's Civil War history as inconsequential. -- Southwestern Historical Quarterly...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 QuarterlyWest 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 ReviewWaite presents a cogently argued, carefully organized, and deftly written history of [slaveholders'] transcontinental vision.--America's Civil WarWaite's impressive work recovering a southern vision of transcontinental reach will be appreciated by historians of the nineteenth-century United States, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the U.S. South, and the North American West... As this wide appeal suggests, you could easily shelve West of Slavery in any number of locations - all the better to spark new connections between familiar stories, as Waite does so skilfully here.---American Nineteenth Century HistoryCorrects 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 BooksA 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 MonitorWaite 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.--CrosscutWaite'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 CaliforniaWaite 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 Product Description When American slaveholders looked west in the mid-nineteenth century, they saw an empire unfolding before them. They pursued that vision through war, diplomacy, political patronage, and perhaps most effectively, the power of migration. By the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders and their allies had transformed the southwestern quarter of the nation--California, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah--into an appendage of the South's plantation states. Across this vast swath of the map, white southerners extended the institution of African American chattel slavery while also defending systems of Native American bondage. This surprising history uncovers the Old South in unexpected places, far west of the cotton fields a