The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-56 [Paperback]

William J. Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1979

The politics of slavery consumed the political world of the antebellum South. Although local economic, ethnic, and religious issues tended to dominate northern antebellum politics, The South and the Politics of Slavery convincingly argues that national and slavery-related issues were the overriding concerns of southern politics during these years. Accordingly, southern voters saw their parties, both Democratic and Whig, as the advocates and guardians of southern rights in the nation.

William Cooper traces and analyzes the history of southern politics from the formation of the Democratic party in the late 1820s to the demise of the Democratic-Whig struggle in the 1850s, reporting on attitudes and reactions in each of the eleven states that were to form the Confederacy. Focusing on southern politicians and parties, Cooper emphasizes their relationship with each other, with their northern counterparts, and with southern voters, and he explores the connections between the values of southern white society and its parties and politicians. Based on extensive research in regional political manuscripts and newspapers, this study will be valuable to all historians of the period for the information and insight it provides on the role of the South in politics of the nation during the lifespan of the Jacksonian party system.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (April 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807103853
• ISBN-13: 978-0807103852
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,357,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Was Slavery the Cause of the Civil War?, August 17, 2001

By 

J. Hart (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856 (Paperback)

It is interesting that this question still causes such a high level of bitter disagreement. This question has been argued in a thousand different ways. Cooper's work, in my opinion, provides the answer. He convincingly shows that Southern politics turned on the issue of slavery not just after 1850, but all the way back to 1831. Slavery and Southern safety won and lost the big elections after 1831 in every Southern state. The issues differed (states' rights, western expansion, etc.), but the heart of every issue was what it would do to slavery. It's hard to find, but if you can, read it.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Untenable, Myopic Assessment of the Antebellum South, September 7, 2001

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856 (Paperback)

William J. Cooper goes to great lengths to reinforce the stereotype that southern politics before the War Between the States was centered around the issue of slavery and that local issues were unimportant compared to it. In The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-1856, Cooper is especially explicit in announcing slavery to be the "fulcrum" of southern politics. The book covers the period of the second American party system, from 1828 and the advent of Jacksonianism to the disintegration of the Whig party in 1856. In explaining why Whigs as well as Democrats spoke "constantly" about slavery-related issues, Cooper argues that only the slavery issue afforded political stability to any party position. He insists that the white South was of a unified, proslavery mind. He is not completely successful at explaining why this should be so. He does succeed in describing slavery as a national issue, pointing out that only the national government could officially recognize the peculiar institution's legitimacy in America. In the process of explication, Cooper seems to imply that the parties were utilized by southern politicians to gain national power, which could then be harnessed to protect southern rights. Since the second party system first emerged in 1828, he seems to date the birth of the southern rights crusade to a time even before the Nullification crisis.

Cooper identifies four factors that animated the "politics of slavery": the institution of slavery itself, southern parties and politicians, the political structure of the South, and the values of white southern society. Cooper would certainly agree that the North and South were culturally different in the antebellum era. He describes this sectional difference in political terms: local issues predominated in northern politics, whereas slavery dominated southern political discourse. Conditionally, southerners viewed parties' roles differently than did their northern counterparts--southerners relied on the national parties to work for the preservation of southern rights within the nation. Local issues were irrelevant in the South, Cooper argues repeatedly, compared to the indomitable politics of slavery. He rejects emphatically the common belief that economic matters defined party politics in the era of the second party system. Cooper dismisses the crucial significance of economic and diverse social issues at the local and state level by placing over each such issue a mask of proslavery. Specific issues emerged and faded, he argues, but slavery remained always at the core of each one. He does not seek to understand just who became Whigs or who became Democrats or the reasons why, for he sees in the South a unified system of political thought. Cooper's argument is almost circular: the drive for southern rights shaped the national party structure, but this selfsame party system fostered sectionalism within the parties and essentially destroyed the second party system. Cooper insists that the Democrats enjoyed political hegemony in the South in the late 1850s because no new party could replace the Whigs under the unspoken rules of the southern political system; the existence of anti-Democratic voters--who were a large minority of the southern population--and the existence of local issues could not subsume the slavery issue in politics. Cooper relies mainly on data from Presidential elections, ignoring nonpresidential contests at the state and local level. This approach prevents him from acknowledging the lack of unity and order in southern politics. He refuses to admit the existence of discord not only between but within parties, and he is blind to any evidence that the South was anything but unified in proslavery ideology by the 1850s.