Freehling follows up his highly praised Secessionists at Bay, 1776– 1854
in this exhaustive, scholarly look at the collisions between the lofty American goals of freedom and democracy and the strong desire of Southern slave owners and their supporters to subvert those ideals by defending whites enslavement of blacks. Beginning where the last volume left off, with the bloody aftermath of the pivotal 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the new work includes revealing analyses of the violence in "bleeding Kansas," the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, among many other incidents. A good deal of the book focuses on differences of opinion on secession throughout the South, and includes a sharp analysis of the generally underappreciated role of the pro-slavery, pro-secessionist "fire-eaters," such as William Lowndes Yancey and Preston Smith Brooks. Most, like Brooks, were South Carolinians. Like its predecessor, this volume is an important work that will appeal mainly to scholars and students of the Civil War. (Apr.)
