Western Expansion

"A fresh and provocative contribution to our understanding of the process of party disorganization and sectional mobilization that brought the union to its final crisis". Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia

How the territorial question and the extension of slavery led to the sectionalization of American politics

Tracing the sectionalization of American politics in the 1840s and 1850s, Michael Morrison offers a comprehensive study of how slavery and territorial expansion intersected as causes of the Civil War. Specifically, he argues that the common heritage of the American Revolution bound Americans together until disputes over the extension of slavery into the territories led northerners and southerners to increasingly divergent understandings of the Revolution's legacy.

Manifest Destiny promised the literal enlargement of freedom through the extension of American institutions all the way to the Pacific. At each step -- from John Tyler's attempt to annex Texas in 1844, to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to the opening shots of the Civil War-the issue of slavery had to be confronted. Morrison shows that the Revolution was the common prism through which northerners and southerners viewed these events and that the factor that ultimately made consensus impossible was slavery itself. By 1861, no nationally accepted solution to the dilemma of slavery in the territories had emerged, no political party existed as a national entity, and politicians from both North and South had come to believe that those on the other side had subverted the American political tradition.

This bold and controversial book takes a hard look at an old subject--race relations in the Western world. Using history as a backdrop, the author illustrates how racism and ethnic chauvinism are, sadly, common. The author warns against the harm of "colorthink"--an excessive obsession with race and racism--and explores the impact of such thinking on race relations today. He gives no comfort to either racists or more fashionable contemporaries obsessed with the supposedly unique evils of the Western past.

A collection of essays by renowned scholars of Native American economic history, The Other Side of the Frontier presents one of the first indepth studies of the complex interaction between the history of Native American economic development & the economic development of the United States at large. Although recent trends in the field of economics have encouraged the study of minority groups such as Asian & African American, little work has been done in Native American economic history. This text fills an existing gap in the economic history literature & will help students come to a richer understanding of the effects that U.S. economic policy has had on the culture & development of its indigenous peoples.

Even though it's no longer very new, the "New Economic History" remains vital. Its hallmark is the application of economic theory and statistical methods to problems in history. New sources of data and advances in economic theory continually offer the opportunity for fresh looks at old and new questions. Since the initial publication of A New Economic View of American History in 1979, the field and its practitioners have matured considerably, and a torrent of new research has been performed. New chapters on long-run growth, the market for labor, population distribution and growth, financial markets, the changing structure of American industry, and the Great Depression have been added. Thus, Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell have filled the gaps that existed in the first edition, fashioning a true survey of America's economic history from colonial times through the New Deal. Did mercantilism cause the American Revolution? Was slavery profitable? What contribution did migration and immigration make tothe economic growth of the nation? How effective has government intervention been in the redistribution of income? Do we know enough about the causes of the Great Depression to prevent another one? Did the New Deal save American capitalism or undermine it? What is the record on tariff policy? These are just a few of the centrally important questions in American history that are illuminated in this book.