Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States

This book explores how specific emotions shaped Americans' perceptions of, and responses to, the sectional conflict over slavery in the United States.

Michael E. Woods (Author)

9781107068988, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 August 2014

264 pages, 2 b/w illus.
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.1 cm, 0.5 kg

'Woods should be commended for the breadth and depth of his research. He is explicit about his interdisciplinary influences, drawing on work from fields including psychology, sociology, and political science. Woods also cites a variety of primary sources, including letters, diaries, agricultural journals, novels, and political speeches, all to demonstrate how people in the antebellum period felt, expressed, and prescribed emotions, both individually and collectively … Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States offers a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of the history of emotions, as well as a thoughtful addition to Civil War scholarship.' Erin Austin Dwyer, Journal of the Early Republic

The sectional conflict over slavery in the United States was not only a clash between labour systems and political ideologies but also a viscerally felt part of the lives of antebellum Americans. This book contributes to the growing field of emotions history by exploring how specific emotions shaped Americans' perceptions of, and responses to, the sectional conflict in order to explain why it culminated in disunion and war. Emotions from indignation to jealousy were inextricably embedded in antebellum understandings of morality, citizenship, and political affiliation. Their arousal in the context of political debates encouraged Northerners and Southerners alike to identify with antagonistic sectional communities and to view the conflicts between them as worth fighting over. Michael E. Woods synthesizes two schools of thought on Civil War causation: the fundamentalist, which foregrounds deep-rooted economic, cultural, and political conflict, and the revisionist, which stresses contingency, individual agency, and collective passion.

Introduction: finding the heart of the sectional conflict
Prologue: slavery, sectionalism, and the affective theory of the Union
Part I. Emotion and the Growth of Sectional Political Identities: 1. Free labor, slave labor, and the political economy of happiness
2. Managed hearts and unmanageable slaves
3. Jealousy and the sectionalization of emotional styles
Part II. Emotion and the Mobilization of Sectional Coalitions: 4. Indignation and the fitful growth of mass antislavery sentiment, 1820–56
5. Indignation and the Northern mobilization for war, 1856–61
6. Political jealousy and Southern radicalism from nullification to secession
7. Mourning and the mobilization of reluctant secessionists, 1860–1
Epilogue: reconstructing the affective theory of the Union.

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Social & cultural history [HBTB], History of the Americas [HBJK]