Mastering America
Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood

Recounts efforts of 'proslavery nationalists' to navigate the nineteenth-century geopolitics of imperialism, federalism, and nationalism and to articulate themes of American mission in overtly proslavery terms.

Robert E. Bonner (Author)

9780521833950, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 April 2009

368 pages, 14 b/w illus.
23.3 x 15.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.6 kg

'Mastering America puts the lie to old notions that northerners in nineteenth-century America were the only nationalists while southerners were the sectionalists. With deft writing, innovative arguments, and prodigious research, Robert Bonner reveals that southerners were the ones who held the keys to American nationalism all along. It was southern slave masters who led the way in shaping the country's quest for empire, in creating its self-image as God's chosen land, and in articulating its distinctive, racialized historical mission. Little wonder, then, that southern slave owners were ready and able to create a new nation when the simmering sectional conflict erupted into Civil War. This vital new work exposes in global dimensions the tangled fate of mastery and nationalism in the nineteenth century.' Michael Vorenberg, Brown University

Mastering America recounts efforts of 'proslavery nationalists' to navigate the nineteenth-century geopolitics of imperialism, federalism, and nationalism and to articulate themes of American mission in overtly proslavery terms. At the heart of this study are spokesmen of the Southern 'Master Class' who crafted a vision of American destiny that put chattel slavery at its center. Looking beyond previous studies of the links between these 'proslavery nationalists' and secession, the book sheds new light on the relationship between the conservative Unionism of the 1850s and the key formulations of Confederate nationalism that arose during war in the 1860s. Bonner's innovative research charts the crucial role these men and women played in the development of American imperialism, constitutionalism, evangelicalism, and popular patriotism.

Part I. The Geopolitics of Mastery: 1. Slaveholders' stake in the American empire
2. The compound republic and the cause of the south
Part II. The Contours of Proslavery Americanism: 3. Republican masters and American mission
4. Reformed masters and the gospel of nationhood
5. Fragments of the past, histories for the future
6. Yankees as apostates and allies in the American 1850s
Part III. Confederate Nationhood and the Revolutions of War: 7. The anatomy of confederate nationhood
8. Reckoning with confederate purpose
9. Liberty, slavery, and the burdens of confederate nationhood.

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]