Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume 1, Commerce and Compromise, 1820–1850

This is the first of a two-volume treatment of slavery, capitalism and politics in the forty years before the Civil War. It is also a Marxist interpretation of the origins of the Civil War.

John Ashworth (Author)

9780521479943, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 January 1996

536 pages, 4 tables
22.8 x 15.1 x 3.5 cm, 0.835 kg

' … a significant contribution to our critical understanding of the structure of the ante-bellum Southern USA … well written and researched an would be of general interest to anyone wishing to become acquainted with issues of the Ante-bellum South'. Capital & Class

The Civil War should be seen as America's 'bourgeois revolution'. So argues Dr John Ashworth in this novel reinterpretation, from a Marxist perspective, of American political and economic development in the forty years before the Civil War. This book, the first of a two-volume treatment of slavery, capitalism and politics, locates the political struggles of the antebellum period in the international context of the dismantling of unfree labor systems. With its sequel, the volume will demonstrate that the conflict resulted from differences between capitalist and slave modes of production. With a careful synthesis of existing scholarship on the economics of slavery, the origins of abolitionism, the proslavery argument and the second party system, Ashworth maintains that the origins of the American Civil War are best understood in terms derived from Marxism.

Context
1. Slavery, Sectionalism and the Jeffersonian Tradition
2. Free Labor, Slave Labor, Wage Labor
Part I. Slavery Versus Capitalism: 3. Abolitionism
4. The Proslavery Argument: Dilemmas of the Master Class
Part II. the Second Party System: 5. Whigs and Democrats
6. Slavery, Economics and Party Politics, 1836–1850
Conclusion: Part III. Economic Development, Class Conflict and american Politics, 1820–1850.

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