Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics
Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America

Robert E. May internationalizes the American Civil War and reinterprets the 1860 presidential campaign, shedding new light on the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry.

Robert E. May (Author)

9780521132527, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 7 October 2013

310 pages, 11 b/w illus. 4 maps
22.6 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.43 kg

'… May has assiduously researched an excellent work, which is a must-read for all who want to better understand the causes of the Civil War.' StrategyPage (www.strategypage.com)

Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics challenges the way historians interpret the causes of the American Civil War. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly from evidence that slaveholders, with Douglas's assistance, planned to follow up successes in Kansas by bringing Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into the Union as slave states. A skeptic about 'Manifest Destiny', Lincoln opposed the war with Mexico, condemned Americans invading Latin America, and warned that Douglas's 'popular sovereignty' doctrine would unleash US slaveholders throughout Latin America. This book internationalizes America's showdown over slavery, shedding new light on the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry and Lincoln's Civil War scheme to resettle freed slaves in the tropics.

1. A spot for manifest destiny
2. Antilles to Isthmus
3. Beyond Kansas
4. Caribbeanizing the house divided
5. A matter of inches
6. Freedom in the tropics.

Subject Areas: American Civil War [HBWJ], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], History of the Americas [HBJK]