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Informationen zum Autor Robert E. May is a Professor of History at Purdue University. He is the author of Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (2002); John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1985), winner of the Mississippi Historical Society's book prize; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire (1973). He is editor of The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim (1995). Klappentext Robert E. May internationalizes the American Civil War and reinterprets the 1860 presidential campaign, shedding new light on the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry. Advance praise: 'It is a truism that the issue of slavery's expansion triggered secession and the Civil War. But as Robert May shows in this important study, it was the possible expansion of slavery southward more than the prospect of slavery in Kansas or other Western territories that provoked passionate controversy. This welcome book gives due weight to pro-Cuban annexationists and Central-American filibusters in the coming of war.' James M. McPherson, Princeton University Advance praise: 'As viewed by most nineteenth-century Americans, slavery was a Southern 'problem'; to Abraham Lincoln, it was an American problem. Now Robert May has broken past traditional interpretations and literally expanded the borders of the slavery issue to reimagine it as hemispheric - much the way the proponents of slavery hoped, and its enemies feared. This is a strong, astute, and original study - one everyone interested in the great debate of the Civil War era should read.' Harold Holzer, Chairman, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation Advance praise: 'A thoroughly researched and wonderfully fresh account of the politics of slavery expansion that carries the issue beyond the usual territorial disputes to the entire western hemisphere. May enlarges the stage on which the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates were conducted and indeed points a wide-angle lens at the entire sectional crisis and Civil War. Focusing on Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, [he] demonstrates how discussion of slavery's future in the Americas and various colonization schemes were deeply interwoven in their political careers. A most valuable and original piece of work.' George C. Rable, University of Alabama Advance praise: 'In this engrossing book, Robert May offers a new perspective on the Lincoln-Douglas story. Underscoring their sharply different approaches to American expansion toward Latin America and the Caribbean, May makes a distinctive contribution to antebellum political history by adding a southern dimension to the territorial issue. He argues compellingly that divergent views about Latin America and the Caribbean were critical in the secession crisis. [He] also illuminates the intimate connection between Lincoln's wartime policy toward the region and his views on race. No-one interested in the break-up of the Union and the resulting war can afford to miss this book.' William Cooper, Louisiana State University Zusammenfassung This book reinterprets 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 because of evidence that slaveholders planned to make Cuba! Mexico! and Central America into new slave states. Inhaltsverzeichnis 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....
