Tabla de Contenidos:
  • Prelude: an inheritance of slavery
  • The nation's conflict over slavery in miniature: Illinois, 1818-1824
  • Democrats, Whigs, and party conflict, 1825-1842
  • Manifest Destiny, slavery, and the rupture of the Democratic Party, 1843-1847
  • Advocates for an antislavery nation, 1837-1848
  • Stephen A. Douglas and the northern democratic origins of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1849-1854
  • The collapse of the Douglas democracy, 1854-1860
  • Abraham Lincoln and the triumph of an antislavery nationalism, 1854-1860
  • Conclusion: the northern Democrats' dilemma over slavery.