1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910796321803321

Autore

Maizlish Stephen E. <1945->

Titolo

A strife of tongues : the Compromise of 1850 and the ideological foundations of the American Civil War / / Stephen E. Maizlish

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Charlottesville ; ; London : , : University of Virginia Press, , [2018]

©2018

ISBN

0-8139-4120-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (332 pages)

Collana

A nation divided: studies in the Civil War era

Disciplina

973.6/4

Soggetti

Compromise of 1850

United States Politics and government 1849-1853

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Causes

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The slavery expansion issue: denied and affirmed -- Consensus and conflict: sectional unity, national division -- State equality, the transactional Union, and the Constitution -- State equality, the perpetual Union, and the people -- Conflicted commitments: slavery and race -- Images in conflict: society, economy, and gender -- The language of conflict and the battlefield of memory.

Sommario/riassunto

"A Strife of Tongues analyzes the debates over the Compromise of 1850 to reveal the underlying assumptions and values of the North and the South a decade before the outbreak of the Civil War. Rather than examining voting patterns, factional alignments, legislative maneuvering, and specific measures of the Compromise, this account looks at the language of the debate, the words of the senators and representatives, to discover the concepts and beliefs that defined the North and the South as the sectional confrontation approached. To a large extent, these opposing ideologies had common roots and were based on shared assumptions. Northerners and southerners had similar views of gender and masculinity, pursued the common goal of capital accumulation, and were in fundamental agreement over the superiority of the white race. But conflicting views of slavery, and especially slavery expansion, led to the development of highly divergent systems of belief



about politics, economics, and society that would sustain the deepening sectional division and eventually support separation. This examination of the language of the debate yields a novel account of the dynamic driving the crisis of 1850 and sectional conflict generally. The ideological formulations of the Compromise debates of 1850 laid the foundations of the American Civil War"--