The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy - Softcover

ADVANCE PRAISE "This is one of those books which reminds us with force and evidence that there is a considerable difference between myth and fact." -- Philip Durham, Western American Literature "State by state, citing editorials, speeches, private letters, statutes, and constitutions, Berwanger reveals that the whites of the West deemed the Negro to be an inherently inferior being, totally unfit for freedom." -- Albert Castel, Civil War Times "Contributes much to a fuller understanding of racial attitudes and of the antislavery movement... [It] demonstrates why the Republican party in the West dedicated itself to blocking the expansion of slavery and shrank from advocating abolition." -- V. Jacque Voegeli, Journal of American History

Eugene H. Berwanger's study of anti-slavery sentiment in the antebellum West is as resoundingly important now, in a new paperback edition, as when first published in 1967. In The Frontier against Slavery, Berwanger attributes the social and political climates of the states and territories Ohio River Valley pioneers settled before 1860 to racial prejudice. Drawing from newspaper accounts, political speeches, correspondence, and legal documents, Berwanger reveals that the whites-only sentiments of the pioneers, rather than humanitarian concern for African Americans, limited the expansion of slavery. This whites-only prejudice shaped laws in the majority of western states and territories that excluded all African Americans, enslaved or free, from citizenship, evidencing the deep-rooted discrimination of political leaders and pioneers.