The politics of slavery consumed the political world of the antebellum South. Although local economic, ethnic, and religious issues tended to dominate northern antebellum politics, The South and the Politics of Slavery convincingly argues that national and slavery-related issues were the overriding concerns of southern politics during these years. Accordingly, southern voters saw their parties, both Democratic and Whig, as the advocates and guardians of southern rights in the nation.

William Cooper traces and analyzes the history of southern politics from the formation of the Democratic...

Edwin Forbes's Thirty Years After is surely one of the most remarkable firsthand accounts of the Civil War ever published. Originally issued in 1890--thus the title--the lavish, oversized book is both a pictorial and a written record of the daily experience of war. It contains almost two hundred etchings of Civil War scenes along with twenty equestrian portraits of Union generals such as Grant, Sherman, McClellan, and Custer, reproduced from oil paintings. The present edition is a facsimile of the original, with the addition of an Introduction by William J. Cooper, Jr, who discusses the...