Prologue: Confederate common sense -- Slaveholders' stake in the American empire -- The compound republic and the cause of the South -- Republican masters and American mission -- Reformed slaveholders and the gospel of nationhood -- Fragments from the past, histories for the future -- Yankee apostates and allies in the American 1850s -- The anatomy of Confederate nationhood -- Reckoning with Confederate purpose -- Liberty, slavery, and the burdens of Confederation nationhood -- Epilogue: "A people brought to the end of a given cycle".
Summary
Mastering America recounts efforts of "proslavery nationalists" to navigate the nineteenth-century geopolitics of imperialism, federalism, and nationalism and to articulate themes of American mission in overtly proslavery terms. At the heart of this study are spokesmen of the Southern "Master Class" who crafted a vision of American destiny that put chattel slavery at its center. --from publisher description
