By Stephen G. Hyslop
By the time Abraham Lincoln asserted in 1858 that the nation
could not “endure permanently half slave and half free,” the rift that would
split the country in civil war was well defined. The origins and evolution of
the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the
early years of the American Republic, as Stephen G. Hyslop demonstrates in
Building a House Divided, an exploration of how the incipient fissure between
the Union’s initial slave states and free states—or those where slaves were
gradually being emancipated—lengthened and deepened as the nation advanced
westward.
Hyslop focuses on four prominent slaveholding expansionists
who were intent on preserving the Union but nonetheless helped build what
Lincoln called a house divided: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson,
and James K. Polk and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who managed a
plantation in Mississippi bequeathed by his father-in-law. Hyslop examines what
these men did, collectively and individually, to further what Jefferson called
an “empire of liberty,” though it kept millions of Black people in bondage.
Along with these major figures, in all their conflicts and contradictions, he
considers other American expansionists who engaged in and helped extend
slavery—among them William Clark, Stephen Austin, and President John Tyler—as
well as examples of principled opposition to the extension of slavery by
northerners such as John Quincy Adams and southerners like Henry Clay and
Thomas Hart Benton, who held slaves but placed preserving the Union above
extending slavery across the continent.
The long view of the path to the Civil War, as charted through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras in this book, reveals the critical fault in the nation’s foundation, exacerbated by slaveholding expansionists like Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Douglas, until the house they built upon it could no longer stand for two opposite ideas at once.
About The Author
Stephen G. Hyslop writes about American history, the American West, and American and international conflicts, including the Mexican War, the Civil War, and World War II. His books are vivid documentary narratives, drawing on numerous accounts from those who made history and witnessed it to portray events as they unfolded. Formerly a staff writer and text editor at Time-Life Books, he has collaborated as author with picture editors and designers to produce several illustrated books, including eyewitness histories and historical atlases published by National Geographic. His special interest in the trails that traders, settlers, and soldiers followed to the Southwest inspired two books on New Mexico and California up through the Mexican War, including Bound for Santa Fe (University of Oklahoma Press), a finalist in 2003 for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, Best Western Nonfiction. His articles have appeared in American History, Kansas History, California History, World War II, and the History Channel Magazine.
ISBN 978-0806192734, University of Oklahoma Press, © 2023, Hardcover, 328 Pages, Photographs, Illustrations, Maps, End Notes, Bibliography & Index. $32.95. To Purchase the book click HERE.
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