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This Vast Southern Empire

Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy

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This Vast Southern Empire

Written by: Matthew Karp
Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
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About this listen

For proslavery leaders like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, the 19th-century world was torn between two hostile forces: a rising movement against bondage and an Atlantic plantation system that was larger and more productive than ever before. In this great struggle, Southern statesmen saw the United States as slavery's most powerful champion. Overcoming traditional qualms about a strong central government, slaveholding leaders harnessed the power of the state to defend slavery abroad. During the antebellum years, they worked energetically to modernize the US military while steering American diplomacy to protect slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the Republic of Texas. As Matthew Karp demonstrates, these leaders were nationalists, not separatists. Their "vast Southern empire" was not an independent South but the entire United States, and only the election of Abraham Lincoln broke their grip on national power. Fortified by years at the helm of US foreign affairs, slave-holding elites formed their own Confederacy - not only as a desperate effort to preserve their property but as a confident bid to shape the future of the Atlantic world.

©2016 Matthew Karp (P)2017 Tantor Americas International Relations Political Science Politics & Government United States Latin America Capitalism Socialism Imperialism War of 1812 Africa Abraham Lincoln Self-Determination American History Colonial Period War Social justice American Foreign Policy

What the critics say

"Karp's thorough and polished study will be eagerly welcomed by scholars, if not a wider public." ( Publishers Weekly)
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