Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery

Masters and Statesmen delineates a provocative set of parallels between the proslavery argument, concepts of political representation, dueling, the theory and practice of political parties, and secession in the American South. Slavery in the antebellum South, Kenneth Greenberg writes, was intimately connected to a distinct set of political values and practices. Ultimately these. . .helped shape the form and content of conflict with the North. To assert their honor and their power, Southerners rose up against the Union; secession came to be seen, paradoxically, as the only way for the South to free itself from slavery.