WEST OF SLAVERY: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire
By Kevin Waite
West of Slavery won the 2022 Wiley-Silver Prize from the Center for Civil War Research and was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize as well as the SHEAR Manuscript Prize. The author is an associate professor of history at Durham University (UK).
The author’s thesis is that after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), a pro-slavery environment was created stretching from the Territory of New Mexico to the Pacific by a political coalition emanating from the slave states. Slaveholders and their allies mobilized federal power to forge this coalition.
As evidence, Waite offers the following: (1) passage of slave codes in the Territories of New Mexico and Utah; (2) separatist movements in southern California and Arizona; (3) purchase of territory from Mexico; (4) construction of roads to facilitate the westward flow of southern migrants; (5) monopolization of patronage networks to empower proslavery allies; and (6) killing of anti-slavery rivals.
These efforts created something the author calls the “Continental South” because proslavery partisans transformed the Southwest into an appendage of the slave states. The author acknowledges that plantation slavery never took root in the region but states that other coercive labor regimes flourished including the trade in captive Native Americans and the institution of debt peonage.
The book develops each of these themes in detail and is prodigiously researched. As with any scholarly work of merit, it is fulsomely annotated—this reviewer advises any reader not to overlook the notes—and provides a robust bibliography and an excellent index. It also contains several photographs and helpful maps.
As to the book’s curious title, the author states: “The preposition in this book’s title is possessive. In other words, the Far Southwest was a land of slavery and slaveholding influence; it was not free from it.”
Waite’s book responds to the following: how was this transcontinental sphere of proslavery influence created; how was it destroyed at the end of the Civil War; how did it reemerge from the ashes of that War; when slaveholders looked west, what did they see; how did these slaveholders incorporate these visions into an increasingly aggressive political and diplomatic program; and how did that western program shape the causes, conduct and consequences of the Civil War?
In addition to an excellent introduction and epilogue, the book has three parts: Part I “From Memphis to Canton;” Part II “Making the South Continental;” and, Part III “War and Reunion.” Part I is subdivided into three chapters—One “The Southern Dream of a Pacific Empire;” Two “The Great Slavery Road;” Three “The Lesser Slavery Road.” Part II is also subdivided into three chapters—Four “The Southernization of Antebellum California;” Five “Slavery in the Desert South;” Six “The Continental crisis of the Union;” Part III is subdivided into two chapters—Seven “West of the Confederacy;” Eight “Reconstruction and the Afterlife of the Continental South.”
The author provides a “Conclusion” to each chapter, which provides the reader an excellent summary of the information contained in the chapter--a feature of the book this reviewer found very helpful.
Part I explores how the South envisioned the western part of the continent and how it used a series of transportation projects to bring the West into the South’s sphere of influence. Part II explains how residents in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah adopted much of the proslavery agenda, playing a part in triggering the Civil War. Part III examines how westward expansion shaped Confederate strategy during the War and sowed the seeds of slavery’s destruction. Despite the end of slavery, elements of this proslavery network remained and fueled a national, rather than merely sectional, revolt against Reconstruction.
West of Slavery reframes the conventional narrative of the Civil War era and offers a different view of the South’s Planter Class, their goals and aspirations. Southern Planters were convinced that Asia was a vast new market for cotton commerce and crafted a group of initiatives to make the Pacific trade their own. To achieve this, they fought a campaign to construct a transcontinental railroad through the Deep South and into California to funnel their plantation goods across the continent and into the sea lanes to Asia.
Northern lawmakers countered with a plan to build a transcontinental railroad across the free states, which sparked a fifteen-year conflict over transcontinental infrastructure and trade with Asia. While no railroad was built prior to the War, the planters had a great win by fixing the overland road for mail (“The Butterfield Overland Mail Road”) along a very southern route. This road facilitated white Southerners ability to migrate West. Many became part of the political and judicial machinery of the Southwest.
California, a free state, figures prominently in the book as, oddly, it became the linchpin of the Continental South. There, during the period beginning in 1850 and ending with the Civil War, Southerners (despite being a minority) dominated the patronage networks, legislature and judiciary.
In New Mexico and what would become Arizona, white Southerners who had migrated West, legalized black-chattel slavery and defended the trade in Native American captives and debt peonage.
The South and West came together by means of a far-flung network of agents, who many times acted together, to achieve the same goal--extending the power and influence of the South across the Southwest. Thus, the author posits, proslavery sentiments of the West must be understood in the context of a national, rather than regional, framework.
During the period beginning in 1853 and ending with the War, proslavery Democrats were in the White House. Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were born in free states but, in a gesture to the Southerners who voted for them, appointed members of the Southern Planter Class to cabinet positions. Using the resources of the War Department and Post Office, slave-owning secretaries directed major projects in the West to achieve goals of the Planter Class. The Planter Class manipulated federal authority at what was then the edges of the country to shape the direction of the United States.
Jefferson Davis is featured throughout the book but as Buchanan’s Secretary of War as opposed to President of the Confederacy. Davis was extremely active during the antebellum period advancing the South’s interests by, for example, authorizing studies for a transcontinental railroad through the Country’s southern states and promoting the Gadsden Purchase for the same purpose. He was also instrumental in paving the way for the Butterfield Overland Mail Road.
West of Slavery claims to destabilize conventional understandings of slavery because American slavery was not the “peculiar institution” of the South alone, it was a transcontinental regime as evidenced by the slavery of Native Americans and debt peonage in the West. Southerners recognized the interdependence of these various forms of bondage and supported laws validating their existence.
The author believes that the Civil War in the far West was the military continuation of a southern campaign to control the far end of the continent that dated to the late 1840’s. From this perspective, the author contends, the Confederate invasions of Arizona and New Mexico cannot be dismissed as a fool’s errand; rather, he says they were the end of Southerners’ tenacious dream.
Despite the end of slavery, California was a safe haven for southerners in the Democratic Party. Western Democrats were reborn by exploiting white voters anxieties over African American and Chinese immigrants. California was the only free state that refused to ratify the 14th and 15th Amendments during Reconstruction. In New Mexico, despite the 13th Amendment, landholders retained control over many of their debt peons for decades. Therefore, the author contends that the backlash to Reconstruction was not limited to the South but, rather, stretched across the country.
West of Slavery challenges the conventional geographic wisdom that the Old South is comprised exclusively of the fifteen slave states. The book finds the Old South in unexpected places like New Mexico, what would become Arizona, Utah and, most prominently, in California. The author believes that it is an error to place the source of the nation’s racial troubles solely in the Country’s southeast. As the author states: “To appreciate the full scope of slavery and slaveholding power in nineteenth-century America requires histories that transcend regions, as did slaveholders themselves. How the South shaped the West and how the West empowered the South—this interplay was central to the making, unmaking , and remaking of the United States and its racial politics.”
While the focus of the book is the expansive nature of slavery, it does not neglect the North’s struggle to contain the South’s efforts to protect slavery in the Southwest and West. The author notes the efforts of antislavery leaders to overturn territorial slave codes, build a transcontinental railroad across free soil states and break the hold proslavery politicians had along the Country’s southern corridor.
The book has a unique point of view and focus that coalesces a great deal of history about a part of the Country that is generally not associated with the Civil War or the history of slavery. Students of the Civil War can benefit greatly by the expansion of their vision of the War that this book provides. Students of both the antebellum and War years of the Southwest will undoubtedly learn something about the South’s keen interest in this part of the Country.
There is much to unpack in this book. I found it robust in historical detail and learned a lot about an area of the Country I thought I knew well. Take your time with it and absorb and enjoy the rich history it unveils.
https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663197/west-of-slavery/
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Henry M. Rivera is a long-time student of the Civil War and member of the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia
