Synopses & Reviews
During the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Aspects of this struggle--the underground railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions, and sectional politics--are well known as parts of other stories. Here, Stanley Harrold explores the border struggle itself, the dramatic incidents that it comprised, and its role in the complex dynamics leading to the Civil War.
Border War examines the previously neglected cross-border clash of attitudes and traditions dating many generations back. By the mid-nineteenth century, nowhere else were tensions greater between antislavery and proslavery interests. Nowhere else was there more direct conflict between the forces binding North and South together and those driving them apart. There were mass slave escapes, battles between antislavery and proslavery vigilantes, and fierce resistance in the Border North to the kidnapping of free African Americans. There were also fights throughout the borderlands between fugitive slaves and those attempting to apprehend them. Harrold argues that, during the 1850s, warfare on the Kansas-Missouri line and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were manifestations of a more pervasive border conflict that helped push the Lower South into secession and helped persuade most of the Border South to stand by the Union.
Review
"A sobering, meticulously researched and astutely presented historical analysis, highly recommended especially for college library collections."
-Midwest Book Review "A good addition to all Civil War collections."
-Library Journal "This book is important in understanding the intense feelings on both sides of the conflict that help lead to the start of our American Civil War. . . . Excellent."
-Lone Star Book Review "This work forces historians to reconsider the fault lines of the origins of the Civil War and promises new directions for research. Highly recommended."
-Choice "Writing with admirable clarity and passion, Harrold vividly recreates the violent and chaotic decade of the 1850s. Harrold's devastating portrait of a nation already at war along the contested border should appeal to all readers of history. His research, both archival and secondary, is exceptional."
-Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College
Review
"A sobering, meticulously researched and astutely presented historical analysis, highly recommended especially for college library collections."
-Midwest Book Review
Review
"A good addition to all Civil War collections."
-Library Journal
Review
"This book is important in understanding the intense feelings on both sides of the conflict that help lead to the start of our American Civil War. . . . Excellent."
-Lone Star Book Review
Review
"This work forces historians to reconsider the fault lines of the origins of the Civil War and promises new directions for research. Highly recommended."
-Choice
Review
"Writing with admirable clarity and passion, Harrold vividly recreates the violent and chaotic decade of the 1850s. Harrold's devastating portrait of a nation already at war along the contested border should appeal to all readers of history. His research, both archival and secondary, is exceptional."
-Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College
Review
"
Border War is a must-have for anyone seeking to understand the small-scale underlying fights that snowballed the Civil War....Textbooks and many leading historical works leave gaps by portraying the sweeping movements, but Harrold fills in the details without which a true and thorough understanding of the slavery issue and the Civil War is impossible."
-Virginia Libraries
Review
"Stanley Harrold has written an excellent book that is sure to prompt debate and additional research. It will be required reading for historians of the slavery controversy in the United States."
-Civil War Book Review
Review
"[
Border War] is a solid, detailed narrative of the violent conflict that developed along the border between the North and South in the decades before the Civil War."
- The Annals of Iowa
Review
"The impressive research in
Border War raises a theme that historians must confront."
-Journal of Illinois History
Review
"This is a unique book and one that is necessary to read if you want to understand politics prior to the war."
-TOCWOC: A Civil War Blog
Review
"Scholars of nineteenth-century America generally, and the Civil War era specifically, would benefit greatly from adding
Border War to their collections."
-Arkansas Historical Quarterly
Review
"Harrold makes impressive use of newspapers and manuscript sources. His engaging study should appeal to students of many historical subjects."
-The Journal of American History
Review
"[This book] can help those trying to develop a better understanding of the issues that led to secession. . . . Highly recommended."
-Blue and Gray Magazine
Review
"Harrold's book is not only informative but provocative."
-Indiana Magazine of History
Review
"[This book] should immediately be standard reading for all historians of antebellum America."
-Journal of Southern History
Review
"In
Border War, Stanley Harrold cements his reputation as one of the leading scholars of sectional tensions in the antebellum and Civil War eras.... A must read for historians of the middle nineteenth century."
-Tennessee Historical Quarterly
Review
"A welcome exploration of the volatile decades of sectional strife that preceded the Civil War."
-Canadian Journal of History
Synopsis
Noted historian Harrold examines the nation's fight over slavery that occurred before the Civil War.
About the Author
Stanley Harrold is professor of history at South Carolina State University.