Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840

Tise here studies the ""proslavery ideology,'' ``a mode of thinking . . . and a system of symbols that expressed the social, cultural and moral values of a large portion of the American population'' in the first half of the 19th century. In a sweeping examination of the point at which America's ``Revolutionary ideology'' was finally supplanted by an ascendant counterrevolutionary response to a rising tide of abolitionism, he documents his conviction that the defense of slaveryespecially after the so-called Missouri compromise and the public arguments against slavery by such voices as that of William Lloyd Garrison in Liberatorwas neither a sectional, nor a Southern, but a national phenomenon. Tise chronicles a constant stream of books, articles, pamphlets and sermonshis chapter on the growth of proslavery arguments by clergy, usually derived from narrow interpretations of Scripture, is illuminatingand builds to a remarkable and probably controversial exploration of the ``proslavery Republicanism,'' which he sees as the full flowering of the conservative Federalist viewpoint that had only temporarily been defeated by America's founding fathers when they framed our Constitution. Tise is director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Illustrations. (January)