Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom

Peck, a professor of history at Saint Xavier University, takes up the antislavery movement’s unprecedented ascent in this intricate history of the antebellum politics of freedom. Focusing on Illinois, which he treats as a case study for national debates concerning slavery, Peck highlights the previously underexplored effects of Northern centrism and 18th-century slavery politics on 19th-century abolitionist sentiment, revealing that Lincoln’s eventual rise was far from assured. Antebellum Illinois, Peck argues, brought U.S. conflicts over slavery to a head: the state’s aggressive westward expansion forced American politicians to decide whether freedom turned on the equal opportunity to work land or the power to ensure white wealth and status by enslaving black people. Settled by communities from both the North and South, Illinois became ground zero in the fight for slavery’s demise. Peck draws on an array of archival sources to reevaluate key political decisions, including the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, later shifting his attention to consider how Stephen A. Douglas’s failed attempts to pacify rival camps paved the way for Lincoln’s antislavery nationalism. Dense with detail, Peck’s overarching claims can at times seem elusive, but his book is sure to interest anyone looking for a fine-grained account of pre–Civil War politics. (Oct.)