Why was the United States the only nation in the world to fight a war to end slavery? Fleming looks at the reasons of why the Civil War was fought, and shows that the polarization that divided the North and South and led to the Civil War began decades earlier than most historians are willing to admit-- back almost to the founding of the nation itself.

"Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics challenges the way historians interpret the causes of the American Civil War. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly from evidence that slaveholders, with Douglas's assistance, planned to follow up successes in Kansas by bringing Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into...

In 1775, Thomas Jeremiah was one of fewer than five hundred "Free Negros" in South Carolina and, with an estimated worth of £1,000 (about $200,000 in today's dollars), possibly the richest person of African descent in British North America. A slaveowner himself, Jeremiah was falsely accused by whites--who resented his success as a Charleston harbor pilot--of sowing insurrection among slaves at the behest of the British. Though a free man, Jeremiah...