This anthology brings together under one cover the most important
abolitionist and--unique to this volume--proslavery documents written in
the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It
makes accessible to students, scholars, and general readers the breadth
of the slavery debate. Including many previously inaccessible documents,
A House Divided is a critical and welcome contribution to a literature
that includes only a few volumes of antislavery writings and no volumes
of proslavery documents in print.
Mason Lowance's introduction is an excellent overview of the antebellum
slavery debate and its key issues and participants. Lowance also
introduces each selection, locating it historically, culturally, and
thematically as well as linking it to other writings. The documents
represent the full scope of the varied debates over slavery. They
include examples of race theory, Bible-based arguments for and against
slavery, constitutional analyses, writings by former slaves and women's
rights activists, economic defenses and critiques of slavery, and
writings on slavery by such major writers as William Lloyd Garrison,
John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Together they give readers a real sense of the complexity
and heat of the vexed conversation that increasingly dominated American
discourse as the country moved from early nationhood into its greatest
trial.
