Why read Ballots for Freedom?

Book cover of Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860

Book description

At first a voice in the wilderness, then the rallying cry of a new morality, abolitionism became the springboard to power of a major national party. Ballots for Freedom recapitulates the political war against slavery, from the first debates over the creation of an abolitionist third party to the election…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ballots for Freedom as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Randy E. Barnett

Author

Sewell’s book is the key to understanding how the ideas discussed in Wilentz’s and Wiecek’s books got translated into political action. In particular, he describes the establishment of the antislavery Liberty Party, which begat the less extreme Free Soil party that opposed any expansion of slavery into the territories from which new states would be formed, culminating in the antislavery Republican Party.

It was the 1860 political platform of the Republican party that led Southern states to secede from the Union even before its candidate Abraham Lincoln and its majorities in Congress could take office and enact its antislavery programs…

From Randy's list on slavery and the constitution.