Why read The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire?

Book cover of The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire

Book description

A path-breaking work when first published in 1973, The Southern Dream remains the standard work on attempts by the South to spread American slavery into the tropics - Cuba, Mexico, and Central America in particular - before the Civil War. Robert May shows that the South's expansionists had no more…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Adrian Brettle

Author

I love this book because it conjures up the restless spirit of the U.S. South in the 1850s on the eve of war. Forget the Gone with the Wind image of a refined southern aristocracy. Instead, conscious of slavery’s need to expand in order to survive, slaveholders were mobile hustlers determined to expand southwards into the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America.

The South needed more states and senators to compete with the North. With southern expansionist plans to acquire Cuba blocked by the northern majority, May brilliantly captures the desperation of what amounted to little more than raids…

From Adrian's list on slavery ambition and the Civil War.