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 success than when they tried to extend slavery westward. As one after another of their plots failed, southern imperialists lost hope that their labor system might survive in the Union. Blaming northern Democrats and antislavery Republicans alike for their disappointed dreams, alienated southerners embraced secession as an alternative means to achieving a tropical slave empire. Had war not erupted at Fort Sumter, Confederates might have attempted to conquer the Caribbean basin. May's book serves as an important reminder that foreign policy cannot be divorced from the writing of American history, even in regard to seemingly domestic matters like the causes of the Civil War. Contending that America's Manifest Destiny became ""sectionalized"" in the 1850s, he explains why southerners considered Caribbean expansion so important and shows how southerners used their clout in Washington to initiate diplomatic schemes like the notorious Ostend Manifesto and presidential attempts to buy the slaveholding island of Cuba from Spain. He also relates how Caribbean plots affected American public opinion and ignited sectional friction in congressional debates. May argues that President-elect Abraham Lincoln might have saved the Union in the winter of 1860-61, had he agreed to last minute concessions facilitating slavery's future expansion towards the tropics.

About the Author
Robert E. May is professor of history at Purdue University. He is the author of John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader (1985) and editor of The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim (1995).

Reviews
The great value of the book lies in the manner in which May relates the expansionist urge to the symbolic"" differences emerging between the North and the South.... The result is a balanced account that contributes to the efforts of historians to understand the causes of the Civil War."" - Journal of American History ""The most ambitious effort yet to relate the Caribbean question to the larger picture of southern economic and political anxieties, and to secession.... The core of this superbly documented book is a detailed description of expansionist ideology and activities during the 1850s."" - Civil War History



Book Information
ISBN 9780813025124
Author Robert E. May
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint University Press of Florida
Publisher University Press of Florida
Weight(grams) 416g