A new portrait of the southern slaveholders who occupied the commanding heights of antebellum politics, this book explores the intimate relationship between American slavery and American power. From John C. Calhoun to Jefferson Davis, the South's leading statesmen understood the United States as the chief defender of bound labor in an Atlantic World still teetering between slavery and abolition. Overcoming traditional southern scruples about dangers...

"John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (and it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results, and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. John and...

"The culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, Seven Virginians is a narrative history and synthesis of the major scholarship on the period between 1750 and 1830 that examines the place of seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall. With refreshing candor regarding the...