Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture

“…Anne Norton offers a provocative …reinterpretation of the character and development of American political culture….she identifies and examines radically different conceptions of American national identity that developed in the North, South , and West….She shows that slavery,tariffs, and other controversies are best understood not as the causes or as the occasion for war, but rather as issues around which the debate over meaning coalesced.”