Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860

For content, this book deserves 5 stars, but I gave it 4 simply because it is by no means a page-turner. That being said, if you are interested in the antebellum South or political history, this is probably required reading. Cooper, who also wrote an excellent bio of Jefferson Davis, posits a very clear thesis: liberty and slavery in Southern politics were always intertwined. Southerners were staunch believers in liberty and a major part of that liberty was the ability to keep slaves. Cooper uses this as his thesis and spends 285 pages proving it. To my mind, he proves his point. And while this may seem like it would make the book redundant, that does not happen, but what we do find is that the Southern ideas of liberty (and their support of slavery) is the guiding light Southern politicians follow.