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Civil War America
Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War
During the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Aspects of this struggle--the underground railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions, and sectional politics--are well known as parts of other stories. Here, Stanley Harrold explores the border struggle itself, the dramatic incidents that it comprised, and its role in the complex dynamics leading to the Civil War.
"Border War" examines the previously neglected cross-border clash of attitudes and traditions dating many generations back. By the mid-nineteenth century, nowhere else were tensions greater between antislavery and proslavery interests. Nowhere else was there more direct conflict between the forces binding North and South together and those driving them apart. There were mass slave escapes, battles between antislavery and proslavery vigilantes, and fierce resistance in the Border North to the kidnapping of free African Americans. There were also fights throughout the borderlands between fugitive slaves and those attempting to apprehend them. Harrold argues that, during the 1850s, warfare on the Kansas-Missouri line and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were manifestations of a more pervasive border conflict that helped push the Lower South into secession and helped persuade most of the Border South to stand by the Union.
"Border War" examines the previously neglected cross-border clash of attitudes and traditions dating many generations back. By the mid-nineteenth century, nowhere else were tensions greater between antislavery and proslavery interests. Nowhere else was there more direct conflict between the forces binding North and South together and those driving them apart. There were mass slave escapes, battles between antislavery and proslavery vigilantes, and fierce resistance in the Border North to the kidnapping of free African Americans. There were also fights throughout the borderlands between fugitive slaves and those attempting to apprehend them. Harrold argues that, during the 1850s, warfare on the Kansas-Missouri line and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, were manifestations of a more pervasive border conflict that helped push the Lower South into secession and helped persuade most of the Border South to stand by the Union.
310 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 8, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 27, 2020
This is a typical book written by a historian. Some people might find it dry, if they're expecting writing in the style of a best-selling thriller. I loved it. I found it fascinating to immerse myself in the world of the U.S. before the Civil War.
August 18, 2015
Border War demonstrates slavery was the ultimate cause of the American Civil War, argues state’s rights were an issue for both northern and southern states, and illustrates that the conditions for violence between the north and south had been festering for decades prior to the shots fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. By looking at violent and non-violent confrontations in the border region (Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) Harrold traces a simmering conflict that goes all the way back to the 1790s. These clashes were over escaped slaves, incursions by slave holders into northern states, raids by abolitionists into southern states, and between other people protecting their homes and families, but not necessarily on either side of the slave debate. Interestingly, even though the border region is where most of the violence between northerners and southerners took place before 1861, many of the border states did not secede from the Union. They viewed the federal government as the best means for the preservation of state’s rights. This book causes readers to see the battle over slavery, the coming of the Civil War, and emancipation as a longue dureé rather than just a single, monumental event that occurred between 1861 and 1865.
July 23, 2020
Professor Harrold amply justifies my long-held view that the American civil war did not start at Fort Sumter in 1861. The secessionist movement had a prolonged gestation from the founding of the Republic in the passions and politics leading to the formal military clashes between "the Blue and the Gray." This social/political context is so often ignored because its unsoothing controversy still rings close to home today (as witness the deconstruction of remaining Confederate memorabilia, especially in the Border South.) It was always much more comfortable to study biographies of Southern generals, or dwell on "the greatness of Lincoln," or re-enact famous battles giving detail to uniform and arms authenticity, or speculate on how Gettysburg might have gone differently if Lee hadn't delayed here or made that decision then: anything but deal with the hard road that brought the country into disunion and armed conflict.
While the long-simmering feud between the "Lower North" and the Border South led to disunion, it was ironically the battleground, "frontline" Border States below the Ohio and Mason-Dixon line that backed away from secession, hoping for continuing Federal protection. The Gulf and South Atlantic states could not "trust" the Upper South as a tottering line of dominos, who would bring abolition and race war to their cottonfields. As Lincoln needed Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland as buffer states he was willing to concede to Unionist slaveowners' interests - at least temporarily - rather than assuage the Brownites of his own party.
When the border conflict reached Kansas, though, the old struggle changed qualitatively. This was more than just a westward projection of Ohio River feuding, as Harrold seems to suggest. Frontier violence guaranteed a small-scale civil war on the Missouri border; and though Missourians were up in arms to protect their own slave property, "invading" northerners saw the free soil struggle in national, not local, terms. If "Bleeding Kansas" was a westward roll of border state sniping, its eastward backwash guaranteed full scale national civil war.
Professor Harrold brusquely concludes that it was northern superiority in resources - men and materiel - that in time overwhelmed the Confederacy. But as David Williams showed in his "Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War", the Confederacy was "underwhelmed" from within by Unionist/anti-Confederate sentiment deriving from sub-regional politics penetrating the Deep South along the Appalachian spine, as well as the "threat" of escaping slaves into "free white territory." The "free soilers" of lower Illinois and the Unionist slave owners of Kentucky found their counterparts in the anti-Confederates of north Alabama and south Louisiana, contributing to Southern defeat of the "Solid South" in the "Heart of Dixie."
A salient question might be, could it happen again, with all the current divisions and violent hostility over monuments and heritage and the "mattering" of lives?" Of course not. Civil wars are overwhelmingly products of low-capitalized, agrarian regions and states with relatively less to lose. The battles of the American civil war were confined to the South for that reason: Lee's major flop at Gettysburg was the exception that amply underscored the rule. Societies (and individuals) with heavy capital investment in material infrastructure do not allow violence to destroy their property. Hence the Cuban and Chinese revolutions' origins in marginal zones, and the confining of Yugoslavia's civil war to its Bosnian and Kosovo backlands. The threat of a modern repeat in America is thus hollow rhetoric, despite occasional flareups. But it remains informative to see how passion and division once led to mass violence and military conflict in America.
While the long-simmering feud between the "Lower North" and the Border South led to disunion, it was ironically the battleground, "frontline" Border States below the Ohio and Mason-Dixon line that backed away from secession, hoping for continuing Federal protection. The Gulf and South Atlantic states could not "trust" the Upper South as a tottering line of dominos, who would bring abolition and race war to their cottonfields. As Lincoln needed Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland as buffer states he was willing to concede to Unionist slaveowners' interests - at least temporarily - rather than assuage the Brownites of his own party.
When the border conflict reached Kansas, though, the old struggle changed qualitatively. This was more than just a westward projection of Ohio River feuding, as Harrold seems to suggest. Frontier violence guaranteed a small-scale civil war on the Missouri border; and though Missourians were up in arms to protect their own slave property, "invading" northerners saw the free soil struggle in national, not local, terms. If "Bleeding Kansas" was a westward roll of border state sniping, its eastward backwash guaranteed full scale national civil war.
Professor Harrold brusquely concludes that it was northern superiority in resources - men and materiel - that in time overwhelmed the Confederacy. But as David Williams showed in his "Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War", the Confederacy was "underwhelmed" from within by Unionist/anti-Confederate sentiment deriving from sub-regional politics penetrating the Deep South along the Appalachian spine, as well as the "threat" of escaping slaves into "free white territory." The "free soilers" of lower Illinois and the Unionist slave owners of Kentucky found their counterparts in the anti-Confederates of north Alabama and south Louisiana, contributing to Southern defeat of the "Solid South" in the "Heart of Dixie."
A salient question might be, could it happen again, with all the current divisions and violent hostility over monuments and heritage and the "mattering" of lives?" Of course not. Civil wars are overwhelmingly products of low-capitalized, agrarian regions and states with relatively less to lose. The battles of the American civil war were confined to the South for that reason: Lee's major flop at Gettysburg was the exception that amply underscored the rule. Societies (and individuals) with heavy capital investment in material infrastructure do not allow violence to destroy their property. Hence the Cuban and Chinese revolutions' origins in marginal zones, and the confining of Yugoslavia's civil war to its Bosnian and Kosovo backlands. The threat of a modern repeat in America is thus hollow rhetoric, despite occasional flareups. But it remains informative to see how passion and division once led to mass violence and military conflict in America.
September 1, 2019
Hot mess of examples.. could have used an edit but the idea that the Border War(s) ..violence and kidnapping that went on sporadically throughout the border states actually led up to the Civil War is notable. I wish they had more sub-headings and organized the chapters a bit more.
November 19, 2018
Harold provides great insight into the bloody politics of the slavery and anti slavery movements in the border states in the decades leading up to the secession of the Southern states.
January 17, 2024
Very authoritative book. I like how it covers ALL the border states.
August 9, 2013
Stanley Harrold's "Border War" surveys the violent and near violent conflict between the border south and the border north prior to the Civil War. Although the entire border is covered, most of the book concentrates on the conflict between slave-state Kentucky and free-state Ohio. Harrold discusses how the conflict was handled by the local populations as well as state and federal authorities. He also discusses how the conflict played into the Civil War and whether the state stayed in the Union or seceeded.
He covers several themes.
First is the issue of escaped slaves and the evolving response by interest groups on both sides of the of the border region. From uncertain northern assistance to slave catchers; To more and more organized resistance by the northern populations; To the intervention by Federal authorities (At one point it took an entire company of US Marines to catch a slave); To Federal-State armed standoffs and Northern nullification efforts; And finally to the Civil War. (During Lee's 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania, his army kidnapped hundreds if not thousands of African-American civilians and sent them south. One mob in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, was so outraged that they attacked and disarmed a Confederate detachment and freed the captured African-Americans.)
Second, to a lesser degree, the conflict between Free-Soil and Pro-Slavery proponents. Interestingly, Harrold notes numerous cases in the late 1850's where, as the anti-slavery northerners contained Southern efforts in Free States, they began to enter the Slave States, setting up Free Soil villages.
Third, how the conflict shaped whether the state remained in the Union of seceeded. I regret that Harrold did not discuss this in greater depth.
I found "Border War" a worthwhile overview of the sometimes violent conflict that immediately preceeded and is now overshadowed by the Civil War. Harrold's writing is expansive in scope, covering the entire border over decades of turmoil. The reader gets an overview of the entire issue. Unfortunately, such an overview is, by neccessity, not very deep. And such a wide overview requires a tremendous amount of jumping across time and space. This jumping around can be very disruptive for the reader.
I would recommend this book to anyone curious on a major aspect of how the US slipped into the Civil War.
He covers several themes.
First is the issue of escaped slaves and the evolving response by interest groups on both sides of the of the border region. From uncertain northern assistance to slave catchers; To more and more organized resistance by the northern populations; To the intervention by Federal authorities (At one point it took an entire company of US Marines to catch a slave); To Federal-State armed standoffs and Northern nullification efforts; And finally to the Civil War. (During Lee's 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania, his army kidnapped hundreds if not thousands of African-American civilians and sent them south. One mob in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, was so outraged that they attacked and disarmed a Confederate detachment and freed the captured African-Americans.)
Second, to a lesser degree, the conflict between Free-Soil and Pro-Slavery proponents. Interestingly, Harrold notes numerous cases in the late 1850's where, as the anti-slavery northerners contained Southern efforts in Free States, they began to enter the Slave States, setting up Free Soil villages.
Third, how the conflict shaped whether the state remained in the Union of seceeded. I regret that Harrold did not discuss this in greater depth.
I found "Border War" a worthwhile overview of the sometimes violent conflict that immediately preceeded and is now overshadowed by the Civil War. Harrold's writing is expansive in scope, covering the entire border over decades of turmoil. The reader gets an overview of the entire issue. Unfortunately, such an overview is, by neccessity, not very deep. And such a wide overview requires a tremendous amount of jumping across time and space. This jumping around can be very disruptive for the reader.
I would recommend this book to anyone curious on a major aspect of how the US slipped into the Civil War.
May 21, 2012
This was one of the most interesting reads assigned for my class on abolitionism last semester. Harrold is looking just at the border states, both North and South- but particularly, he spends a lot of time on the Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania border, and the Kentucky/Ohio border. In the first case, the boundary between slavery and free people of color was an imaginary line drawn on a map, in the second, the boundary was the Ohio river. For decades, people on both sides had to deal with this, and they fought about slavery constantly. The biggest flashpoint involved slaves emancipating themselves by fleeing over the border, and slave catchers attempting to pursue and capture them. Many northern whites, while still pretty racist, proved unwilling to do much to help the southern slave catchers...especially since free black people who were NOT runaway slaves were getting kidnapped into slavery on a regular basis. Tensions grew (and grew and grew).
I had never really considered how porous this border really was. A city like Cincinnati, for example, is technically a "northern" city, being in Ohio. But Kentucky is just on the other side of the river, so Kentucky slaveholders owned a lot of property and were very influential in the town. A lot of the settlers of southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were southerners, while the northern parts of those states were settled by Yankees. So while Ohio is arguing with Kentucky over border issues, north Ohioans are arguing with south Ohioans over the same issues. Meanwhile people like Abe Lincoln's family are moving from Kentucky to Illinois, and Abe is growing up disliking slavery but he has relatives and friends who are slaveholders and he isn't inclined to do much about it. Such a complex story. Books like this have really helped me start to understand these decades before the Civil War as just this really gradual deepening of tensions. All through the 1820s, and 30s, and 40s, every time northern whites (and people of color) watched a free black person get seized and dragged back South, every time a Southern slaveholder rode North to retrieve a fugitive and got shot at, or saw a northern judge rule against him, the anger on both sides just got deeper and deeper, slowly but surely.
I had never really considered how porous this border really was. A city like Cincinnati, for example, is technically a "northern" city, being in Ohio. But Kentucky is just on the other side of the river, so Kentucky slaveholders owned a lot of property and were very influential in the town. A lot of the settlers of southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were southerners, while the northern parts of those states were settled by Yankees. So while Ohio is arguing with Kentucky over border issues, north Ohioans are arguing with south Ohioans over the same issues. Meanwhile people like Abe Lincoln's family are moving from Kentucky to Illinois, and Abe is growing up disliking slavery but he has relatives and friends who are slaveholders and he isn't inclined to do much about it. Such a complex story. Books like this have really helped me start to understand these decades before the Civil War as just this really gradual deepening of tensions. All through the 1820s, and 30s, and 40s, every time northern whites (and people of color) watched a free black person get seized and dragged back South, every time a Southern slaveholder rode North to retrieve a fugitive and got shot at, or saw a northern judge rule against him, the anger on both sides just got deeper and deeper, slowly but surely.
April 17, 2011
Interesting depiction of the antebellum conflicts in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest in the several decades leading to the Civil War. The book is a work of scholarship designed for the serious historian. It illustrates how states on the Mason-Dixon line dealt with their neighbors on the issues of slavery vrs. free labor, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the expansion of slavery to the west. I was especially interested in the confrontations between Ohio and Kentucky, but overall the author provided too many examples to illustrate each of his topics. I was often tempted to skip ahead to the concluding paragraphs for the chapter summaries.
July 13, 2012
Good overview of border states' importance in the antebellum decades.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews