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This chapter explains the development of the Unionist Offensive, which was an effort by Border South moderates to sustain the region’s pro-Union mind-set in the weeks after the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln. Although the election of 1860 had proven that many white border southerners continued to espouse a preference for moderate politics, Unionists rightfully worried that pro-secession sentiment would spread rapidly in the region, especially after many Lower South states called conventions to consider secession. Led by Kentucky Senator John Jordan Crittenden, the Unionist Offensive was a full-fledged political campaign aimed at beating back disunionists. It included pro-Union political rallies, newspaper editorials, and stump speaking. The centrepiece of the Unionist Offensive was the argument that slavery was best protected within the Union and that secession greatly endangered slavery. The chapter focuses on Crittenden’s efforts to craft a compromise package in the U.S. Senate which would allay the fears of white border southerners about the safety of slavery now that Republicans were poised to take over the federal government.

This chapter focuses on Unionism and the activities of Unionists in the southern states during the Civil War. It looks at those areas of Mississippi, such as Piney Woods and Natchez, and classes of citizens who chose to remain loyal to the Union or resist the Confederacy. The chapter also examines the South’s transition from nationalism to sectionalism, attributed to a series of events such as those related to the expansion of slavery from the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854 to the Lincoln–Douglas Debate in 1858 and the presidential election of 1860. Furthermore, it analyzes the relationship between Unionism and the secession movement that gained momentum from 1850 to the 1860 presidential election.

Josie began her diary in early December as she prepared to visit with her sister and brother-in-law in Memphis. The diary chronicled a slave wedding, parties, social calls, and romantic visits that enlivened the holidays, but more serious concerns quickly overshadowed these social festivities. Josie witnessed torchlight parades and became involved in heated political discussion while in Memphis, the hotbed of Tennessee's secession movement. The 20-year-old Josie voiced her parent's opposition to Lincoln and to secession despite her attempts to remain a soft-spoken southern belle. As one after another of the states of the Lower South seceded, the intensity and anger in these discussions increased.

This chapter reveals that Missouri's branch banks, which played a critical role in financing the secession movement in Missouri, were with few exceptions of recent origin when the war started. Until the law changed in 1857, Missouri's constitution of 1820 allowed only one currency-issuing bank in the state, with a maximum of six branches, counting the parent bank. Since its establishment in 1837, that bank had been the Bank of Missouri. Between 1857 and the end of 1860 the number of chartered banks in the state, counting parents and branches, increased seven-fold. By January 1861, Missouri had nine currency-issuing banks with thirty-three external branches, none of which, except for the Bank of Missouri, had been in business for more than three and a half years. Twenty of the thirty-six new banks had existed for eighteen months or less.

This chapter explores increased interest in commemorating the Revolutionary War during the antebellum period. More than during any other time period to date, antebellum Americans sought out battlefields, no matter how small or local in importance, as subjects of commemoration. In doing so, antebellum Americans derived new meaning from the old conflict, tinting it with the rising sectional conflicts of their own time, seeking to remember the war as either a moment of common national purpose or as a vindication of state rights. Growing Southern nationalism and the secession movement coincided with an increasing Southern desire to visit regional attractions and historic sites. Northerners rediscovered and used their battlefields for similar purposes, although they emphasized national unity amid sectional crisis. The increase in battlefield commemoration during the antebellum eraemployed old rhetoric in new ways by using place as a legitimizing factor in sectional political rhetoric.

This chapter looks at the figure of Aaron Burr, the “traumatic colonel” of the book's title, as the anomalous figure hovering at the margins of the Founders proper. The significance of Burr is precisely its resistance to incorporation in the semiotic system of the Founders. The chapter aims to make sense of the odd details in contemporary literature of the Founders: Burr's electoral tie with Thomas Jefferson in 1800, the accusations of seduction, the assault waged by the New York Republicans, the duel with Alexander Hamilton, and the Federalists' odd courting of their hated antagonist to lead a secession movement. One can read Burr in two ways: that he is the gull of the blacks' duplicity, or he is a sinister conspirator whose manliness cannot be questioned.