West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Beginning in the 1840s, Southern slaveholders launched a series of campaigns to extend their political power across the American West. They passed slave codes in New Mexico and Utah, sponsored separatist movements in Southern California and Arizona, orchestrated a territorial purchase from Mexico, monopolized patronage networks to empower proslavery allies, and even killed antislavery rivals. California, despite its constitutional prohibition on slavery, was the linchpin of their western program. Until the eve of the Civil War, white Southerners controlled the political fortunes of California, with a powerful base of support in Los Angeles. During the war years, large parts of the Far Southwest remained in the thrall of slaveholders. Even after the collapse of slavery, California continued to mimic many of the white supremacist strategies of the South, with its own version of the Ku Klux Klan. Kevin Waite brings to light what contemporaries recognized but historians have described only…