Product Description

A comprehensive history of mob violence related to sectional issues in antebellum America, this book argues that the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions from authorities. In the South, riots against suspected abolitionists and slave insurrectionists were widely tolerated as a means of quelling anti-slavery sentiment. In the North, both pro-slavery riots and attacking abolitionists and anti-slavery riots in support of fugitive slaves provoked reluctant but often effective riot suppression. Grimsted demonstrates that in these two distinct reactions to mob violence lay major resources of the social split that infiltrated politics and political rioting and that ultimately led to the Civil War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3123418 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
.,."Grimsted has produced a well-written and provocative account of a difficult subject. He is to be commended for making some sense out of the senseless, and his work should be read by all those interested in the causes of America's bloodiest war."--Mississippi Quarterly
.,."[a] lively, eloquent study....American Mobbing is a smart, passionate examination of an unusually contentious era. Scholars and general readers interested in prewar America will wish to read it, and they will much enjoy the time spent doing it."--Civil War History
"David Grimsted's groundbreaking tome, the product of over twenty-five years of work, is a deeply considered meditation on the relationship between mob violence and the coming of the Civil War....He addresses one of the central questions in American History and his important answers deserve widespread acclaim and continued commentary."--Journal of Social History
"[Grimsted] offers lengthy analyses...extensive...contextual examinations...provocative and controversial."--The North Carolina Historical Review
.,."David Grimsted has made a major contribution to the historiography of mob violence in the nineteenth-century United States. His book illuminates how often antebellum Americans negotiated their differences through rioting. More importantly it shows the price that this nation has paid for engaging in such behavior....American Mobbing is required reading for those interested in Civil War causation and the history of mob violence in the United States."--Reviews in American History