Arguing about Slavery - by William Lee Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

In the 1830s, slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a gag rule summarily rejecting all anti-slavery petitions delivered to it. This stirring work of history chronicles John Quincy Adams's nine-year battle to overturn that rule and make slavery subject to parliamentary debate--a battle that paved the way for the Civil War.

Book Synopsis

In the 1830s slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not even be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a "gag rule" to ensure that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected. This stirring book chronicles the parliamentary battle to bring "the peculiar institution" into the national debate, a battle that some historians have called "the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy." The campaign to make slavery officially and respectably debatable was waged by John Quincy Adams who spent nine years defying gags, accusations of treason, and assassination threats. In the end he made his case through a combination of cunning and sheer endurance. Telling this story with a brilliant command of detail, Arguing About Slavery endows history with majestic sweep, heroism, and moral weight.

"Dramatic, immediate, intensely readable, fascinating and often moving."--New York Times Book Review

About the Author

William Lee Miller has taught at Yale University, Smith College, Indiana University, and the University of Virginia, where he is currently Miller Center of Public Affairs Scholar in Ethics and Institutions. He has been an editor and writer on a political magazine, a speechwriter, and a three-term alderman. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Arguing About Slavery, which won the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress.