Conservative Americanism

Conservative Americanism: Nativism, Unionism, and Slavery in Border South Politics, 1854-1861 explores the rise of Conservative Americanism — an ideology that linked the worsening sectional crisis of the 1850s to the country's growing immigrant population — among former Whigs in the Border South. Jesse George-Nichol challenges the prevailing wisdom that Unionism, rather than genuine nativism, drove these Southerners to join the nativist Know Nothing or American Party. She argues that Southern na