| Author | Hinton Rowan Helper |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Burdick Brothers |
Publication date | 1857 |
| OCLC | 226488928 |
| Website | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36055 |
The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It is an 1857 book by Hinton Rowan Helper, who declares himself a proud Southerner.[1]: vi It was written mostly in Baltimore, but it would have been illegal to publish it there, as he pointed out.[1]: 360 It was a strong attack on slavery as inefficient and a barrier to the economic advancement of whites. The book was widely distributed by Horace Greeley and other antislavery leaders, and infuriated Southerners. According to historian George M. Fredrickson, "it would not be difficult to make a case for The Impending Crisis as the most important single book, in terms of its political impact, that has ever been published in the United States. Even more perhaps than Uncle Tom's Cabin, it fed the fires of sectional controversy leading up to the Civil War; for it had the distinction of being the only book in American history to become the center of bitter and prolonged Congressional debate".[2]: 542 [note 1] In the Northern United States, it became "the book against slavery."[3]: 75 A book reviewer wrote, "Next to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Hinton Helper's critique of slavery and the Southern class system, The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), was arguably the most important antislavery book of the 1850s."[4]
- ^ a b Helper, Hinton Rowan (1857). The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. New York: Burdick Brothers.
- ^ Brown, David (2004). "Attacking Slavery from Within: The Making of The Impending Crisis of the South" (PDF). Journal of Southern History. 70 (3): 541–576. doi:10.2307/27648477. JSTOR 27648477.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Noblewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Smith, David, Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and The Impending Crisis of the South (review), Civil War History, vol. 55, no. 4, December 2009, pp. 531-532, The Kent State University Press.
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