Half Slave and Half Free, Revised Edition

"A remarkable work, concise, vigorously argues, thought-provoking, and authoritative. It provides a clear, challenging overview of the most pivotal crisis in American history."—Steven Hahn, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Nation Under Our Feet

"A solid introduction to antebellum social structure . . . [One would] be hard put to find a more accessible introduction to the social processes that were coincident with the coming of the Civil War."—Jane H. Pease, The Journal of American History

"This skillful blending of social, cultural, and political history clarifies the complex connections between socioeconomic changes in the first half century of American nationhood and the coming of the Civil War which almost destroyed the nation. The realities and ideologies that clustered around the institution of slavery emerge as the driving force that sundered the polity and then reunited it under a new vision of the future."—James M. McPherson

"In a taut, smooth narrative Levine succeeds admirably in showing how a popular basis for the Civil War developed out of the contradictions inherent in America's incomplete revolution of 1776. By emphasizing the social basis of political action, he is able to explain the social foundation of what became, in Seward's phrase, an irrepressible conflict between the north and the South."—William L. Barney

"Skillfully organized, forcefully argued and crisply written . . . Unusually successful in relying on brevity and clarity in order to render a profound analysis of the nation's deadly encounter with racial enslavement."—James Stewart

"A good, clear overview of the growing divergence between North and South that culminated in Civil War. In explaining the War's origins, Levine puts the focus where it belongs: on slavery and the struggle to preserve or abolish it."—Peter Kolchin, author of American Slavery