This is the first of a two-volume study of slavery and capitalism as they relate to the second party system and the origins of the Civil War. The second volume is to be entitled, “Towards a Bourgeois Revolution”. The two volumes are divided chronologically in 1850 but when in this volume I consider abolitionism, the proslavery argument and the economic performance of the two sections, I largely ignore this chronology. Similarly, even though most of the direct discussion of the origins of the Civil War will be in the second volume, I shall attribute primacy to long-term causes, operative, that is to say, before 1850 and thus central to the concerns of the first volume.

Nevertheless, my discussion of the political events of the antebellum decades reflects my concern with the collapse of 1860–1861 in that the treatment of each decade is fuller than that of the previous one. What follows is by no means a complete list of the subjects I address but it does indicate my major concerns. For the reader's benefit I have added a reference to the chapters which most directly relate to each of them. In this work and its sequel I maintain the following propositions:

1. The American Civil War is best understood as a bourgeois revolution; indeed it is one of the world's leading examples of such a revolution. (Introduction and conclusion to this volume but primarily Volume 2.)

2. […]