Border War: The Long War before the American Civil War

FAIN: HR-50191-05

Stanley Harrold
South Carolina State University (Orangeburg, SC 29115-4427)

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This is a comprehensive analysis of violent confrontation between antislavery and proslavery forces that occurred, from the 1820s to the 1860s, on the long border between America’s free-labor and slave-labor states. In its geographic scope and in its investigation of the proslavery side, this project goes beyond the applicant’s earlier studies of antislavery in the border region. It locates the origins of the Civil War in a longer struggle over slavery that flourished along the North-South border. The study indicates that assisted slave escapes, the kidnapping of free northern African Americans into slavery, and armed conflict between antislavery and proslavery vigilantees in the region pushed the United States toward disunion and war.