Northern men with Southern loyalties: the Democratic Party and the sectional crisis

In the decade before the Civil War, Northern Democrats, although they ostensibly represented antislavery and free-state constituencies, made possible the passage of such proslavery legislation as the Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Law the same year, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the Lecompton Constitution of 1858.

In this book, Michael Todd Landis forcefully contends that a full understanding of the Civil War and its causes is impossible without a careful examination of Northern Democrats and their proslavery sentiments and activities.