Chained to History

Steven J. Brady is Associate Professor in the Department of History at The George Washington University. He is author of Eisenhower and Adenauer.

• Introduction: Speaking of Slavery1. "Things Odious or Immoral": Britain, Spanish Florida, and Slaves Unfettered2. "'Tis Ill to Fear": American Responses to the Haitian Revolution3. "Separate from Foreign Alliances": Limiting Connections and Commitments4. "Fully Meets Its Responsibility": The Limits of American Unilateralism5. "Only Cowards Fear and Oppose It": Texas and Cuba6. "Its Peculiar Moral Force": Lincoln, Emancipation, and ColonizationEpilogue: American Foreign Relations Unchained

This international history illustrates the multidirectional thrusts of slavery in US diplomacy.(Choice) Chained to Slavery traces the influence of slavery on American foreign policy through a series of critical events in US history. With clear use of evidence and strong organization, Stephen J. Brady compellingly demonstrates that slavery and international relations were inextricably connected throughout the first century of US history.(The Journal of Southern History) With Chained to History, Stephen Brady makes a signal contribution to nineteenth-century history: producing a comprehensive, well-written, and authoritative one-volume account of the impact of Black slavery on early US statecraft.(Civil War Book Review) Steven J. Brady offers a new synthesis across the antebellum era to "re-center" the importance of slavery by analyzing how the "peculiar institution" complicated commercial transactions. Slavery required American administrations to deal more with foreign nations than they would have ideally liked.(Journal of American History) Written with objectivity and precision, Chained to History makes an important contribution by depicting how the distinct worldview of enslavers twisted US foreign policy in troubling ways.(The Foreign Service Journal) Steven Brady's Chained to History demonstrates how any understanding of the relationship between the United States and the world from 1783 to 1865 has to place slavery at its centre as a domestic consideration, protecting slavery at home influenced foreign policy abroad; slavery was also a transnational institution.(Slavery and Abolition)