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A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Richard Ellis  and
Aaron Wildavsky
Richard Ellis
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Aaron Wildavsky
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

“Any basic interpretation of American history,” one prominent historian contends, “will have to account for…the coming of the Civil War.” Yet the two basic interpretations that have dominated the study of American politics, the progressive and consensus paradigms, have spawned partial and unsatisfactory explanations for what is arguably the most central event in the American past. After briefly analyzing the insights and limitations of these approaches to the Civil War, we propose an alternative perspective: cultural theory.

Type
The Culture of Politics
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 89 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1990

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References

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