By 1840, American politics was a paradox-unprecedented freedom and equality for men of European descent, and the simultaneous isolation and degradation of people of African and Native American descent. Historians have characterized this phenomenon as the "white republic."Race and the Early Republic offers a rich account of how this paradox evolved, beginning with the fledgling nation of the 1770s and running through the antebellum years. The essays in the volume, written by a wide array of scholars, are arranged so as to allow a clear understanding of how and why white political supremacy came to be in the early United States. Race and the Early Republic is a collection of diverse, insightful and interrelated essays that promote an easy understanding of why and how people of color were systematically excluded from the early U.S. republic.

Chapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 The Pursuit of Whiteness: Property, Terror, and Expansion, 1790-1860Chapter 3 "Believing That Many of the Red People Suffer Much for the Want of Food": Hunting, Agriculture, and a Quaker Construction of Indianness in the Early RepublicChapter 4 From Class to Race in Early America: Northern Post-Emancipation Racial ReconstructionChapter 5 The "Condition" Debate and Racial Discourse in the Antebellum NorthChapter 6 "Here in America There Is Neither King Nor Tyrant": European Encounters with Race, "Freedom," and Their European PastsChapter 7 Modernizing "Difference": The Political Meanings of Color in the Free States, 1776-1840Chapter 8 Making the "White Man's Country" White: Race, Slavery, and State-Building in the Jacksonian SouthChapter 9 "We Have a Country": Race, Geography, and the Invention of Indian TerritoryChapter 10 The Culmination of Racial Polarities and Prejudice