The American North's commitment to preventing a southern secession
rooted in slaveholding suggests a society united in its opposition to slavery and racial
inequality. The reality, however, was far more complex and troubling. In his latest book, Paul
Escott lays bare the contrast between progress on emancipation and the persistence of white
supremacy in the Civil War North. Escott analyzes northern politics, as well as the racial
attitudes revealed in the era's literature, to expose the nearly ubiquitous racism that
flourished in all of American society and culture.

Contradicting much recent scholarship, Escott argues that the
North's Dematic Party was consciously and avowedly "the white man's
party," as an extensive examination of Dematic newspapers, as well as congressional
debates and other speeches by Dematic leaders, proves. The Republican Party, meanwhile,
defended emancipation as a war measure but did little to attack racism or fight for equal
rights. Most Republicans propagated a message that emancipation would not disturb northern race
relations or the interests of northern white voters: freed slaves, it was felt, would either
leave the nation or remain in the South as subordinate
laborers.
Escott's book uncovers the substantial and
destructive racism that lay beyond the South's borders. Although emancipation represented
enormous progress, racism flourished in the North, and assumptions of white supremacy remained
powerful and nearly ubiquitous throughout America.