Author Interview--Kevin Waite (West of Slavery) Part 3

Hello H-CivWar readers,

today we continue our multipart video interview series with Kevin Waite. We chat about the political influences of Southerners in the West and the infamous Camel Corps. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Kevin Waite via Zoom. We talked about his new book West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire, which was just released by the University of North Carolina Press. The interview is broken up so that you can easily use the material in class.

Kevin Waite is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and an assistant professor of history at Durham University. His writings have also appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Journal of the Civil War Era, and California History.

These videos are also available on this Playlist

We start our conversation by looking at Southerners and their failure promoting a southern Transcontinental Railroad in the Antebellum Era:

We briefly talk about Jefferson Davis's infamous Camel Corps:

We shift to why Southerners migrated into the southern reaches of the Southwest:

We close today with how Southerners sought out political opportunities in the West