Author Interview--Kevin Waite (West of Slavery) Part 5

Hello H-CivWar readers,

today we continue our multipart video interview series with Kevin Waite. We chat about the war and the importance of including Mexico in conversations about the Civil War West. We also talk about the end of the war and how coerced racialized labor systems continued in the West.

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 with my question about what California Volunteers did during the Rebellion:

We continue with the importance of the events in Mexico for the Civil War West and the Southern Confederacy:

We move beyond the Civil War and talk about Coerced Labor Systems in the West post-Thirteenth Amendment

We close with a conversation about race in the West: