Author Interview--Kevin Waite (West of Slavery) Part 7
Hello H-CivWar readers,
today we close our multipart video interview series with Kevin Waite. For the last episode, we focus on the Civil War in the West, its importance and potential scholarly directions.
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 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 the importance and relevance of the Civil War West as a field of inquiry:
We then turn to the reality that for the diverse people in the Southwest and West, things continued as the armies fought in the East:
We close this brief section by considering the fragility of the U.S. Republic and the danger of other secessions:
1 Reply
Post ReplyKevin's last episode re: Civil War in the West, Does it Matter might be answered by two thoughts.
One, what would have happened had the Western States sided with the Confederacy and second, consider thoose resources from the West which would not have been available to the Union.
Recall having read somewhere, one of Lincoln's speeches, possibly his last State of the Union, He mentioned Long Beach, Calfornia, specifically as a place he was interested in visiting after the Civil War ended.
Wyatt Reader MA
UCLA_Whittier College
California Community Colleges/private
Instructor/Supervisor