Alice Malavasic, associate professor in the History, Philosophy and Social Sciences Department, will talk about her book, “The F Street Mess — How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act,” at Siebels House in Columbia, South Carolina.
The 6 p.m. talk on Tuesday, May 22 will be followed by a reception and book signing.
Pushing back against the idea that the Slave Power conspiracy was merely an ideological construction, Malavasic argues that some southern politicians in the 1850s did indeed hold an inordinate amount of power in the antebellum Congress and used it to foster the interests of slavery. Malavasic focuses her argument on Senators David Rice Atchison of Missouri, Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina, and Robert M. T. Hunter and James Murray Mason of Virginia, known by their contemporaries as the “F Street Mess” for the location of the house they shared. Focusing on the Senators’ most significant achievement — forcing a rewrite of the Nebraska bill that repealed the restriction against slavery above the 36° 30′ parallel — Malavasic demonstrates how the F Street Mess’s mastery of the legislative process led to one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in United States history and helped pave the way to secession.
“The F Street Mess” is available from The University of North Carolina Press and at Amazon.com.
Published: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:32:18 +0000 by d.gardner