This Stephan Talty’s book is far inferior to “The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War.” So why is he getting publicity when Lawrence Tenzer doesn’t? I believe it is because Tenzer shows that Northern whites were aware of the fact that there was no clear dividing line between the “pure” white and the “impure” white who might be a slave because of the accident of maternal slave descent unbroken by manumission. This and other factors made slavery a threat to “whites” in general. That’s why Northern states passed personal liberty laws to nullify the effect of the federal Fugitive Slave Law. Talty, by contrast, follows the “politically correct” line of pretending that there are “pure” Caucasians and “light-skinned blacks.” The “pure” types are the only ones HE considers “white,” but antebellum Northern whites were of a very different opinion.
