"Scholars have long known that African Americans in the antebellum South vigorously resisted slaveholder control, but less has been known about how slave resistance shaped antebellum politics. Roots of Secession examines the relationship between Virginia's political system and its restive slave population during the turbulent decade leading up to the war.

Using recent scholarship on slave resistance, William Link reconsiders the politics of secession in Virginia, placing African Americans at the center of the story. Arguing that their acts of defiance and rebellion had powerful repercussions throughout this critical period, he provides the first thorough political history of Virginia's secession in nearly seventy years.".

"An upper South state with nearly half a million slaves - more than any other state in the nation - and some 50,000 free blacks, Virginia witnessed a uniquely volatile convergence of slave resistance and electoral politics in the 1850s. While masters struggled with slaves, disunionists sought to join a regionwide effort to secede and moderates sought to protect slavery but remain in the Union.

Suggesting a broader definition of political action, Link shows that the coming of the Civil War was directly connected to Virginia's system of slavery, as the tension between defiant slaves and anxious slaveholders energized Virginia politics and spurred on the impending sectional crisis."--BOOK JACKET.