Chapter 1: 1835: Year of Violent Indecision; Chapter 2: Riots Hatching Resistance: Against Abolitionists and in Aid of Fugitive Slaves; Chapter 3: The Peculiar Institution of Southern Violence; Chapter 4: White Fears: Silencing Questions; Chapter 5: Black Fears: Mastering Dark Realities; Chapter 6: Times That Tried Men's Bodies: The Manly Sport of American Politics; Chapter 7: The Mobs of the Second Party System; Chapter 8: Trying to Forget Slavery: Nativism and New Riots; Chapter 9: Bleeding Majoritarianism: The Sectional Mob Systems Meet, Mingle, and Mangle
Summary
American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War is a comprehensive history of mob violence related to sectional issues in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions from authorities. In the South, riots against suspected abolitionists and slave insurrectionists were widely tolerated as a means of quelling anti-slavery sentiment. In the North, both pro-slavery riots attacking abolitionists and anti-slavery riots in support of fugitive slaves provoked reluctant but often effe
