Eighty-eight years: the long death of slavery in the United States, 1777-1865

Prologue: A house divided

Introduction: The slave power

The Age of Revolution : Impious prayers: slavery and the revolution ; Half slave and half free: the founding of the United States

The early republic : A house dividing: Atlantic slavery and abolition in the era of the early republic ; To become a great nation: caste and resistance in the age of emancipations

The Age of Immediatism : MInds long set on freedom: rebellion, metropolitan abolition, and sectional conflict ; Ere the storm come forth: antislavery militance and the collapse of party politics

The Civil War and Reconstruction : This terrible war: secession, civil war, and emancipation ; One hundred years: reconstruction ; What peace among the whites brought.