Professor Waite discusses his book, West of Slavery: the Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire. He explains his thesis that the Southern Slave States had ambitions and plans to extend slavery across the West. Prof.
Waite explains how railroads, camels, and the hope for new international markets all played a part in the coming of the Civil War.
Kevin Waite is an assistant professor at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He is a political historian of the 19th-century United States with a focus on slavery, imperialism, and the American West.