John Quincy Adams's remarkable diary is an unusually accessible window into the thinking of a president long before, during, and well after his own administration. It is enormous in scope-examining all subjects that came to Adams's interest and stretching from the late 1780s to his death in 1848. David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason produce an edition of the diary that is not only of accessible length but also focused on one issue: the politics of slavery. Adams's long journey from nationalist diplomacy to culture war with the southern plantocracy is not well understood. How did the man who in 1795 told a British cabinet officer not to speak to him of the Virginians, the Southern people, the democrats, whom he considered in no other light than as Americans, come to predict a grand struggle between slavery and freedom? How could an expansionist who had left his party and lost his U.S. Senate seat rather than attack the Jeffersonian slave power, later come to declare the Mexican War the apoplexy of the Constitution, a hijacking of the republic by slaveholders? What changed? Entries in the diary touching on the politics of slavery increased over time and reflect national events as well as Adams' changes in attitude. The diary enables the reader to perceive and weigh the relative importance and interaction of ideology, politics, and personal ambition in one highly consequential life. The editors provide a lucid introduction to the collection as a whole and illuminate the individual documents with brief and engaging comments, deftly placing Adams's public statements alongside his private reflections. By juxtaposing Adams's personal reflections on slavery with what he said-and did not say-publicly on the issue, the editors offer a unique perspective on a topic historians of the early republic, and especially of Jacksonian democracy, have trouble integrating into their stories: the complicated politics of slavery.

The essays in this volume of the Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology are drawn from the papers presented at the October 2012 and June 2013 theological symposia hosted by the Center for Pastor Theologians. These two symposia brought together evangelical clergy from across denominational lines, with a view to exploring the topics of gender, sexuality, marriage, and sexual ethics-primarily through an interaction with John Paul II's Male and Female He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. Contributors include Matthew Mason, Gerald Hiestand, Owen Strachan, Christopher Bechtel, and David Morlan. Book reviews in this volume likewise focus on works associated with the themes of sexuality, marriage, and gender.

In 1754 the British adventurer, compiler, and novelist Edward Kimber published The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Rooted in a tale Kimber heard while exploring the Atlantic seaboard, Mr. Anderson is the novelist's transatlantic tale of slavery, Indian relations, and frontier life. Having been kidnapped in England, transported across the Middle Passage, and sold to a brutal Maryland planter as a white slave, Tom Anderson gains his freedom and in rapid succession becomes a successful trader, a war hero, and a friend to slave, Indian, Quebecois, and Englishman alike. Still engaging 250 years after its original publication, Mr. Anderson offers a rich and varied portrayal of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic world. This Broadview edition features an introduction by both a literary scholar and a historian, elaborating on significant themes in the novel. The appendices include an extensive selection of documents-some unpublished elsewhere-further contextualizing many of those themes, including slavery, British representations of colonial America, and eighteenth-century British literature's emphasis on sensibility and the "cult of feeling."

Known today as "the other speaker at Gettysburg," Edward Everett had a distinguished and illustrative career at every level of American politics from the 1820s through the Civil War. In this new biography, Matthew Mason argues that Everett's extraordinarily well-documented career reveals a complex man whose shifting political opinions, especially on the topic of slavery, illuminate the nuances of Northern Unionism. In the case of Everett--who once pledged to march south to aid slaveholders in putting down slave insurrections--Mason explores just how complex the question of slavery was for most Northerners, who considered slavery within a larger context of competing priorities that alternately furthered or hindered antislavery actions. By charting Everett's changing stance toward slavery over time, Mason sheds new light on antebellum conservative politics, the complexities of slavery and its related issues for reform-minded Americans, and the ways in which secession turned into civil war. As Mason demonstrates, Everett's political and cultural efforts to preserve the Union, and the response to his work from citizens and politicians, help us see the coming of the Civil War as a three-sided, not just two-sided, contest.

This title discusses about the partisan and political uses of slavery. Giving close consideration to previously neglected debates, Matthew Mason challenges the common contention that slavery held little political significance in America until the Missouri Crisis of 1819. Mason demonstrates that slavery and politics were enmeshed in the creation of the nation, and that in fact there was never a time between the Revolution and the Civil War in which slavery went uncontested.Offering a full picture of the politics of slavery in the crucial years of the early republic, Mason demonstrates that partisans and patriots, slave and free - and not just abolitionists and advocates of slavery - should be considered important players in the politics of slavery in the United States.