SYNOPSIS

Spanning some fiftyfour years, The Union on Trial is a fascinating look at the journals that William Barclay Napton (1808￯﾿ﾽ1883), an editor, Missouri lawyer, and state Supreme Court judge, kept from his time as a student at Princeton to his death in Missouri. Although a northerner by birth, Napton, the owner or trustee of fortysix slaves, viewed American society through a decidedly proslavery lens. Focusing on events between the 1850s and 1870s, especially those associated with the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Union on Trial contains Napton￯﾿ﾽs political reflections, offering thoughtful and important perspectives of an educated northerncumsouthern rightist on the key issues that turned Missouri toward the South during the Civil War era. The most obvious theme that emerges from Napton￯﾿ﾽs journals is the centrality of slavery in Missourians￯﾿ﾽ measure of themselves and the nation and, ultimately, in how border states constructed their southernness out of the tumultuous events of the era.

Author Bio: Christopher Phillips is Associate Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of several books, most recently Missouri￯﾿ﾽs Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern Identity in the Border West (University of Missouri Press).

Jason L. Pendleton currently teaches American history at Free State High School in Lawrence, Kansas. He has published articles in Kansas History.