附註:Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-388) and index.
John Tyler's hobby: territorial expansion and Jacksonian politics -- Milton's devil: slavery restriction and the revolutionary heritage, 1820-1846 -- Washington redux: the whig party and the politics of slavery, 1846-1848 -- Tower of Babel: social ideology and the crisis of territorial organization, 1849-1850 -- Of Pegasus and Bellerophon: popular sovereignty, Stephen A. Douglas, and the origins of the Kansas-Nebraska Act -- A house dividing: the conspiracy thesis joined and defined -- To the egress: humbug and the disruption of the democracy -- The eclipse of manifest destiny and the disruption of the second party system.