A Continuous State of War: Empire Building and Race Making in the Civil War–Era Gulf South Available to Purchase

Maria Angela Diaz's A Continuous State of War joins an extensive historiography about empire and expansion in the nineteenth-century United States. Robert May, for example, has written extensively about filibustering and Southern imperial dreams. Amy Greenberg and Kristin Hoganson have dissected the gendered nature of expansion. Daniel Burge has argued that manifest destiny was ultimately unsuccessful. Other scholars have analyzed different conceptions of empire, how people living in contested territory experienced empire, and how Northerners often outdid Southerners in embracing empire. Diaz, currently associate professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, examines how Gulf South communities such as Galveston, Texas, Pensacola, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana, drove Southern imperial dreams. The physical location of these communities allowed them to gaze longingly over the Gulf of Mexico and dream about conquest. In addition to coveting territory, white people in the Gulf South spearheaded, aggressively promoted, and supported efforts to...