Before the U.S. Civil War - American foreign policy had a lopsided presence of Southern slaveholders - on a mission to save their peculiar institution. Their crowning achievement? The annexation of Texas into the Union as a slave state.
But things could have gone very differently. And Texas could of had a very different future. That and other decisions were made to keep the plantation system in good working order.
Guest:
- Matthew Karp, assistant professor of history at Princeton University and author of "This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy"