Böcker utgivna av Louisiana State University Press

Walther examines the lives of nine of the most prominent "fire-eaters" (southerns who were staunch and unyielding advocates of the secession): Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, William Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnewll Rhett, Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D. B. DeBow, Edmund Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles.

A product of vast archival research and the latest literature on this increasingly popular subject, this is the first book to consider the southern red scare as a unique regional phenomenon rather than an offshoot of McCarthyism or massive resistance.

Places the rise of the race idea in the context of the development of modern philosophy. The history of the race idea, according to Eric Voegelin, begins with the post-Christian orientation toward a natural system of living forms.