Christopher Childers

I am an associate professor of history and director of the School of History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, where I teach courses covering the Colonial and Revolutionary eras as well as the early American republic.

My research focuses on the political and constitutional history of the early American republic (1776-1861), specifically southern politics and sectionalism.  My current research project is a history of the Webster-Hayne Debate and its impact on politics in the South, North, and West.

My first book, The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics (University Press of Kansas, 2012), reconceptualizes the history of slavery’s westward extension by showing how southerners first advocated popular sovereignty to check federal interference with slavery in the territories only to jettison the idea during the 1850s in favor of federal protection of extension. My book follows the work of other scholars who have sought to connect the sectional crisis of the 1850s with debates over slavery in the early republic. It revises our understanding of popular sovereignty by exploring how the idea emerged after the Revolution and became central to the argument over slavery in the antebellum era. The ambiguities of popular sovereignty initially allowed politicians to evade the extension issue, but as the debate between the proslavery and antislavery movements intensified, the doctrine collapsed.
Address: Department of History, Philosophy, and Social Sciences
Pittsburg State University
1701 S. Broadway
Pittsburg, KS 66762