DescriptionThis dissertation argues that ideas about black and white extermination in a war between the races influenced the development of slavery and precluded the acceptance of black freedom in America. Beyond the instrumentality of violence that we know was part of the master slave relationship, this study examines what impels white ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth century that emancipation would ultimately lead to a race war. It attempts to demonstrate how ideas of extermination became part of the brutal legacy of racial control that sustained the institution of slavery and violence in the post-Civil War South. “A Curse Upon the Nation” traces the progression of these beliefs from the colonial period to the post Reconstruction era and how they traveled from Europe, Africa, and then to America, revealing that ideas about extermination became inextricably tied to race and freedom, making survival an important form of resistance for blacks in America.