Making a Nation: The United States and Its People (Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2001), chapters 14-19, 24.

Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (New York: Knopf, 1990).

The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Knopf, 1982). Second edition published by WW Norton, 1998.

Articles:
“‘Whom Have I Oppressed’: The Pursuit of Happiness and the Happy Slave,” in James Horn, et al, The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic
(Charlottesville, Virginia: Univ. Of Virginia Press, 2003), 220-239.

“The Peculiar Fate of the Bourgeois Critique of Slavery,” in Winthrop D. Jordan, ed., Slavery and the American South (Oxford, Mississippi: Univ. Of Mississippi Press, 2002), 29-48.

“Why Slaves Can’t Read: The Political Significance of Jefferson’s Racism,” in James Gilreath, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Education of a Citizen (Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, 1999), 177-192.

“The Compromising Expedient: Justifying a Proslavery Constitution,” Cardozo Law Review, v. 17, no. 6 (May, 1996), pp. 2023-2056.

“Slavery as an American Problem,” in Larry Griffin, ed., The South as an American Problem (University of Georgia Press; 1995).

“The Political Significance of Slave Resistance, History Workshop, 22 (Autumn, 1986).

“The Present Becomes the Past: The Planter Class in the Postbellum South,” in Robert Abzug and Stephen Maizlish, eds., New Perspectives on Race and Slavery in America (Lexington, Ky., 1986).

“From Republicanism to Liberalism: Ideological Change and the Crisis of the Old South,” American Quarterly 37, (Fall, 1985).

“A Failure of Vision: The Collapse of the Freedmen’s Bureau Courts,” Civil War History, 25 (March, 1979).

Encyclopedia Articles:
“New World Slavery,” “Plantation System,” and “Overseers and Drivers,” entries in The Encyclopedia of American History (Scribners, forthcoming).

“North American Slavery,” entry in Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

“Slavery,” entry in Encyclopedia of American Social History (Scribners, 1993).

“Small Slaveholders,” entry in Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (Greenwood Press, 1988).

Review Essays:
“Slavery in Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly (forthcoming)

“Radical Liberals, Liberal Radicals: The Dissenting Tradition in American Political Culture,” Reviews in American History (2000).

“Was Madison More Radical than Jefferson?” Journal of the Early Republic (1996).

“The Invention of Race: Rereading White over Black,” Reviews in American History, 21 (1993), 172-183.

“The Politics of Economic Development in the Antebellum South, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XV:2 (Autumn, 1984), 305-316.

“The Muted Firebell of Old Virginia,” Reviews in American History, II, (September 1983), 374-380.

Papers and Conferences:
“Utopian Liberalism in the Eighteenth Century,” Faculty Seminar, Scripps College, The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA, November 11, 2002.

“Some Thoughts on Proslavery Thought,” Southern Historical Association, New Orleans, November, 2001.

“The Peculiar Fate of the Bourgeois Critique of Slavery,” Univ. of Mississippi, Spring, 1999.

“Amistad and Identity Politics,” Horace Mann School, New York, January, 1998.

“The Enlightenment as ‘Social’ History,” Conference on “Commerce, Culture, Enlightenment,” University of Chicago, May 2-4, 1997.

Chair and commentator, panel on “Bankrupt Bondsmen and Fettered Females: Slavery Metaphors in 18th and 19th-Century America,” American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting, Richmond, Va., October 1996.

“Robert Wiebe’s Self Rule: A Comment,” Society for the History of the Early American Republic, Nashville, July, 1996.

“The Enlightenment as Social History,” Newberry Library Seminary in Early American History, May 23, 1996. Also given at University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, February 18, 1996.
Commentator, panel on “Slavery and the Southwestern Frontier,” Southern Historical Association, October, 1995.

“The Rhetoric of Reaction: Justifying a Proslavery Constitution,” Society for the History of the Early American Republic, Cincinnati, Ohio, July, 1995.

“The Rhetoric of Reaction: Justifying a Proslavery Constitution,” Symposium on Bondage, Freedom & the Constitution at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, Feb. 19-20, 1995.

“American Thermidor: Republican Reaction in Post-Revolutionary America,” Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, May 27, 1993.

“Why Slaves Can’t Read: The Political Significance of Thomas Jefferson’s Racism,” Library of Congress, conference on “Thomas Jefferson and the Education of the Citizen,” Washington, DC, May 14-15, 1993.

“Slavery as an American Problem, “Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University, December 1992.

“Synthesizing Race, Class and Gender in Historical Studies,” Social Science History Association, Chicago, IL, December, 1992.

“The Liberal Dissensus,” Humanities Center, Northwestern University, November 4, 1992.

“Redefining Liberalism, “The Newberry Library Seminar in American Social History, Chicago, IL, May 5, 1992.

“The Liberal Dissensus, “Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, May 1991.

“Slavery and Liberal Capitalism,” University of Chicago, History Department Colloquium, Spring, 1987.

“Comparing Slavery: Comment,” Conference on Comparative History, Northwestern University, Spring, 1986.

“The Planter Class in the Post-Bellum South,” Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, 1985.

“The Myth of the Planter Class,” Conference on “Myths and Realities in the Old South,” Kentucky State Library, Louisville, 1984.

“Politics and Slavery in the Old South: A Comment,” American Historical Association, San Francisco, 1983.

“The Revolutionary Origins of the Civil War,” University of Dayton, 1982.

Works in Progress:
Lincoln and Douglass Debate: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Varieties of Anti-slavery Thought, to be published by W. W. Norton.

A History of American Slavery

Professional Service:
Member, Program Committee, Organization of American Historians, 1996-97
Chair, Avery Craven Prize Committee, Organization of American Historians, 1992