In first volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that dilemmas of Native Americans and African Americans are collaterally connected with my subject without forming a part of it; they are American without being democratic, and to portray has been my principle aim.1 Preoccupied with determining role would play in Europe, Tocqueville felt little compunction to situate America's troubling pattern of race relations at center of his study of in United States. Until recently, historians of Early Republic have largely followed in Tocqueville's footsteps, at least in terms of slavery question. But thanks to new works by Richard Newman, Adam Rothman, and Matthew Mason, among others, we now know far more about slavery in Early Republic, ranging from expansion of slavery into Old Southwest to political debates about future of institution, from development of domestic slave trade to both radical and conservative approaches to abolition before 1830s.2 Robert Pierce Forbes' s new book, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, can be understood as culmination of this historiographic campaign to reassess role of slavery in Early Republic. First, it exhaustively traces debates about and significance of era's most important piece of legislation relating to slavery: Missouri Compromise. Second, it casts its gaze far beyond Missouri Compromise proper, demonstrating ways that politicians of 1820s and early 1830s were consumed with questions about future of slavery in American republic. Ultimately, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath makes a strong case that for much of early history of United States, slavery was the contradiction at heart of American democracy (p. 49). The first major study devoted to Missouri Compromise in almost fifty years, Forbes's book does an admirable job summarizing many responses it has provoked from historical actors and historians alike. In wake of