Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1912, Kenneth M. Stampp is of the generation of historians that came into the profession in the age of the Great Depression. It was a time when liberalism completed its metamorphosis from the classical laissez-faire formulation of the nineteenth century to its modern predication of the state as the guarantor of social welfare as well as of individual liberty. Although strongly influenced by the socialist-pacifist traditions of the German-American community in which he grew up, Stampp developed his early perceptions of the American past in the climate of opinion provided by New Deal liberalism. In his long and distinguished career as a social and political historian, Stampp has always concerned himself with the democratic experience, especially in its humanistic and ethnic dimensions. His major works deal with the collapse of the democratic process in the sectional conflict, the harsh realities of chattel slavery in...