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The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War
Every American war has brought conflict over the extent to which national security will permit protesters to exercise their constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The most famous case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln’s Civil War policies and one of the most controversial figure in the nation’s history. In the great crisis of his time, he insisted that no circumstance, even war, could deprive a citizen of his right to oppose government policy freely and openly.
The consequence was a furor which shook the nation’s legislative halls and filled the press with vituperation. The ...Read More
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Free Soil: The Election of 1848
The presidential election of 1848, known as the Free Soil election, marked the emergence of antislavery sentiment as a determining political force on a national scale. In this book Joseph G. Rayback provides the first comprehensive history of the campaign and the election, documenting his analysis with contemporary letters and newspaper accounts.
The progress of the campaign is examined in light of the Free Soil movement: agitation for Free Soil candidates and platforms at the national conventions proved ineffective, and the nominations of Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass completed the major parties’ alienation of the various antislavery groups. Thwarted in ...Read More
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The Allegheny Frontier: West Virginia Beginnings, 1730–1830
The Allegheny frontier, comprising the mountainous area of present-day West Virginia and bordering states, is studied here in a broad context of frontier history and national development. The region was significant in the great American westward movement, but Otis K. Rice seeks also to call attention to the impact of the frontier experience upon the later history of the Allegheny Highlands. He sees a relationship between its prolonged frontier experience and the problems of Appalachia in the twentieth century.
Through an intensive study of the social, economic, and political developments in pioneer West Virginia, Rice shows that during the period ...Read More
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Pennsylvania and the War of 1812
In this study of Pennsylvania and the War of 1812, the author sees the political ambitions of the Republicans, rather than economic, diplomatic or expansionist motives as the primary impetus for the outbreak of the war. Fearful of the Federalists’ growing strength, the Republicans exploited the friction with England to maintain their power and to secure the reelection of Madison to the presidency. In this strategy, Victor A. Sapio shows, Pennsylvania played a crucial but hitherto unrecognized part. The strongest Republican state, its politicians influential in their party’s stance, Pennsylvania provided the largest number of votes for war, and willingly ...Read More
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Chateaubriand's Travels in America
Chateaubriand’s Travels in America, presented here in its first modern translation, was a reflection of the attitudes of his epoch toward the New World. And at the same time, because of his enormous literary reputation, it has continued to be a major source of European impressions about America. The America portrayed by Chateaubriand was much more a product of his reading and his imagination than of his actual visit. (His supposed itinerary included a trip up the Hudson to Albany, a visit to Niagara Falls via the Mohawk Trail, a trip down the Mississippi to the Natchez country, and even ...Read More
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Three American Frontiers: Writings of Thomas D. Clark
The casual and the serious of American history—fiddlers, yarn spinners, and riverboat gamblers, politicians, educators, and social reformers—have all concerned Thomas D. Clark, celebrated historian of the Western frontier and the changing South. Three American Frontiers, a volume of his selected writings, draws from works produced throughout Clark's long career as a writer, teacher, and lecturer on the frontier West, social change in the South, and the cutting-edge of historical research.
An avid researcher and a tenacious collector of original materials, Clark looks to the everyday items like the record book of a country store, the file of a small-town ...Read More
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The Civilization of the Old South: Writings of Clement Eaton
Exhibiting a clear, straightforward style, his many works are marked by a comprehensiveness and a catholicity of view. There is hardly an element of southern thought or society, hardly a major movement of any kind or an event of any significance that has escaped his penetrating thought and discerning analysis.
This volume of Eaton's selected writings forms a rich and provocative mosaic of southern life from the years of Thomas Jefferson to the close of the Civil War. These selections, perceptively edited by Albert D. Kirwan, show the wide range of Eaton's interests, including the impact of slavery, the influence ...Read More
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Prologue to Democracy: The Federalists in the South 1789–1800
This study of the Southern Federalists examines their contribution to the formation of the party system at the end of the eighteenth century and to the liberalization of politics in America.
Despite their belief in rule by the elite and their reluctance to develop an organized party system, the Southern Federalists are shown by Lisle A. Rose to have elicited political participation along broad geographic and social lines through local party efforts, newspaper campaigns, and mass meetings.
Forced into distinct ideological and organizational identities, the Southern Federalists as much as their Republican opponents had a significant share in shaping American ...Read More
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Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal
History faced by the disaster of depression, Congress in the early 1930s proved amenable to the far-reaching demands and programs presented to it by the newly elected President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, but by 1937 it showed increasing resistance, even outright opposition, to many New Deal measures. In this study, James T. Patterson examines this resurgence of conservative strength in Congress, focusing upon the personalities and backgrounds of the men involved and upon the key domestic issues which brought them together in an informal coalition opposed to executive plans, especially for the years 1937–1939.
From the first the Roosevelt Congress had ...Read More
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Gold Rush Diary: Being the Journal of Elisha Douglass Perkins on the Overland Trail in the Spring and Summer of 1849
Among the hundreds captivated by the vision of quick riches in the gold fields of California was Elisha Douglass Perkins, a tall handsome youth from Marietta, Ohio, who has here left a remarkable first-hand account of the great trek westward in 1849. Perkins’s diary is an unusually full and intimate record of crossing the plains and mountains of the Great West.
Extensive notes supplement the text, associating it with numerous other published and unpublished accounts, while an appendix of reports and letters from the Marietta newspaper reveals the involvement of those at home with the Gold Rush. An annotated map ...Read More
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