"When historian Alfred "Alf" Clayton is invited by an academic journal to record his impressions of the Gerald R. Ford Administration (1974-77), he recalls not the political events of the time but rather a turbulent period of his own sexual past. Alf's highly idiosyncratic contribution to Retrospect consists not only of reams of unbuttoned personal history but also of pages from an unpublished project of the time, a chronicle of the presidency of James Buchanan (1857-61). The alternating texts mirror each other and tell a story in counterpoint, a frequently hilarious comedy of manners contrasting the erotic etiquette and social dictions of antebellum Washington with those of late-twentieth-century southern New Hampshire. Alf's style is Nabokovian. His obsessions are vintage Updike. " [from Amazon.com]
Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-310) and index.
Summary
Although the United States has always portrayed itself as a sanctuary for the world's victim's of poverty and oppression, anti-immigrant movements have enjoyed remarkable success throughout American history. None attained greater prominence than the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a fraternal order referred to most commonly as the Know Nothing party. Vowing to reduce the political influence of immigrants and Catholics, the Know Nothings burst onto the American political scene in 1854, and by the end of the following year they had elected eight governors, more than one hundred congressmen, and thousands of other local officials including the mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago. After their initial successes, the Know Nothings attempted to increase their appeal by converting their network of lodges into a conventional political organization, which they christened the "American Party." Recently, historians have pointed to the Know Nothings' success as evidence that ethnic and religious issues mattered more to nineteenth-century voters than better-known national issues such as slavery. In this important book, however, Anbinder argues that the Know Nothings' phenomenal success was inextricably linked to the firm stance their northern members took against the extension of slavery. Most Know Nothings, he asserts, saw slavery and Catholicism as interconnected evils that should be fought in tandem. Although the Know Nothings certainly were bigots, their party provided an early outlet for the anti-slavery sentiment that eventually led to the Civil War. Anbinder's study presents the first comprehensive history of America's most successful anti-immigrant movement, as well as a major reinterpretation of the political crisis that led to the Civil War.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [341]-376) and index.
Contents
A new year and a fresh start -- Politics and the social milieu -- James Buchanan : President-elect -- The President, the Chief Justice, and a slave named Scott -- The heart of the matter : slavery and sectionalism -- Popular sovereignty, Kansas style -- Dog days -- Flush times and an autumn panic -- Northern politics : the parties in equipoise -- Politics as farce : the Lecompton Constitution -- Politics as tragedy : Buchanan's decision -- 1858 : the fruits of Lecompton.
Summary
It was a year packed with unsettling events. The Panic of 1857 closed every bank in New York City, ruined thousands of businesses, and caused widespread unemployment among industrial workers. The Mormons in Utah Territory threatened rebellion when federal troops approached with a non-Morman governor to replace Brigham Young. The Supreme Court outraged northernRepublicans and abolitionists with the Dred Scott decision ("a breathtaking example of judicial activism"). etc.
Prologue: America's Crisis -- 1. Slavery and States' Rights in the Early Republic -- 2. The Political Economy of Slavery and Secession -- 3. The Slave Power Seeks Foreign Conquest -- 4. Emergence of the Republican Party -- 5. The Confederate States of America -- 6. Mobilizing for Conflict -- 7. The Military Struggle -- 8. The War to Abolish Slavery? -- 9. Republican Neo-Mercantilism Versus Confederate War Socialism -- 10. Dissent and Disaffection - North and South -- 11. The Ravages of Total War -- 12. The Politics of Reconstruction -- 13. American Society Transformed -- Epilogue: America's Turning Point.
Summary
This book combines a sweeping narrative history of the Civil War with a bold new look at the war's significance for American society. Professor Hummel sees the Civil War as America's turning point: simultaneously the culmination and repudiation of the American revolution. A unique feature of the book is the bibliographical essays which follow every chapter. Here the author surveys the literature and points out where his own interpretation fits into the continuing clash of viewpoints which informs historical debate on the Civil War.
editor, Robert G. Crist ; contributors, Roland M. Baumann, Rodger C. Henderson, Owen S. Ireland.
Place of Publication
University Park, Pa
Publisher
Pennsylvania Historical Association,
Date of Publication
1990.
Physical Description
viii, 93 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Series
Pennsylvania history studies ;
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Summary
"Enter into the contentious debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and learn Pennsylvania's role in shaping the first ten amendments to the document, the Bill of Rights." [from the publisher]
Guide to research collections of former United States senators, 1789-1995 a listing of archival repositories housing the papers of former senators, related collections, and oral history interviews
Includes bibliographical references (p. [1181]-1201) and index.
Summary
"The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was represented at every level of American politics - local, state, and federal - in the years before the Civil War, and controlled the White House for eight of the twenty-two years that it existed. Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written - a monumental history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion."--BOOK JACKET.
Reprint. Published by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-106) and index.
Summary
Includes diary entries, personal letters, and archival photographs to describe the experiences of boys, sixteen years old or younger, who fought in the Civil War.
edited by Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute.
ISBN
0807847348 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Place of Publication
Chapel Hill
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press,
Date of Publication
c1998.
Physical Description
x, 390 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Notes
"Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, the Newberry Library, Chicago, and the Historic New Orleans Collection."
Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-382) and index.
Contents
Introduction : on the connection of frontiers / Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute -- Shamokin, "the very seat of the Prince of darkness": unsettling the early American frontier / James H. Merrell -- Metaphor, meaning, and misunderstanding : language and power on the Pennsylvania frontier / Jane T. Merritt -- Black "go-betweens" and the mutability of "race," status, and identity on New York's pre-revolutionary frontier / William B. Hart -- "Insidious friends" : gift giving and the Cherokee-British alliance in the Seven Years' War / Gregory Evans Dowd --"Domestick ... quiet being broke" : gender conflict among Creek Indians in the eighteenth century / Claudio Saunt -- Pigs and hunters : "rights in the woods" on the trans-Appalachian frontier / Stephen Aron -- Distinctions and partitions amongst us : identity and interaction in the revolutionary Ohio Valley / Elizabeth A. Perkins -- "Noble actors" upon "the theatre of honour" : power and civility in the Treaty of Greenville / Andrew R.L. Cayton -- To live among us : accommodation, gender, and conflict in the Western Great Lakes region, 1760-1832 / Lucy Eldersveld Murphy -- "More motley than Mackinaw" : from ethnic mixing to ethnic cleansing on the frontier of the Lower Missouri, 1783-1833 / John Mack Faragher -- Remembering American frontiers : King Philip's War and the American imagination / Jill Lepore.
