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.
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.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-240) and index.
Contents
1. Constitutionalism, Capitalism, and Antebellum Society -- 2. Constitutionalism and the Associational Economy -- 3. Taxation and Capitalist Accountability -- 4. Taking Property -- 5. Railroad Accidents and Capitalist Accountability.
Summary
Throughout much of American history the relationship between the Constitution and capitalism has been contentious. Recently, however, consensus has replaced conflict as the framework for understanding capitalism's relationship to constitutional development. Thus the recurrent struggles between producers and capitalists (financiers, speculators, corporations, and the like) over the constitutionality of capitalistic practices have come to be viewed simply as politically manageable tensions within a liberal-capitalist consensus. This study focuses on how antebellum constitutional law and principles responded to and shaped producers' appeals for protection from capitalists' predations. Placing the constitutional system's operation in the context of the nation's profound ideological and social conflicts, Tony A. Freyer suggests that the normative force of constitutional values often enabled pro-producer, protectionist policies to be enacted, despite an emerging corporate and mercantile capitalist consensus. The first chapter sets out a framework for understanding the social basis of constitutionalism and its policymaking impact between 1800 and 1860. Subsequent chapters employ this framework in the setting of the mid-Atlantic states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They focus on four principal policy areas: debtor-creditor relations, taxation, eminent domain, and railroad accidents. This mid-Atlantic region is intended to serve as a federal system in miniature, offering opportunities for comparative analysis. By illuminating the interplay between social conflict and constitutional institutions, the book reveals a policy-making process which was dynamic, reflecting a multiplicity of values and supporting diverse producer interests, many of which conflicted with those of corporate and mercantile capitalists. Freyer challenges established historical interpretations not only of social-class conflict but also of the Supreme Court under chief justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney, with particular regard to states' rights versus federal power and the growth of the Constitution's contract, commerce, and judicial clauses. Thus the book will be of interest not only to political scientists and to judges, lawyers, and professors of law but also to historians and general readers.
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.
Contents: 1. German long - distance migration / 2. The flow and composition of German immigration to the American colonies / 3. The trade in migrants / 4. The ordeal of relocation / 5.Irish immigration to the Delaware Valley / Conclusion : A model for the modern era / Appendix : German immigration voyages 1683 to 1775
Summary
"Wokeck shows how first the German system of immigration, and then the Irish system, evolved from earlier, haphazard forms into modern mass trans-oceanic migration. At the center of this development were merchants on both sides of the Atlantic who organized a business that enabled them to make profitable use of underutilized cargo space on ships bound from Europe to the British North American colonies. This trade offered German and Irish immigrants transatlantic passage on terms that allowed even people of little and modest means to pursue opportunities that beckoned in the New World. The eighteenth-century changes established a model for the better-known mass migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which drew wave after wave of Europeans to the New World in the hope of making a better life than the one they left behind-a story that is familiar to most modern Americans." [from the publisher]
