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Prelude To Civil War By William W Freehling
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Book Synopsis Prelude to Civil War by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book Prelude to Civil War written by William W. Freehling and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh analysis revises many previous theories on origins & significance of the nullification controversy.
Book Synopsis The Reintegration of American History by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book The Reintegration of American History written by William W. Freehling and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on slavery in the Old South, including Denmark Vesey.
Book Synopsis Becoming Lincoln by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book Becoming Lincoln written by William W. Freehling and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2018 Lincoln Prize Previous biographies of Abraham Lincoln—universally acknowledged as one of America’s greatest presidents—have typically focused on his experiences in the White House. In Becoming Lincoln, renowned historian William Freehling instead emphasizes the prewar years, revealing how Lincoln came to be the extraordinary leader who would guide the nation through its most bitter chapter. Freehling’s engaging narrative focuses anew on Lincoln’s journey. The epic highlights Lincoln’s difficult family life, first with his father and later with his wife. We learn about the staggering number of setbacks and recoveries Lincoln experienced. We witness Lincoln’s famous embodiment of the self-made man (although he sought and received critical help from others). The book traces Lincoln from his tough childhood through incarnations as a bankrupt with few prospects, a superb lawyer, a canny two-party politician, a great orator, a failed state legislator, and a losing senatorial candidate, to a winning presidential contender and a besieged six weeks as a pre-war president. As Lincoln’s individual life unfolds, so does the American nineteenth century. Few great Americans have endured such pain but been rewarded with such success. Few lives have seen so much color and drama. Few mirror so uncannily the great themes of their own society. No one so well illustrates the emergence of our national economy and the causes of the Civil War. The book concludes with a substantial epilogue in which Freehling turns to Lincoln’s wartime presidency to assess how the preceding fifty-one years of experience shaped the Great Emancipator’s final four years. Extensively illustrated, nuanced but swiftly paced, and full of examples that vividly bring Lincoln to life for the modern reader, this new biography shows how an ordinary young man from the Midwest prepared to become, against almost absurd odds, our most tested and successful president.
Book Synopsis Showdown in Virginia by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book Showdown in Virginia written by William W. Freehling and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1861, Virginians confronted destiny—their own and their nation’s. Pivotal decisions awaited about secession, the consequences of which would unfold for a hundred years and more. But few Virginians wanted to decide at all. Instead, they talked, almost interminably. The remarkable record of the Virginia State Convention, edited in a fine modern version in 1965, runs to almost 3,000 pages, some 1.3 million words. Through the diligent efforts of William W. Freehling and Craig M. Simpson, this daunting record has now been made accessible to teachers, students, and general readers. With important contextual contributions—an introduction and commentary, chronology, headnotes, and suggestions for further reading—the essential core of the speeches, and what they signified, is now within reach. This is a collection of speeches by men for whom everything was at risk. Some saw independence and even war as glory; others predicted ruin and devastation. They all offered commentary of lasting interest to anyone concerned about the fate of democracy in crisis.
Book Synopsis The South Vs. the South by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book The South Vs. the South written by William W. Freehling and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the Confederacy lose the Civil War? Most historians point to the larger number of Union troops, for example, or the North's greater industrial might. Now, in The South Vs. the South, one of America's leading authorities on the Civil War era offers an entirely new answer to this question. William Freehling argues that anti-Confederate Southerners--specifically, border state whites and southern blacks--helped cost the Confederacy the war. White men in such border states as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, Freehling points out, were divided in their loyalties--but far more joined the Union army (or simply stayed home) than marched off in Confederate gray. If they had enlisted as rebel troops in the same proportion as white men did farther south, their numbers would have offset all the Confederate casualties during four years of war. In addition, when those states stayed loyal, the vast majority of the South's urban population and industrial capacity remained in Union hands. And many forget, Freehling writes, that the slaves' own decisions led to a series of white decisions (culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation) that turned federal forces into an army of liberation, depriving the South of labor and adding essential troops to the blue ranks. Whether revising our conception of slavery or of Abraham Lincoln, or establishing the antecedents of Martin Luther King, or analyzing Union military strategy, or uncovering new meanings in what is arguably America's greatest piece of sculpture, Augustus St.-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial, Freehling writes with piercing insight and rhetorical verve. Concise and provocative, The South Vs. the South will forever change the way we view the Civil War.
Book Synopsis The Road to Disunion by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book The Road to Disunion written by William W. Freehling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first most Southerners took a cautious approach, willing to wait and see what Lincoln would do--especially, whether he would take any antagonistic measures against the South. But at this moment, the extreme fringe in the South took charge, first in South Carolina and Mississippi, but then throughout the lower South, sounding the drum roll for secession. Indeed, The Road to Disunion is the first book to fully document how this decided minority of Southern hotspurs took hold of the secessionist issue and, aided by a series of fortuitous events, drove the South out of the Union. Freehling provides compelling profiles of the leaders of this movement--many of them members of the South Carolina elite. Throughout the narrative, he evokes a world of fascinating characters and places as he captures the drama of one of America's most important--and least understood--stories. The long-awaited sequel to the award-winning Secessionists at Bay, which was hailed as "the most important history of the Old South ever published," this volume concludes a major contribution to our understanding of the Civil War. A compelling, vivid portrait of the final years of the antebellum South, The Road to Disunion will stand as an important history of its subject. "This sure-to-be-lasting work--studded with pen portraits and consistently astute in its appraisal of the subtle cultural and geographic variations in the region--adds crucial layers to scholarship on the origins of America's bloodiest conflict." --The Atlantic Monthly "Splendid, painstaking account...and so a work of history reaches into the past to illuminate the present. It is light we need, and we owe Freehling a debt for shedding it." --Washington Post "A masterful, dramatic, breathtakingly detailed narrative." --The Baltimore Sun
Book Synopsis Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina by : Steven A. Channing
Download or read book Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina written by Steven A. Channing and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Secession Debated by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book Secession Debated written by William W. Freehling and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critical northern antebellum debate matched the rhetorical skills of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in an historic argument over the future of slavery in a westward-expanding America. Two years later, an equally historic oratorical showdown between secessionists and Unionists in Georgia generated as much popular interest south of the Mason-Dixon line, and perhaps had an even more profound immediate effect on the future of the United States. With Abraham Lincoln's "Black Republican" triumph in the presidential election of 1860 came ardent secessionist sentiment in the South. But Unionists were equally zealous and while South Carolina—a bastion of Disunionism since 1832—seemed certain to secede, the other fourteen slave states were far from decided. In the deep South, the road to disunion depended much on the actions of Georgia, a veritable microcosm of the divided South and geographically in the middle of the Cotton South. If Georgia went for the Union, secessionist South Carolina could be isolated. So in November of 1860 all the eyes of Dixie turned to tiny Milledgeville, pre-war capital of Georgia, for a legislative confrontation that would help chart the course toward civil war. In Secession Debated, William W. Freehling and Craig M. Simpson have for the first time collected the seven surviving speeches and public letters of this greatest of southern debates over disunion, providing today's reader with a unique window into a moment of American crisis. Introducing the debate and debaters in compelling fashion, the editors help bring to life a sleepy Southern town suddenly alive with importance as a divided legislature met to decide the fate of Georgia, and by extension, that of the nation. We hear myriad voices, among them the energetic and self-righteous governor Joseph E. Brown who, while a slaveholder and secessionist, was somewhat suspect as a native North Georgian; Alexander H. Stephens, the eloquent Unionist whose "calm dispassionate approach" ultimately backfired; and fiery secessionist Robert Toombs who, impatient with Brown's indecisiveness and the caution of the Unionists, shouted to legislators: "Give me the sword! but if you do not place it in my hands, before God! I will take it." The secessionists' Henry Benning and Thomas R.R. Cobb as well as the Unionists Benjamin Hill and Herschel Johnson also speak to us across the years, most with eloquence, all with the patriotic, passionate conviction that defined an era. In the end, the legislature adopted a convention bill which decreed a popular vote on the issue in early January, 1861. The election results were close, mirroring the intense debate of two months before: 51% of Georgians favored immediate secession, a slim margin which the propaganda-conscious Brown later inflated to 58%. On January 19th the Georgia Convention sanctioned secession in a 166-130 vote, and the imminent Confederacy had its Southern hinge. Secession Debated is a colorful and gripping tale told in the words of the actual participants, one which sheds new light on one of the great and hitherto neglected verbal showdowns in American history. It is essential to a full understanding of the origins of the war between the states.
Book Synopsis The Road to Disunion by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book The Road to Disunion written by William W. Freehling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991-12-05 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states, the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was, in William Freehling's words, "a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream." It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers, where the egalitarian spirit sweeping the North seeped down through border states already uncertain about slavery, where even sections of the same state (for instance, coastal and mountain Virginia) divided bitterly on key issues. It was the world of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, and also of Gullah Jack, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass. Now, in the first volume of his long awaited, monumental study of the South's road to disunion, historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Controversy, the Gag Rule ("the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy"), the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way, he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850, and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism, Jeffersonian states' rights, Jacksonian democracy, and the causes of the American Civil War. But for all Freehling's brilliant insight into American antebellum politics, Secessionists at Bay is at bottom the saga of the rich social tapestry of the pre-war South. He takes us to old Charleston, Natchez, and Nashville, to the big house of a typical plantation, and we feel anew the tensions between the slaveowner and his family, the poor whites and the planters, the established South and the newer South, and especially between the slave and his master, "Cuffee" and "Massa." Freehling brings the Old South back to life in all its color, cruelty, and diversity. It is a memorable portrait, certain to be a key analysis of this crucial era in American history.
Download or read book Perryville written by Kenneth W. Noe and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2001-09-21 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Seaborg Civil War Prize: “Impressively researched . . . will please many readers, especially those who enjoy exciting battle histories.” ―Journal of Military History On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed near Perryville in what would be the largest battle ever fought on Kentucky soil. The climax of a campaign that began two months before in northern Mississippi, Perryville came to be recognized as the high-water mark of the western Confederacy. Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle is the definitive account of this important conflict. While providing all the parry and thrust one might expect from an excellent battle narrative, the book also reflects the new trends in Civil War history in its concern for ordinary soldiers and civilians caught in the slaughterhouse. The last chapter, unique among Civil War battle narratives, even discusses the battle’s veterans, their families, efforts to preserve the battlefield, and the many ways Americans have remembered and commemorated Perryville. “This superb book unravels the complexities of Perryville, but discloses these military details within their social and political contexts. These considerations greatly enrich our understanding of war, history, and human endeavor.” —Virginia Quarterly Review “It should remain the definitive work of the Perryville campaign for many years.” —Bowling Green Daily News
Book Synopsis The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War by : Michael F. Conlin
Download or read book The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War written by Michael F. Conlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates the crucial role that the Constitution played in the coming of the Civil War.
Book Synopsis Gateway to the Confederacy by : Evan C. Jones
Download or read book Gateway to the Confederacy written by Evan C. Jones and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of ten new essays from some of our finest Civil War historians working today, Gateway to the Confederacy offers a reexamination of the campaigns fought to gain possession of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Each essay addresses how Americans have misconstrued the legacy of these struggles and why scholars feel it necessary to reconsider one of the most critical turning points of the American Civil War. The first academic analysis that delineates all three Civil War campaigns fought from 1862 to 1863 for control of Chattanooga -- the trans-portation hub of the Confederacy and gateway to the Deep South -- this book deals not only with military operations but also with the campaigns' origins and consequences. The essays also explore the far-reaching social and political implications of the battles and bring into sharp focus their impact on postwar literature and commemoration. Several chapters revise the traditional portraits of both famous and con-troversial figures including Ambrose Bierce and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Others investigate some of the more salient moments of these cam-paigns such as the circumstances that allowed for the Confederate breakthrough assault at Chickamauga. Gateway to the Confederacy reassesses these pivotal battles, long in need of reappraisal, and breaks new ground as each scholar re-shapes a particular aspect of this momentous part of the Civil War. CONTRIBUTORS Russell S. Bonds Stephen Cushman Caroline E. Janney Evan C. Jones David A. Powell Gerald J. Prokopowicz William Glenn Robertson Wiley Sword Craig L. Symonds
Book Synopsis Secessionists Triumphant by : William W. Freehling
Download or read book Secessionists Triumphant written by William W. Freehling and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Slavery and the Annexation of Texas by : Frederick Merk
Download or read book Slavery and the Annexation of Texas written by Frederick Merk and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1972 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the eminent Harvard historian Frederick Merk focuses on the intricate maneuverings of President Tyler and his colleagues to reverse the policies of three previous Administrations and, without reference to public opinion, move toward the annexation of Texas.
Book Synopsis American Nationalisms by : Benjamin E. Park
Download or read book American Nationalisms written by Benjamin E. Park and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces how early Americans imagined what a 'nation' meant during the first fifty years of the country's existence.
Book Synopsis Brown v. Board of Education by : James T. Patterson
Download or read book Brown v. Board of Education written by James T. Patterson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?
Book Synopsis John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union by : John Niven
Download or read book John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union written by John Niven and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1993-07-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) was one of the prominent figure of American politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. The son of a slaveholding South Carolina family, he served in the federal government in various capacities—as senator from his home state, as secretary of war and secretary of state, and as vice-president in the administrations of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Calhoun was a staunch supporter of the interests of his state and region. His battle from tariff reform, aimed at alleviating the economic problems of the southern states, eventually led him to formulate his famous nullification doctrine, which asserted the right of states to declare federal laws null and void within their own boundaries. In the first full-scale biography of Calhoun in almost half a century, John Niven skillfully presents a new interpretation of this preeminent spokesman of the Old South. Deftly blending Calhoun’s public career with important elements of his private life, Niven shows Calhoun to have been at once a more consistent politician and a far more complex human being than previous historians have thought. Rather than history’s image of an assured, self-confident Calhoun, Niven reveals a figure who was in many ways insecure and defensive. Niven maintains that the War of 1812, which Calhoun helped instigate and which nearly resulted in the nation’s ruin, made a lasting impression on Calhoun’s mind and personality. From that point until the end of his life, he sought security first from the western Indians and the British while he was secretary of war, then from northern exploitation of southern wealth through what he regarded as manipulation of public policy while he was vice-president and a senator. He worked tirelessly to further the South’s slave-plantation system of economic and social values. He sought protection for a region that he freely admitted was low in population and poor in material resources, and he defended a position that he knew was morally inferior. Niven portrays Calhoun as a driven, tragic figure whose ambitions and personal desires to achieve leadership and compensate for a lack of inner assurance were often thwarted. The life he made for himself, the peace he felt on his plantation with his dependent retainers, and the agricultural pursuits that represented to him and his neighbors stability in a rapidly changing environment were beyond price. Calhoun sought to resist any menace to this way of life with all the force of his character and intellect. Yet in the end Calhoun’s headstrong allegiance to his region helped to destroy the very culture he sought to preserve and disrupted the Union he had hoped to keep whole. Niven’s masterful retelling of Calhoun’s eventful life is a model biography.
