American History: 19th Century

The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

Michael F. Holt

The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was involved at every level of American politics—local, state, ... More

The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was involved 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. This book gives a comprehensive history of the Whigs—a history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion. The history of the Whig Party becomes a political history of the United States during the tumultuous Antebellum period. The book offers a panoramic account of a time when a welter of parties (Whig, Democratic, Anti-Mason, Know Nothing, Free Soil, Republican) and many extraordinary political statesmen (including Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay) struggled to control the national agenda as the United States inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, when local concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events rocked the country, including the Nullification Controversy, the Panic of 1837, the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This book captures all of this as it shows that, amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, repeatedly trying to find a compromise position. Indeed, the Whig Party emerges as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession and civil war. Less

Science and the Social Good: Nature, Culture, and Community, 1865-1965

John P. Herron

From the beginnings of industrial capitalism to contemporary disputes over evolution, nature has long been part of the public debate over the social good. As such, many natural ... More

From the beginnings of industrial capitalism to contemporary disputes over evolution, nature has long been part of the public debate over the social good. As such, many natural scientists throughout American history have understood their work as a cultural activity contributing to social stability, and their field as a powerful tool for enhancing the quality of American life. In the late Victorian era, interwar period, and post-war decades, massive social change, economic collapse and recovery, and the aftermath of war, prompted natural scientists to offer up a civic-minded natural science concerned with the political wellbeing of American society. Science and the Social Good explores the evolving internal and external forces influencing the design and purpose of American natural science by focusing on three representative scientists — geologist Clarence King, forester Robert Marshall, and biologist Rachel Carson — who purposefully considered the social outcomes of their work. As comfortable in the royal courts of Europe as the remote field camps of the American West, Clarence King was the founding director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and used his standing to integrate science into late 19th century political debates about foreign policy, immigration, and social reform. In the mid-1930s, Robert Marshall founded the environmental advocacy group, The Wilderness Society, which transformed the face of natural preservation in America. Committed to social justice, Marshall blended forest ecology and pragmatic philosophy to craft a natural science ethic that extended the reach of science into political discussions about the restructuring of society prompted by urbanization. Less

Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848–1865

Paul Quigley

Between 1848 and 1865 white southerners felt the grounds of nationhood shift beneath their feet. The regional conflict over slavery that culminated in the American Civil War forced them ... More

Between 1848 and 1865 white southerners felt the grounds of nationhood shift beneath their feet. The regional conflict over slavery that culminated in the American Civil War forced them to confront difficult problems of nationalism, allegiance, and identity. In doing so, white southerners drew on their long experience as American nationalists and their knowledge of nationalism in the wider world. Shifting Grounds tells the story not just of the radical secessionists who shattered the Union in 1861, but also of the moderate majority who struggled before and after secession to balance their southern and American identities and loyalties. As they pondered the changing significance of the Fourth of July, as they fused ideals of masculinity and femininity with national identity, they revealed the shifting meanings of nationalism and citizenship. Southerners also looked across the Atlantic, comparing southern separatism with movements in Hungary and Ireland, and applying the transatlantic model of romantic nationalism first to the United States and later to the Confederate States of America. The creation of the Confederacy and the onset of brutal war in 1861 both built on and transformed antebellum ideas. A powerful national government imposed newly stringent obligations of citizenship while the shared experience of suffering united many Confederates in a sacred national community of sacrifice. For all white southerners—Unionists, die-hard Confederates, and the large majority torn between the two—the problems of nationalism had come to matter more by 1865 than ever before. Less

The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

Don E. Fehrenbacher

Ward M. McAfee (ed.)

Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But this book refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the ... More

Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But this book refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. The book shows that the Constitution itself was more or less neutral on the issue of slavery and that, in the antebellum period, the idea that the Constitution protected slavery was hotly debated (many Northerners would concede only that slavery was protected by state law, not by federal law). Nevertheless, it also reveals that US policy abroad and in the territories was consistently proslavery. The book makes clear why Lincoln's election was such a shock to the South and shows how Lincoln's approach to emancipation, which seems exceedingly cautious by modern standards, quickly evolved into a “Republican revolution” that ended the anomaly of the United States as a “slaveholding republic”. Less

Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk

William Dusinberre

This book examines both the social and the political history of slavery. James Polk — President of the United States from 1845 to 1849 — owned a Mississippi cotton plantation with about ... More

This book examines both the social and the political history of slavery. James Polk — President of the United States from 1845 to 1849 — owned a Mississippi cotton plantation with about fifty slaves. Drawing upon previously unexplored records, this book recreates the world of Polk's Mississippi plantation and the personal histories of his slaves, in what is arguably the most careful and vivid account to date of how slavery functioned on a single cotton plantation. Life at the Polk estate was brutal and often short. Fewer than one in two slave children lived to the age of fifteen, a child mortality rate even higher than that on the average plantation. A steady stream of slaves temporarily fled the plantation throughout Polk's tenure as absentee slavemaster. Yet Polk was in some respects an enlightened owner, instituting an unusual incentive plan for his slaves and granting extensive privileges to his most favored slave. By contrast with Senator John C. Calhoun, President Polk has been seen as a moderate Southern Democratic leader. But this book suggests that the president's political stance toward slavery — influenced as it was by his deep personal involvement in the plantation system — may actually have helped to precipitate the Civil War that Polk sought to avoid. Less

Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906

Edward L. Ayers

This book represents an abridgement of previous work, Promise of the New South, which tells the history of the American South between the 1870s and the 1900s. It offers a glimpse into a ... More

This book represents an abridgement of previous work, Promise of the New South, which tells the history of the American South between the 1870s and the 1900s. It offers a glimpse into a society undergoing the sudden confrontation with the promises, costs, and consequences of modern life. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee Mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, the book depicts a land of startling contrasts—a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. It takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic “Redeemers” swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. It explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Here is the local Baptist congregation, the country store, the tobacco-stained second-class railroad car, the rise of Populism. Central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. The book weaves all these details into the contradictory story of the New South, showing how the region developed the patterns it was to follow for the next fifty years. Less

Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870–1929

Allison L. Sneider

In 1899, Carrie Chapman Catt, who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, argued that it was the “duty” of U.S. women to help lift the ... More

In 1899, Carrie Chapman Catt, who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, argued that it was the “duty” of U.S. women to help lift the inhabitants of new island possessions in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii up from “barbarism” to “civilization,” a project that would presumably demonstrate the capacity of U.S. women for full citizenship and political rights. Catt, like many suffragists in her day, was well versed in the language of empire and infused the cause of suffrage with imperialist zeal in public debate. Unlike their predecessors, who were working for votes for women within the context of slavery and abolition, the next generation of suffragists argued their case against the backdrop of U.S. expansionism in Indian and Mormon territory at home as well as overseas in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. This book examines these simultaneous political movements—woman suffrage and American imperialism—as inextricably intertwined phenomena, instructively complicating the histories of both. Less

“… The Real War Will Never Get in the Books”: Selections from Writers During the Civil War

Louis P. Masur (ed.)

Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, this book captures the reactions, as the American Civil War was waged, of writers such as Nathaniel ... More

Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, this book captures the reactions, as the American Civil War was waged, of writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott. Less

A Visitation of God: Northern Civilians Interpret the Civil War

Sean A. Scott

This book examines how numerous northern civilians understood the Civil War as a contest permeated with religious significance. From the war's outset, many religious Northerners asserted ... More

This book examines how numerous northern civilians understood the Civil War as a contest permeated with religious significance. From the war's outset, many religious Northerners asserted that God was directing the conflict to chasten his chosen nation and bring about the destruction of slavery. Convinced that the Union was sacred and had to be preserved so that America could fulfill its God‐ordained purpose in world history, many ministers and laypersons wholeheartedly supported the northern war effort and broadcast their political views at church. Overflowing with Christian patriotism, individual congregations and entire denominations frequently alienated members who disagreed with them politically. Some disgruntled Democrats formed their own assemblies where they could avoid political preaching, but these churches oftentimes suffered from partisanship as well. A minority of churchgoers lamented that war and politics had caused people to lose interest in spiritual matters, and some feared that the church had forsaken its divine calling to preach the gospel. The enthusiasm of clergy and laity to sanctify the Union and fuse religion and politics during the Civil War demonstrates that religious Northerners tended to look to the American nation rather the church as the primary means through which God would accomplish his will in the world. Ultimately, this consuming desire to Christianize the Union by infusing it with spiritual significance contributed to the secularization of religion rather than the transformation of the state into a Christian republic. Less