James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War

James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War PDF Author: John W. Quist
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813045037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
As James Buchanan took office in 1857, the United States found itself at a crossroads. Dissolution of the Union had been averted and the Democratic Party maintained control of the federal government, but the nation watched to see if Pennsylvania's first president could make good on his promise to calm sectional tensions. Despite Buchanan's central role in a crucial hour in U.S. history, few presidents have been more ignored by historians. In assembling the essays for this volume, Michael Birkner and John Quist have asked leading scholars to reconsider whether Buchanan’s failures stemmed from his own mistakes or from circumstances that no president could have overcome. Buchanan's dealings with Utah shed light on his handling of the secession crisis. His approach to Dred Scott reinforces the image of a president whose doughface views were less a matter of hypocrisy than a thorough identification with southern interests. Essays on the secession crisis provide fodder for debate about the strengths and limitations of presidential authority in an existential moment for the young nation. Although the essays in this collection offer widely differing interpretations of Buchanan's presidency, they all grapple honestly with the complexities of the issues faced by the man who sat in the White House prior to the towering figure of Lincoln, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a turbulent and formative era.

James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War

James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War PDF Author: John W. Quist
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813045037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
As James Buchanan took office in 1857, the United States found itself at a crossroads. Dissolution of the Union had been averted and the Democratic Party maintained control of the federal government, but the nation watched to see if Pennsylvania's first president could make good on his promise to calm sectional tensions. Despite Buchanan's central role in a crucial hour in U.S. history, few presidents have been more ignored by historians. In assembling the essays for this volume, Michael Birkner and John Quist have asked leading scholars to reconsider whether Buchanan’s failures stemmed from his own mistakes or from circumstances that no president could have overcome. Buchanan's dealings with Utah shed light on his handling of the secession crisis. His approach to Dred Scott reinforces the image of a president whose doughface views were less a matter of hypocrisy than a thorough identification with southern interests. Essays on the secession crisis provide fodder for debate about the strengths and limitations of presidential authority in an existential moment for the young nation. Although the essays in this collection offer widely differing interpretations of Buchanan's presidency, they all grapple honestly with the complexities of the issues faced by the man who sat in the White House prior to the towering figure of Lincoln, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a turbulent and formative era.

Lincoln President-Elect

Lincoln President-Elect PDF Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 141659440X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 643

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Book Description
One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency—there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war. Abraham Lincoln first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the Great Secession Winter—the four months between his election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861—when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states. During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent. Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.

And the War Came

And the War Came PDF Author: Kenneth Milton Stampp
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description


The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War

The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War PDF Author: Michael F. Conlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108495273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Demonstrates the crucial role that the Constitution played in the coming of the Civil War.

James Buchanan

James Buchanan PDF Author: Jean H. Baker
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805069464
Category : Presidents
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
1. Buchanan, James, 1791-1868 2. Presidents United States Biography 3. United States - Politics and Government - 1857-1861.

Rebels in the Making

Rebels in the Making PDF Author: William L. Barney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190076100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Regardless of whether they owned slaves, Southern whites lived in a world defined by slavery. As shown by their blaming British and Northern slave traders for saddling them with slavery, most were uncomfortable with the institution. While many wanted it ended, most were content to leave that up to God. All that changed with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Rebels in the Making is a narrative-driven history of how and why secession occurred. In this work, senior Civil War historian William L. Barney narrates the explosion of the sectional conflict into secession and civil war. Carefully examining the events in all fifteen slave states and distinguishing the political circumstances in each, he argues that this was not a mass democratic movement but one led from above. The work begins with the deepening strains within Southern society as the slave economy matured in the mid-nineteenth century and Southern ideologues struggled to convert whites to the orthodoxy of slavery as a positive good. It then focuses on the years of 1860-1861 when the sectional conflict led to the break-up of the Union. As foreshadowed by the fracturing of the Democratic Party over the issue of federal protection for slavery in the territories, the election of 1860 set the stage for secession. Exploiting fears of slave insurrections, anxieties over crops ravaged by a long drought, and the perceived moral degradation of submitting to the rule of an antislavery Republican, secessionists launched a movement in South Carolina that spread across the South in a frenzied atmosphere described as the great excitement. After examining why Congress was unable to reach a compromise on the core issue of slavery's expansion, the study shows why secession swept over the Lower South in January of 1861 but stalled in the Upper South. The driving impetus for secession is shown to have come from the middling ranks of the slaveholders who saw their aspirations of planter status blocked and denigrated by the Republicans. A separate chapter on the formation of the Confederate government in February of 1861 reveals how moderates and former conservatives pushed aside the original secessionists to assume positions of leadership. The final chapter centers on the crisis over Fort Sumter, the resolution of which by Lincoln precipitated a second wave of secession in the Upper South. Rebels in the Making shows that secession was not a unified movement, but has its own proponents and patterns in each of the slave states. It draws together the voices of planters, non-slaveholders, women, the enslaved, journalists, and politicians. This is the definitive study of the seminal moment in Southern history that culminated in the Civil War.

Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis

Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis PDF Author: David Morris Potter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Secession
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Bibliographical note: p. [376]-388.

Faith Through the Storm

Faith Through the Storm PDF Author: Major James Capers,
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1642986429
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
This is a book about war. A war against America's enemies, against racism, against the loss of fellow warriors in battle, and against the personal loss of family back home. This is the story of Major James Capers, Jr. (USMC Ret.) Jim was born to a family of sharecroppers in South Carolina who escaped to Baltimore, Maryland in the dead of night to escape the days of Jim Crow laws for a better life. Joining the Marines fresh out of high school, Jim had no idea that he was paving the road for future Marines, black and white alike. The first African-American Marine to receive a battlefield commission as a member of 3rd Force Recon, a new special forces unit designed specifically for the war in Vietnam; the first African-American Marine officer used on a Marine recruitment poster; co-leader of the first special forces team to attempt the rescue of American and allied POW's held in a North Vietnamese prison; a leader in Team Broadminded, whose missions were so secret, their military records from Vietnam were not declassified until 2006; nominated for the Medal of Honor; inducted into the Commando Hall of Honor for special forces; awarded the Bronze and the Silver Stars. This book is about a man who is a true American hero, though he denies the notion. Above all, Jim is a husband, a father, a patriot, a warrior who has dealt with the tragedies of his military and personal life, always depending on his faith in God to guide him through the storm.

Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion

Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion PDF Author: James Buchanan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description


The Impending Crisis

The Impending Crisis PDF Author: David M. Potter
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061319295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 667

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Book Description
David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern succession. Now available in a new edition, The Impending Crisis remains one of the most celebrated works of American historical writing.