Lincoln's Northern Nemesis

Lincoln's Northern Nemesis PDF Author: Martin Gottlieb
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476643717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio opponent of the Civil War and of abolition, was thrown out of the country by Abraham Lincoln because of his political views. As a result of his banishment, Vallandigham became a martyr to his cause and was nominated for governor by the Democratic Party in 1863. He ran the race from exile. The stakes in this colorful campaign were enormous, and Lincoln was highly involved, worrying that a Vallandigham victory would be seen as a rejection of the war by voters. That could have been devastating to the Union cause. It also would likely have made Vallandigham--a former congressman from Dayton--a presidential prospect. This book tells the story of a unique event in American history: a president--significantly, Lincoln--banishing a leading opponent, with that opponent then being nominated by a major party for high office in an important state.

Lincoln's Northern Nemesis

Lincoln's Northern Nemesis PDF Author: Martin Gottlieb
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476643717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio opponent of the Civil War and of abolition, was thrown out of the country by Abraham Lincoln because of his political views. As a result of his banishment, Vallandigham became a martyr to his cause and was nominated for governor by the Democratic Party in 1863. He ran the race from exile. The stakes in this colorful campaign were enormous, and Lincoln was highly involved, worrying that a Vallandigham victory would be seen as a rejection of the war by voters. That could have been devastating to the Union cause. It also would likely have made Vallandigham--a former congressman from Dayton--a presidential prospect. This book tells the story of a unique event in American history: a president--significantly, Lincoln--banishing a leading opponent, with that opponent then being nominated by a major party for high office in an important state.

Lincoln's Northern Nemesis

Lincoln's Northern Nemesis PDF Author: Martin Gottlieb
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio opponent of the Civil War and of abolition, was thrown out of the country by Abraham Lincoln because of his political views. As a result of his banishment, Vallandigham became a martyr to his cause and was nominated for governor by the Democratic Party in 1863. He ran the race from exile. The stakes in this colorful campaign were enormous, and Lincoln was highly involved, worrying that a Vallandigham victory would be seen as a rejection of the war by voters. That could have been devastating to the Union cause. It also would likely have made Vallandigham--a former congressman from Dayton--a presidential prospect. This book tells the story of a unique event in American history: a president--significantly, Lincoln--banishing a leading opponent, with that opponent then being nominated by a major party for high office in an important state.

Opposing Lincoln

Opposing Lincoln PDF Author: Thomas C. Mackey
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700630155
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In a time of great national division, a time of threats of resistance and counterthreats of suppression, a controversial president takes drastic measures to rein in his critics, citing national interest, national security, and his obligations as chief executive. If this seems familiar in our current moment of intense political agitation, that is all the more reason to attend to Thomas Mackey’s gripping, learned, and eminently readable account of the Civil War–era case of Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio congressman arrested for campaigning against the war and President Lincoln’s policies. In Mackey’s telling, the story of this prominent “Copperhead,” or Southern sympathizer, illuminates the problem of internal security, loyalty, and disloyalty faced by the Lincoln administration during wartime—and, more generally, the problem of determining the balance between executive power and tyranny, and between dissent and treason. Opposing Lincoln explores Vallandigham’s opposition not only to Lincoln and his administration but also to Lincoln’s use of force and his executive orders suspending habeas corpus. In addition to tracing Vallandigham’s experiences of being arrested, tried, convicted by military commission instead of civilian courts, and then banished from the United States, this historical narrative introduces readers to Lincoln’s most important statements on presidential powers in wartime, while also providing a primer on the wealth of detail involved in such legal and military controversies. Examining the long-standing issue of the limits of political dissent in wartime, the book asks the critical historical question of what reasonable lengths a legitimate government can go to in order to protect itself and its citizens from threats, whether external or internal. The case of Clement Vallandigham is, Mackey suggests, a quintessentially American story. Testing the limits of dissent in a political democracy in wartime, and of the scope and power of constitutional government, it clarifies a critical aspect of the American experience from afar.

The Broken Constitution

The Broken Constitution PDF Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations

Lincoln and Douglas

Lincoln and Douglas PDF Author: Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416564926
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
From the two-time winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize, a stirring and surprising account of the debates that made Lincoln a national figure and defined the slavery issue that would bring the country to war. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln was known as a successful Illinois lawyer who had achieved some prominence in state politics as a leader in the new Republican Party. Two years later, he was elected president and was on his way to becoming the greatest chief executive in American history. What carried this one-term congressman from obscurity to fame was the campaign he mounted for the United States Senate against the country’s most formidable politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer and fall of 1858. As this brilliant narrative by the prize-winning Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo dramatizes, Lincoln would emerge a predominant national figure, the leader of his party, the man who would bear the burden of the national confrontation. Lincoln lost that Senate race to Douglas, though he came close to toppling the “Little Giant,” whom almost everyone thought was unbeatable. Guelzo’s Lincoln and Douglas brings alive their debates and this whole year of campaigns and underscores their centrality in the greatest conflict in American history. The encounters between Lincoln and Douglas engage a key question in American political life: What is democracy's purpose? Is it to satisfy the desires of the majority? Or is it to achieve a just and moral public order? These were the real questions in 1858 that led to the Civil War. They remain questions for Americans today.

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.

Life on the Circuit with Lincoln

Life on the Circuit with Lincoln PDF Author: Henry Clay Whitney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
"Originally commenced as a pastime, and to please a circle of friends alone, success, in any degree, can only be hoped for, because of my vantage ground as an intimate and close friend of Mr. Lincoln, and because, by reason of such intimacy, of the novelty of some of the facts and deductions, and not, in any sense, by reason, but in spite of, its literary style or, rather, the lack thereof."--Preface.

Lincoln and the Power of the Press

Lincoln and the Power of the Press PDF Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439192715
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Examines Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the press, arguing that he used such intimidation and manipulation techniques as closing down dissenting newspapers, pampering favoring newspaper men, and physically moving official telegraph lines.

Midnight Rising

Midnight Rising PDF Author: Tony Horwitz
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429996986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.

The F Street Mess

The F Street Mess PDF Author: Alice Elizabeth Malavasic
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469635534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Pushing back against the idea that the Slave Power conspiracy was merely an ideological construction, Alice Elizabeth Malavasic argues that some southern politicians in the 1850s did indeed hold an inordinate amount of power in the antebellum Congress and used it to foster the interests of slavery. Malavasic focuses her argument on Senators David Rice Atchison of Missouri, Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina, and Robert M. T. Hunter and James Murray Mason of Virginia, known by their contemporaries as the "F Street Mess" for the location of the house they shared. Unlike the earlier and better-known triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, the F Street Mess was a functioning oligarchy within the U.S. Senate whose power was based on shared ideology, institutional seniority, and personal friendship. By centering on their most significant achievement--forcing a rewrite of the Nebraska bill that repealed the restriction against slavery above the 36 degrees 30′ parallel--Malavasic demonstrates how the F Street Mess's mastery of the legislative process led to one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in United States history and helped pave the way to secession.