Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 958
Book Description
Suffrage Reconstructed
Author: Laura E. Free
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501701088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed considers how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction. Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War–era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501701088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed considers how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction. Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women's rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women's inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment's congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one's capacity to vote. Stanton's actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War–era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women's rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
The Practice of Citizenship
Author: Derrick R. Spires
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812295773
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship. Grounded in political participation, mutual aid, critique and revolution, and the myriad daily interactions between people living in the same spaces, citizenship, they argued, is not defined by who one is but, rather, by what one does. In The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires examines the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship, beginning in 1787, with the framing of the federal Constitution and the founding of the Free African Society by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and ending in 1861, with the onset of the Civil War. Between these two points he recovers understudied figures such as William J. Wilson, whose 1859 "Afric-American Picture Gallery" appeared in seven installments in The Anglo-African Magazine, and the physician, abolitionist, and essayist James McCune Smith. He places texts such as the proceedings of black state conventions alongside considerations of canonical figures such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Frederick Douglass. Reading black print culture as a space where citizenship was both theorized and practiced, Spires reveals the degree to which concepts of black citizenship emerged through a highly creative and diverse community of letters, not easily reducible to representative figures or genres. From petitions to Congress to Frances Harper's parlor fiction, black writers framed citizenship both explicitly and implicitly, the book demonstrates, not simply as a response to white supremacy but as a matter of course in the shaping of their own communities and in meeting their own political, social, and cultural needs.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812295773
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship. Grounded in political participation, mutual aid, critique and revolution, and the myriad daily interactions between people living in the same spaces, citizenship, they argued, is not defined by who one is but, rather, by what one does. In The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires examines the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship, beginning in 1787, with the framing of the federal Constitution and the founding of the Free African Society by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and ending in 1861, with the onset of the Civil War. Between these two points he recovers understudied figures such as William J. Wilson, whose 1859 "Afric-American Picture Gallery" appeared in seven installments in The Anglo-African Magazine, and the physician, abolitionist, and essayist James McCune Smith. He places texts such as the proceedings of black state conventions alongside considerations of canonical figures such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Frederick Douglass. Reading black print culture as a space where citizenship was both theorized and practiced, Spires reveals the degree to which concepts of black citizenship emerged through a highly creative and diverse community of letters, not easily reducible to representative figures or genres. From petitions to Congress to Frances Harper's parlor fiction, black writers framed citizenship both explicitly and implicitly, the book demonstrates, not simply as a response to white supremacy but as a matter of course in the shaping of their own communities and in meeting their own political, social, and cultural needs.
The Literary and Scientific Repository, and Critical Review
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 526
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 526
Book Description
Removal of the Property Qualification for Voting in the United States
Author: Justin Moeller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351751123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
In Colonial America, democracy was centered in provincial assemblies and based on the collection of neighbors whose freehold ownership made them permanent stakeholders in the community. The removal of the property qualification for voting in the United States occurred over three-quarters of a century and was among the more important events in the history of democratization, functioning to shift voting from a corporate privilege toward a human right. Moving beyond the standard histories of property standard histories of property qualification removal, Justin Moeller and Ronald F. King adopt the theories and methods of social science to discover underlying patterns and regularities, attempting a more systematic understanding of subject. While no historical event has a single cause, party consolidation and party competition provided a necessary mechanism, making background factors politically relevant. No change in franchise rules could occur without the explicit consent of incumbent politicians, always sensitive to the anticipated impact. Moeller and King argue that political parties acted strategically, accepting or rejecting removal of the property qualification as a means of advancing their electoral position. The authors identify four different variants of the strategic calculation variable, significantly helping to explain both the temporal differences across states and the pattern of contestation with each state individually.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351751123
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
In Colonial America, democracy was centered in provincial assemblies and based on the collection of neighbors whose freehold ownership made them permanent stakeholders in the community. The removal of the property qualification for voting in the United States occurred over three-quarters of a century and was among the more important events in the history of democratization, functioning to shift voting from a corporate privilege toward a human right. Moving beyond the standard histories of property standard histories of property qualification removal, Justin Moeller and Ronald F. King adopt the theories and methods of social science to discover underlying patterns and regularities, attempting a more systematic understanding of subject. While no historical event has a single cause, party consolidation and party competition provided a necessary mechanism, making background factors politically relevant. No change in franchise rules could occur without the explicit consent of incumbent politicians, always sensitive to the anticipated impact. Moeller and King argue that political parties acted strategically, accepting or rejecting removal of the property qualification as a means of advancing their electoral position. The authors identify four different variants of the strategic calculation variable, significantly helping to explain both the temporal differences across states and the pattern of contestation with each state individually.
The Road to Mass Democracy
Author: C. H. Hoebeke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135147488X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
Until 1913 and passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, US senators were elected by state legislatures, not directly by the people. Progressive Era reformers urged this revision in answer to the corruption of state "machines" under the dominance of party bosses. They also believed that direct elections would make the Senate more responsive to popular concerns regarding the concentrations of business, capital, and labor that in the industrial era gave rise to a growing sense of individual voicelessness. Popular control over the higher affairs of government was thought to be possible, since the spread of information and communications technology was seen as rendering indirect representation through state legislators unnecessary. However sincerely such reasons were advanced, C. H. Hoebeke contends, none of them accorded with the original intent of the Constitution's framers.The driving force behind the Seventeenth Amendment was the furtherance of democracy exactly what the founders were trying to prevent in placing the Senate out of direct popular reach. Democracy was not synonymous with liberty as it is today, but simply meant the absolute rule of the majority. In full reaction to the egalitarian theories of the Enlightenment, and to the excesses of popular government under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution's framers sought a "mixed" Constitution, an ancient ideal under which democracy was only one element in a balanced republic. Accordingly, only the House of Representatives answered immediately to the people. But as Hoebeke demonstrates, the states never resisted egalitarian encroachments, and had settled for popular expedients when electing both presidents and senators long before the formal cry for amendment. The Progressives' charge that a corrupt and unresponsive Senate could never be reformed until placed directly in the hands of the people was refuted by the amendment itself. As required by the Constitutio
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135147488X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
Until 1913 and passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, US senators were elected by state legislatures, not directly by the people. Progressive Era reformers urged this revision in answer to the corruption of state "machines" under the dominance of party bosses. They also believed that direct elections would make the Senate more responsive to popular concerns regarding the concentrations of business, capital, and labor that in the industrial era gave rise to a growing sense of individual voicelessness. Popular control over the higher affairs of government was thought to be possible, since the spread of information and communications technology was seen as rendering indirect representation through state legislators unnecessary. However sincerely such reasons were advanced, C. H. Hoebeke contends, none of them accorded with the original intent of the Constitution's framers.The driving force behind the Seventeenth Amendment was the furtherance of democracy exactly what the founders were trying to prevent in placing the Senate out of direct popular reach. Democracy was not synonymous with liberty as it is today, but simply meant the absolute rule of the majority. In full reaction to the egalitarian theories of the Enlightenment, and to the excesses of popular government under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution's framers sought a "mixed" Constitution, an ancient ideal under which democracy was only one element in a balanced republic. Accordingly, only the House of Representatives answered immediately to the people. But as Hoebeke demonstrates, the states never resisted egalitarian encroachments, and had settled for popular expedients when electing both presidents and senators long before the formal cry for amendment. The Progressives' charge that a corrupt and unresponsive Senate could never be reformed until placed directly in the hands of the people was refuted by the amendment itself. As required by the Constitutio
A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University
Author: Julius J. Marke
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1886363919
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1418
Book Description
Marke, Julius J., Editor. A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University With Selected Annotations. New York: The Law Center of New York University, 1953. xxxi, 1372 pp. Reprinted 1999 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-19939. ISBN 1-886363-91-9. Cloth. $195. * Reprint of the massive, well-annotated catalogue compiled by the librarian of the School of Law at New York University. Classifies approximately 15,000 works excluding foreign law, by Sources of the Law, History of Law and its Institutions, Public and Private Law, Comparative Law, Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, Political and Economic Theory, Trials, Biography, Law and Literature, Periodicals and Serials and Reference Material. With a thorough subject and author index. This reference volume will be of continuous value to the legal scholar and bibliographer, due not only to the works included but to the authoritative annotations, often citing more than one source. Besterman, A World Bibliography of Bibliographies 3461.
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1886363919
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1418
Book Description
Marke, Julius J., Editor. A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University With Selected Annotations. New York: The Law Center of New York University, 1953. xxxi, 1372 pp. Reprinted 1999 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-19939. ISBN 1-886363-91-9. Cloth. $195. * Reprint of the massive, well-annotated catalogue compiled by the librarian of the School of Law at New York University. Classifies approximately 15,000 works excluding foreign law, by Sources of the Law, History of Law and its Institutions, Public and Private Law, Comparative Law, Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, Political and Economic Theory, Trials, Biography, Law and Literature, Periodicals and Serials and Reference Material. With a thorough subject and author index. This reference volume will be of continuous value to the legal scholar and bibliographer, due not only to the works included but to the authoritative annotations, often citing more than one source. Besterman, A World Bibliography of Bibliographies 3461.
Religious Freedom
Author: John A. Ragosta
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813933714
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment. Jefferson’s expansive vision—including his insistence that political freedom and free thought would be at risk if we did not keep government out of the church and church out of government—enjoyed a near consensus of support at the Supreme Court and among historians, until Justice William Rehnquist called reliance on Jefferson "demonstrably incorrect." Since then, Rehnquist’s call has been taken up by a bevy of jurists and academics anxious to encourage renewed government involvement with religion. In Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed, the historian and lawyer John Ragosta offers a vigorous defense of Jefferson’s advocacy for a strict separation of church and state. Beginning with a close look at Jefferson’s own religious evolution, Ragosta shows that deep religious beliefs were at the heart of Jefferson’s views on religious freedom. Basing his analysis on that Jeffersonian vision, Ragosta redefines our understanding of how and why the First Amendment was adopted. He shows how the amendment’s focus on maintaining the authority of states to regulate religious freedom demonstrates that a very strict restriction on federal action was intended. Ultimately revealing that the great sage demanded a firm separation of church and state but never sought a wholly secular public square, Ragosta provides a new perspective on Jefferson, the First Amendment, and religious liberty within the United States.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813933714
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment. Jefferson’s expansive vision—including his insistence that political freedom and free thought would be at risk if we did not keep government out of the church and church out of government—enjoyed a near consensus of support at the Supreme Court and among historians, until Justice William Rehnquist called reliance on Jefferson "demonstrably incorrect." Since then, Rehnquist’s call has been taken up by a bevy of jurists and academics anxious to encourage renewed government involvement with religion. In Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed, the historian and lawyer John Ragosta offers a vigorous defense of Jefferson’s advocacy for a strict separation of church and state. Beginning with a close look at Jefferson’s own religious evolution, Ragosta shows that deep religious beliefs were at the heart of Jefferson’s views on religious freedom. Basing his analysis on that Jeffersonian vision, Ragosta redefines our understanding of how and why the First Amendment was adopted. He shows how the amendment’s focus on maintaining the authority of states to regulate religious freedom demonstrates that a very strict restriction on federal action was intended. Ultimately revealing that the great sage demanded a firm separation of church and state but never sought a wholly secular public square, Ragosta provides a new perspective on Jefferson, the First Amendment, and religious liberty within the United States.
Debating Reform
Author: Richard J. Ellis
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 150633363X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Debating Reform: Conflicting Perspectives on How to Fix the American Political System, Third Edition edited by Richard J. Ellis and Michael Nelson, gets readers to consider the key issues in reforming political institutions. Written specifically for this volume, each pro or con essay is contributed by a top scholar and examines a concrete proposal for reforming the political system. By focusing on institutions, rather than liberal or conservative public policies, the essays move readers to leave behind ideology and grapple with evidence, and then draw their own conclusions and build their own arguments.
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 150633363X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Debating Reform: Conflicting Perspectives on How to Fix the American Political System, Third Edition edited by Richard J. Ellis and Michael Nelson, gets readers to consider the key issues in reforming political institutions. Written specifically for this volume, each pro or con essay is contributed by a top scholar and examines a concrete proposal for reforming the political system. By focusing on institutions, rather than liberal or conservative public policies, the essays move readers to leave behind ideology and grapple with evidence, and then draw their own conclusions and build their own arguments.
In the Shadow of Slavery
Author: Leslie M. Harris
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226824861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
A new edition of a classic work revealing the little-known history of African Americans in New York City before Emancipation. The popular understanding of the history of slavery in America almost entirely ignores the institution’s extensive reach in the North. But the cities of the North were built by—and became the home of—tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans, many of whom would continue to live there as free people after Emancipation. In the Shadow of Slavery reveals the history of African Americans in the nation’s largest metropolis, New York City. Leslie M. Harris draws on travel accounts, autobiographies, newspapers, literature, and organizational records to extend prior studies of racial discrimination. She traces the undeniable impact of African Americans on class distinctions, politics, and community formation by offering vivid portraits of the lives and aspirations of countless black New Yorkers. This new edition includes an afterword by the author addressing subsequent research and the ongoing arguments over how slavery and its legacy should be taught, memorialized, and acknowledged by governments.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226824861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
A new edition of a classic work revealing the little-known history of African Americans in New York City before Emancipation. The popular understanding of the history of slavery in America almost entirely ignores the institution’s extensive reach in the North. But the cities of the North were built by—and became the home of—tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans, many of whom would continue to live there as free people after Emancipation. In the Shadow of Slavery reveals the history of African Americans in the nation’s largest metropolis, New York City. Leslie M. Harris draws on travel accounts, autobiographies, newspapers, literature, and organizational records to extend prior studies of racial discrimination. She traces the undeniable impact of African Americans on class distinctions, politics, and community formation by offering vivid portraits of the lives and aspirations of countless black New Yorkers. This new edition includes an afterword by the author addressing subsequent research and the ongoing arguments over how slavery and its legacy should be taught, memorialized, and acknowledged by governments.
For Liberty and Equality
Author: Alexander Tsesis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199942579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 527
Book Description
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents in modern history-the inspiration for what would become the most powerful democracy in the world. Indeed, at every stage of American history, the Declaration has been a touchstone for evaluating the legitimacy of legal, social, and political practices. Not only have civil rights activists drawn inspiration from its proclamation of inalienable rights, but individuals decrying a wide variety of governmental abuses have turned for support to the document's enumeration of British tyranny. In this sweeping synthesis of the Declaration's impact on American life, ranging from 1776 to the present, Alexander Tsesis offers a deeply researched narrative that highlights the many surprising ways in which this document has influenced American politics, law, and society. The drafting of the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement-all are heavily indebted to the Declaration's principles of representative government. Tsesis demonstrates that from the founding on, the Declaration has played a central role in American political and social advocacy, congressional debates, and presidential decisions. He focuses on how successive generations internalized, adapted, and interpreted its meaning, but he also shines a light on the many American failures to live up to the ideals enshrined in the document. Based on extensive research from primary sources such as newspapers, diaries, letters, transcripts of speeches, and congressional records, For Liberty and Equality shows how our founding document shaped America through successive eras and why its influence has always been crucial to the nation and our way of life.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199942579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 527
Book Description
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents in modern history-the inspiration for what would become the most powerful democracy in the world. Indeed, at every stage of American history, the Declaration has been a touchstone for evaluating the legitimacy of legal, social, and political practices. Not only have civil rights activists drawn inspiration from its proclamation of inalienable rights, but individuals decrying a wide variety of governmental abuses have turned for support to the document's enumeration of British tyranny. In this sweeping synthesis of the Declaration's impact on American life, ranging from 1776 to the present, Alexander Tsesis offers a deeply researched narrative that highlights the many surprising ways in which this document has influenced American politics, law, and society. The drafting of the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement-all are heavily indebted to the Declaration's principles of representative government. Tsesis demonstrates that from the founding on, the Declaration has played a central role in American political and social advocacy, congressional debates, and presidential decisions. He focuses on how successive generations internalized, adapted, and interpreted its meaning, but he also shines a light on the many American failures to live up to the ideals enshrined in the document. Based on extensive research from primary sources such as newspapers, diaries, letters, transcripts of speeches, and congressional records, For Liberty and Equality shows how our founding document shaped America through successive eras and why its influence has always been crucial to the nation and our way of life.