The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery PDF Author: W. Caleb McDaniel
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150193
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Garrison signaled the importance of these ties to his movement with the well-known cosmopolitan motto he printed on every issue of his famous newspaper, The Liberator: "Our Country is the World--Our Countrymen are All Mankind." That motto serves as an impetus for McDaniel's study, which shows that Garrison and his movement must be placed squarely within the context of transatlantic mid-nineteenth-century reform. Through exposure to contemporary European thinkers--such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Giuseppe Mazzini, and John Stuart Mill--Garrisonian abolitionists came to understand their own movement not only as an effort to mold public opinion about slavery but also as a measure to defend democracy in an Atlantic World still dominated by aristocracy and monarchy. While convinced that democracy offered the best form of government, Garrisonians recognized that the persistence of slavery in the United States revealed problems with the political system.

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery PDF Author: W. Caleb McDaniel
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150193
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
Garrison signaled the importance of these ties to his movement with the well-known cosmopolitan motto he printed on every issue of his famous newspaper, The Liberator: "Our Country is the World--Our Countrymen are All Mankind." That motto serves as an impetus for McDaniel's study, which shows that Garrison and his movement must be placed squarely within the context of transatlantic mid-nineteenth-century reform. Through exposure to contemporary European thinkers--such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Giuseppe Mazzini, and John Stuart Mill--Garrisonian abolitionists came to understand their own movement not only as an effort to mold public opinion about slavery but also as a measure to defend democracy in an Atlantic World still dominated by aristocracy and monarchy. While convinced that democracy offered the best form of government, Garrisonians recognized that the persistence of slavery in the United States revealed problems with the political system.

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery

The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery PDF Author: W. Caleb McDaniel
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
In The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery, W. Caleb McDaniel sets forth a new interpretation of the Garrisonian abolitionists, stressing their deep ties to reformers and liberal thinkers in Great Britain and Europe. The group of American reformers known as "Garrisonians" included, at various times, some of the most significant and familiar figures in the history of the antebellum struggle over slavery: Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison himself. Between 1830 and 1870, American abolitionists led by Garrison developed extensive networks of friendship, correspondence, and intellectual exchange with a wide range of European reformers -- Chartists, free trade advocates, Irish nationalists, and European revolutionaries. Garrison signaled the importance of these ties to his movement with the well-known cosmopolitan motto he printed on every issue of his famous newspaper, The Liberator: "Our Country is the World -- Our Countrymen are All Mankind." That motto serves as an impetus for McDaniel's study, which shows that Garrison and his movement must be placed squarely within the context of transatlantic mid-nineteenth-century reform. Through exposure to contemporary European thinkers -- such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Giuseppe Mazzini, and John Stuart Mill -- Garrisonian abolitionists came to understand their own movement not only as an effort to mold public opinion about slavery but also as a measure to defend democracy in an Atlantic World still dominated by aristocracy and monarchy. While convinced that democracy offered the best form of government, Garrisonians recognized that the persistence of slavery in the United States revealed problems with the political system. They identified the participation of minority agitators as part of the process in a healthy democratic society. Ultimately, Garrisonians' transatlantic activities reveal their deep patriotism, their interest in using public opinion to affect American politics, and their similarities to other antislavery groups. By following Garrisonian abolitionists across the Atlantic Ocean and exhaustively documenting their international networks, McDaniel challenges many of the timeworn stereotypes that still cling to their movement. He argues for a new image of Garrison's band as politically savvy, intellectually sophisticated liberal reformers, who were well informed about transatlantic debates regarding the problem of democracy.

The Problem of Democracy

The Problem of Democracy PDF Author: Nancy Isenberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525557520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
"Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship."--The Wall Street Journal How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy. Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country's first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and--in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics--they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In a bold recasting of the Adamses' historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It's also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents' somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America's political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.

Sites of Slavery

Sites of Slavery PDF Author: Salamishah Tillet
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822352613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In Sites of Slavery Salamishah Tillet examines how contemporary African American artists and intellectuals—including Annette Gordon-Reed, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Bill T. Jones, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kara Walker—turn to the subject of slavery in order to understand and challenge the ongoing exclusion of African Americans from the founding narratives of the United States.

Politics and Power in a Slave Society

Politics and Power in a Slave Society PDF Author: J. Mills Thornton
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807159158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
More than three decades after its initial publication, J. Mills Thornton's Politics and Power in a Slave Society remains the definitive study of political culture in antebellum Alabama. Controversial when it first appeared, the book argues against a view of prewar Alabama as an aristocratic society governed by a planter elite. Instead, Thornton claims that Alabama was an aggressively democratic state, and that this very egalitarianism set the stage for secession. White Alabamians had first-hand experiences with slavery, and these encounters warned them to guard against the imposition of economic or social reforms that might limit their equality. Playing upon their fears, the leaders of the southern rights movement warned that national consolidation presented the danger that fanatic northern reformers would force alien values upon Alabama and its residents. These threats gained traction when national reforms of the 1850s gave state government a more active role in the everyday life of Alabama citizens; and ambitious young politicians were able to carry the state into secession in 1861. Politics and Power in a Slave Society continues to inspire scholars by challenging one of the fundamental articles of the American creed: that democracy intrinsically produces good. Contrary to our conventional wisdom, slavery was not an un-American institution, but rather coexisted with and supported the democratic beliefs of white Alabama.

Carbon Democracy

Carbon Democracy PDF Author: Timothy Mitchell
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781681163
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
“A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th-century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian “A sweeping overview of the relationship between fossil fuels and political institutions from the industrial revolution to the Arab Spring.” —Financial Times Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

Moral Commerce

Moral Commerce PDF Author: Julie L. Holcomb
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
How can the simple choice of a men’s suit be a moral statement and a political act? When the suit is made of free-labor wool rather than slave-grown cotton. In Moral Commerce, Julie L. Holcomb traces the genealogy of the boycott of slave labor from its seventeenth-century Quaker origins through its late nineteenth-century decline. In their failures and in their successes, in their resilience and their persistence, antislavery consumers help us understand the possibilities and the limitations of moral commerce. Quaker antislavery rhetoric began with protests against the slave trade before expanding to include boycotts of the use and products of slave labor. For more than one hundred years, British and American abolitionists highlighted consumers’ complicity in sustaining slavery. The boycott of slave labor was the first consumer movement to transcend the boundaries of nation, gender, and race in an effort by reformers to change the conditions of production. The movement attracted a broad cross-section of abolitionists: conservative and radical, Quaker and non-Quaker, male and female, white and black. The men and women who boycotted slave labor created diverse, biracial networks that worked to reorganize the transatlantic economy on an ethical basis. Even when they acted locally, supporters embraced a global vision, mobilizing the boycott as a powerful force that could transform the marketplace. For supporters of the boycott, the abolition of slavery was a step toward a broader goal of a just and humane economy. The boycott failed to overcome the power structures that kept slave labor in place; nonetheless, the movement’s historic successes and failures have important implications for modern consumers.

"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

Author: Annette Gordon-Reed
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1631490788
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle Finalist for the George Washington Prize Finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection "An important book…[R]ichly rewarding. It is full of fascinating insights about Jefferson." —Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs" is one of the richest and most insightful accounts of Thomas Jefferson in a generation. Following her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello¸ Annette Gordon-Reed has teamed with Peter S. Onuf to present a provocative and absorbing character study, "a fresh and layered analysis" (New York Times Book Review) that reveals our third president as "a dynamic, complex and oftentimes contradictory human being" (Chicago Tribune). Gordon-Reed and Onuf fundamentally challenge much of what we thought we knew, and through their painstaking research and vivid prose create a portrait of Jefferson, as he might have painted himself, one "comprised of equal parts sun and shadow" (Jane Kamensky).

The Age of the Democratic Revolution: The challenge

The Age of the Democratic Revolution: The challenge PDF Author: Robert Roswell Palmer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691005690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Primary source.

The Age of Acrimony

The Age of Acrimony PDF Author: Jon Grinspan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
A penetrating, character-filled history “in the manner of David McCullough” (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the “normal” politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.