Lincoln Apostate

Lincoln Apostate PDF Author: Charles R. McKirdy
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604739878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1847, in a small rural courthouse in Coles County, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln represented a Kentucky slave owner named Robert Matson in his attempt to recover a runaway slave woman and her four children. Most Americans, even those with a penchant for the nation's history, have never heard of this court case. This is no coincidence. Lincoln's involvement in the case has troubled and bewildered most students and biographers of the "Great Emancipator." In many assessments, the case inspires rationalizations and distortions; in others, avoidance and denial. These approaches are a disservice to the man and to those who seek to understand him. In Lincoln Apostate: The Matson Slave Case, lawyer and historian Charles R. McKirdy digs behind the myths and evasions to determine why Lincoln chose to advocate property rights grounded in a system that he claimed to abhor and pursue the continued enslavement of five of its most vulnerable and sympathetic victims. In a careful and readable blend of narrative and analysis, the book finds the answer in the time and place that was Lincoln's Illinois in 1847, in the laws and judicial decisions that provided the legal backdrop against which the drama of the Matson case was played out, and in the man that Lincoln was thirteen years before he became president. The discussion of Lincoln's decision to represent Matson and the description of the trial itself take nothing at face value. The author examines primary and secondary sources for the ribbon of truth shorn of preconceptions and hollow justifications. Lincoln Apostate scrutinizes Lincoln's motives for choosing as he did and explores the ideals and fears of this very complex man.

Lincoln Apostate

Lincoln Apostate PDF Author: Charles R. McKirdy
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604739878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1847, in a small rural courthouse in Coles County, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln represented a Kentucky slave owner named Robert Matson in his attempt to recover a runaway slave woman and her four children. Most Americans, even those with a penchant for the nation's history, have never heard of this court case. This is no coincidence. Lincoln's involvement in the case has troubled and bewildered most students and biographers of the "Great Emancipator." In many assessments, the case inspires rationalizations and distortions; in others, avoidance and denial. These approaches are a disservice to the man and to those who seek to understand him. In Lincoln Apostate: The Matson Slave Case, lawyer and historian Charles R. McKirdy digs behind the myths and evasions to determine why Lincoln chose to advocate property rights grounded in a system that he claimed to abhor and pursue the continued enslavement of five of its most vulnerable and sympathetic victims. In a careful and readable blend of narrative and analysis, the book finds the answer in the time and place that was Lincoln's Illinois in 1847, in the laws and judicial decisions that provided the legal backdrop against which the drama of the Matson case was played out, and in the man that Lincoln was thirteen years before he became president. The discussion of Lincoln's decision to represent Matson and the description of the trial itself take nothing at face value. The author examines primary and secondary sources for the ribbon of truth shorn of preconceptions and hollow justifications. Lincoln Apostate scrutinizes Lincoln's motives for choosing as he did and explores the ideals and fears of this very complex man.

A Degraded Caste of Society

A Degraded Caste of Society PDF Author: Andrew T. Fede
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820367109
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Degraded Caste of Society traces the origins of twenty-first-century cases of interracial violence to the separate and unequal protection principles of the criminal law of enslavement in the southern United States. Andrew T. Fede explains how antebellum appellate court opinions and statutes, when read in a context that includes newspaper articles and trial court and census records, extended this doctrine to the South’s free Black people, consigning them to what South Carolina justice John Belton O’Neall called “a degraded caste of society,” in which they were “in no respect, on a perfect equality with the white man.” This written law either criminalized Black insolence or privileged private white interracial violence, which became a badge of slavery that continued to influence the law in action, contrary to the Constitution’s mandate of equal protection of the criminal law. The U.S. Supreme Court enabled this denial of equal justice, as did Congress, which did not make all private white racially motivated violence a crime until 2009, when it adopted the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Fede’s analysis supports that law’s constitutionality under the Thirteenth Amendment, while suggesting why—during the Jim Crow era and beyond—equal protection of the criminal law was not always realized, and why the curse of interracial violence has been a lingering badge of slavery.

Salmon P. Chase

Salmon P. Chase PDF Author: Walter Stahr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501199234
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 848

Get Book Here

Book Description
From an acclaimed, New York Times bestselling biographer, a timely reassessment of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of the Treasury: a leading proponent for black rights both before and during his years in cabinet and later as Chief Justice of the United States. Salmon P. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln's for the Republican nomination in 1860--but there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not have won the presidency, were it not for the vital groundwork Chase laid over the previous two decades. Starting in the early 1840s, long before Lincoln was speaking out against slavery, Chase was forming and leading antislavery parties. He represented fugitive slaves so often in his law practice that he was known as the attorney general for runaway negroes, and he furthered his reputation as an outspoken federal senator and progressive governor of Ohio. Tapped by Lincoln to become Secretary of the Treasury, Chase would soon prove vital to the Civil War effort, raising the billions of dollars that allowed the Union to win the war, while also pressing the president to emancipate the country's slaves and recognize black rights. When Lincoln had the chance to appoint a chief justice in 1864, he chose his faithful rival, because he was sure Chase would make the right decisions on the difficult racial, political, and economic issues the Supreme Court would confront during Reconstruction. Drawing on previously overlooked sources, Walter Stahr sheds new light on a complex and fascinating political figure, as well as on the pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath. Salmon P. Chase tells the forgotten story of a man at the center of the fight for racial justice in 19th century America.

A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood

A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood PDF Author: James P. Byrd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190902809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his Second Inaugural Address, delivered as the nation was in the throes of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that both sides "read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other." He wasn't speaking metaphorically: the Bible was frequently wielded as a weapon in support of both North and South. As James P. Byrd reveals in this insightful narrative, no book was more important to the Civil War than the Bible. From Massachusetts to Mississippi and beyond, the Bible was the nation's most read and respected book. It presented a drama of salvation and damnation, of providence and judgment, of sacred history and sacrifice. When Americans argued over the issues that divided them -- slavery, secession, patriotism, authority, white supremacy, and violence -- the Bible was the book they most often invoked. Soldiers fought the Civil War with Bibles in hand, and both sides called the war just and sacred. In scripture, both Union and Confederate soldiers found inspiration for dying-and for killing-on a scale never before seen in the nation's history. With approximately 750,000 fatalities, the Civil War was the deadliest of the nation's wars, leading many to turn to the Bible not just to fight but to deal with its inevitable trauma. A fascinating overview of religious and military conflict, A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood draws on an astonishing array of sources to demonstrate the many ways that Americans enlisted the Bible in the nation's bloodiest, and arguably most biblically-saturated conflict.

Journal of the Civil War Era

Journal of the Civil War Era PDF Author: William A. Blair
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 080785266X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Journal of the Civil War Era Volume 2, Number 4 December 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Articles Mark Fleszar "My Laborers in Haiti are not Slaves": Proslavery Fictions and a Black Colonization Experiment on the Northern Coast, 1835-1846 Jarret Ruminski "Tradyville": The Contraband Trade and the Problem of Loyalty in Civil War Mississippi K. Stephen Prince Legitimacy and Interventionism: Northern Republicans, the "Terrible Carpetbagger," and the Retreat from Reconstruction Review Essay Roseanne Currarino Toward a History of Cultural Economy Professional Notes T. Lloyd Benson Geohistory: Democratizing the Landscape of Battle Book Reviews Books Received Notes on Contributors The Journal of the Civil War Era takes advantage of the flowering of research on the many issues raised by the sectional crisis, war, Reconstruction, and memory of the conflict, while bringing fresh understanding to the struggles that defined the period, and by extension, the course of American history in the nineteenth century.

The Dr. John K. Lattimer Collection of Lincolniana

The Dr. John K. Lattimer Collection of Lincolniana PDF Author: Heritage Auction Galleries (Dallas, Tex.)
Publisher: Heritage Capital Corporation
ISBN: 9781599673042
Category : Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description


Lincoln of Kentucky

Lincoln of Kentucky PDF Author: Lowell H. Harrison
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813129400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
Young Abraham Lincoln and his family joined the migration over the Ohio River, but it was Kentucky—the state of his birth—that shaped his personality and continued to affect his life. His wife was from the commonwealth, as were each of the other women with whom he had romantic relationships. Henry Clay was his political idol; Joshua Speed of Farmington, near Louisville, was his lifelong best friend; and all three of his law partners were Kentuckians. During the Civil War, Lincoln is reputed to have said, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky." He recognized Kentucky's importance as the bellwether of the four loyal slave states and accepted the commonwealth's illegal neutrality until Unionists secured firm control of the state government. Lowell Harrison emphasizes the particular skill and delicacy with which Lincoln handled the problems of a loyal slave state populated by a large number of Confederate sympathizers. It was not until decades later that Kentuckians fully recognized Lincoln's greatness and paid homage to their native son.

Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency

Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency PDF Author: William Charles Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Emphasizes the conservative bent that guided the young statesman's remarkable political evolution, revealing a Lincoln who was increasingly driven by his antislavery sentiments and fear for the republic in the hands of the Democrats like Stephen Douglas as much as--if not more than--his own political ambition.

Apostle of Union

Apostle of Union PDF Author: Matthew Mason
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469628619
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
Known today as "the other speaker at Gettysburg," Edward Everett had a distinguished and illustrative career at every level of American politics from the 1820s through the Civil War. In this new biography, Matthew Mason argues that Everett's extraordinarily well-documented career reveals a complex man whose shifting political opinions, especially on the topic of slavery, illuminate the nuances of Northern Unionism. In the case of Everett--who once pledged to march south to aid slaveholders in putting down slave insurrections--Mason explores just how complex the question of slavery was for most Northerners, who considered slavery within a larger context of competing priorities that alternately furthered or hindered antislavery actions. By charting Everett's changing stance toward slavery over time, Mason sheds new light on antebellum conservative politics, the complexities of slavery and its related issues for reform-minded Americans, and the ways in which secession turned into civil war. As Mason demonstrates, Everett's political and cultural efforts to preserve the Union, and the response to his work from citizens and politicians, help us see the coming of the Civil War as a three-sided, not just two-sided, contest.

Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

Fifty Years in the Church of Rome PDF Author: Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catholic ex-priests
Languages : en
Pages : 872

Get Book Here

Book Description