Author: Brian McGinty
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 087140785X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
The untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight. In May of 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge, unalterably changing the course of American transportation history. Within a year, long-simmering tensions between powerful steamboat interests and burgeoning railroads exploded, and the nation’s attention, absorbed by the Dred Scott case, was riveted by a new civil trial. Dramatically reenacting the Effie Afton case—from its unlikely inception, complete with a young Abraham Lincoln’s soaring oratory, to the controversial finale—this “masterful” (Christian Science Monitor) account gives us the previously untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight.
Author: David J. Kent
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149306388X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Abraham Lincoln had a lifelong fascination with science and technology, a fascination that would help institutionalize science, win the Civil War, and propel the nation into the modern age. Readers will learn through Lincoln: The Fire of Genius how science and technology gradually infiltrated Lincoln’s remarkable life and influenced his growing desire to improve the condition of all men. The book traces this progression from a simple farm boy to a president who changed the world. Counter to conventional wisdom, subsistence farming provides a considerable education in agronomic science, forest ecology, hydrology, and even a little civil engineering. Continuing through a lifetime of self-study, curiosity, and hard work, Lincoln became the only President with a patent, advocated for technological advancement as a legislator in Illinois and in Washington, and became the “go-to” western lawyer on technology, and patent cases during his legal career. During the Civil War, Lincoln drew upon his commitment to science and personally encouraged inventors while taking dramatic steps to institutionalize science via the Smithsonian Institution, create the National Academy of Sciences, and initiate the Department of Agriculture. Lincoln’s insistence on high-tech weaponry, balloon surveillance, strategic use of telegraphy, and railroad deployment positioned the North to achieve Union victory.
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743203173
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.
Author: Brian McGinty
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493045350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
In San Francisco, CA, in 1858, a young African American man was freed from the claims of a white man who sought to return him to slavery in Mississippi. This was one year after the Supreme Court’s notorious Dred Scott decision and during the California Gold Rush, which saw the population of the state rise from 7,000 to more than 60,000 in a few short years. Archy Lee was the name of the man who, with the aid of anti-slavery lawyers and determined opponents of human bondage, had just won his freedom from the claims of Charles Stovall. With the aid of pro-slavery lawyers and equally determined supporters, Stovall had sought to capture him and carry him back to a far-away slave plantation. Yet the book is not solely about Archy Lee. It is also about the travel routes that the gold-seekers followed to California in the 1850s, some by land over the Great Plains, some by sea around Cape Horn, yet others by sailing from the east coast of North America to the isthmus of Panama, where they crossed over the land there by train and continued on by sea to San Francisco. It is about the efforts of the racially motivated lawmakers to suppress the rights of all of California’s residents except whites, and to subject people of African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American descent to second-, third-, or even fourth-class citizenship. It is about the residents of the state—including many whites—who fought back against those efforts, seeking to ameliorate or repeal the discriminatory laws and introduce a measure of fairness and justice into California’s civil life. It is about the lawyers and judges who participated in Archy Lee’s legal struggles in 1858, some supporting his claims for freedom while others ferociously opposed them and, in the process, elevated their own political and professional profiles.
Author: William W. Freehling
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813941571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500
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Book Description
Shortlisted for the 2018 Lincoln Prize Previous biographies of Abraham Lincoln—universally acknowledged as one of America’s greatest presidents—have typically focused on his experiences in the White House. In Becoming Lincoln, renowned historian William Freehling instead emphasizes the prewar years, revealing how Lincoln came to be the extraordinary leader who would guide the nation through its most bitter chapter. Freehling’s engaging narrative focuses anew on Lincoln’s journey. The epic highlights Lincoln’s difficult family life, first with his father and later with his wife. We learn about the staggering number of setbacks and recoveries Lincoln experienced. We witness Lincoln’s famous embodiment of the self-made man (although he sought and received critical help from others). The book traces Lincoln from his tough childhood through incarnations as a bankrupt with few prospects, a superb lawyer, a canny two-party politician, a great orator, a failed state legislator, and a losing senatorial candidate, to a winning presidential contender and a besieged six weeks as a pre-war president. As Lincoln’s individual life unfolds, so does the American nineteenth century. Few great Americans have endured such pain but been rewarded with such success. Few lives have seen so much color and drama. Few mirror so uncannily the great themes of their own society. No one so well illustrates the emergence of our national economy and the causes of the Civil War. The book concludes with a substantial epilogue in which Freehling turns to Lincoln’s wartime presidency to assess how the preceding fifty-one years of experience shaped the Great Emancipator’s final four years. Extensively illustrated, nuanced but swiftly paced, and full of examples that vividly bring Lincoln to life for the modern reader, this new biography shows how an ordinary young man from the Midwest prepared to become, against almost absurd odds, our most tested and successful president.
Author: Dan Abrams
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488095329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
The award-winning, New York Times–bestselling chronicle of the sensational murder trial that would be the capstone of Lincoln’s legal career. In the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old “Peachy” Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. When Harrison’s father hired Abraham Lincoln to defend him, the case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln’s debates with Senator Stephen Douglas the previous fall had transformed the little-known, self-taught lawyer into a respected politician of national prominence. As Lincoln contemplated a dark-horse run for the presidency in 1860, this case involved great risk. A loss could diminish Lincoln’s untarnished reputation. But the case also posed painful personal challenges for Lincoln. The victim had been his friend and his mentor. The accused killer, whom Lincoln would defend, was the son of a close friend and loyal supporter. And to win this trial he would have to form an unholy allegiance with a longtime enemy, a revivalist preacher he had twice run against for political office. Lincoln’s Last Trial vividly captures Lincoln’s dramatic courtroom confrontations as he fights for his client—but also for his own blossoming political future. It is a moment in history that shines a light on our legal system, our history, and one of our greatest presidents. A Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award
Author: John K. Brown
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421448629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
"The Eads Bridge and its protagonists provide new perspectives on the Gilded Age at large"--
Author: Myron J. Smith, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476650403
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
With a unique prewar history as a snagboat and James B. Eads' noted catamaran salvage vessel, the Benton survived a tumultuous government acquisition process and conversion to become flagship of the Union's Civil War Western river navy. From Island No. 10 through the Vicksburg and Red River campaigns, the revolutionary ironclad participated in both combat and administrative activities, earning a prominent place in nautical legend and literature. This first book-length profile of the warship reveals little known details of both her prewar and wartime career and reviews her final disposal.
Author: Ted Widmer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1476739439
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 624
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Book Description
WINNER OF THE LINCOLN FORUM BOOK PRIZE “A Lincoln classic...superb.” —The Washington Post “A book for our time.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln on the Verge tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic. As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration—an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close. Drawing on new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to take his oath of office.
Author: Nan Goodman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317042972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
Nineteenth-century America witnessed some of the most important and fruitful areas of intersection between the law and humanities, as people began to realize that the law, formerly confined to courts and lawyers, might also find expression in a variety of ostensibly non-legal areas such as painting, poetry, fiction, and sculpture. Bringing together leading researchers from law schools and humanities departments, this Companion touches on regulatory, statutory, and common law in nineteenth-century America and encompasses judges, lawyers, legislators, litigants, and the institutions they inhabited (courts, firms, prisons). It will serve as a reference for specific information on a variety of law- and humanities-related topics as well as a guide to understanding how the two disciplines developed in tandem in the long nineteenth century.
