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Author: Williamjames Hull Hoffer
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
A signal, violent event in the history of the United States Congress, the caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor embodied the complex North-South cultural divide of the mid-nineteenth century. Williamjames Hull Hoffer's vivid account of the brutal act demonstrates just how far the sections had drifted apart and explains why the coming war was so difficult to avoid. Sumner, a noted abolitionist and gifted speaker, was seated at his Senate desk on May 22, 1856, when Democratic Congressman Preston S. Brooks approached, pulled out a gutta-percha walking stick, and struck him on the head. Brooks continued to beat the stunned Sumner, forcing him to the ground and repeatedly striking him even as the cane shattered. He then pursued the bloodied, staggering Republican senator up the Senate aisle until Sumner collapsed at the feet of Congressman Edwin B. Morgan. Colleagues of the two intervened only after Brooks appeared intent on beating the unconscious Sumner severely—and, perhaps, to death. Sumner's crime? Speaking passionately about the evils of slavery, which dishonored both the South and Brooks’s relative, Senator Andrew P. Butler. Celebrated in the South for the act, Brooks was fined only three hundred dollars, dying a year later of a throat infection. Sumner recovered and served out a distinguished Senate career until his death in 1873. Hoffer's narrative recounts the caning and its aftermath, explores the depths of the differences between free and slave states in 1856, and explains the workings of the Southern honor culture as opposed to Yankee idealism. Hoffer helps us understand why Brooks would take such great offense at a political speech and why he chose a cane—instead of dueling with pistols or swords—to meet his obligation under the South’s prevailing code of honor. He discusses why the courts meted out a comparatively light sentence. He addresses the importance of the event in the national crisis and shows why such actions are not quite as alien to today’s politics as they might at first seem.
Author: Williamjames Hull Hoffer
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Get Book Here
Book Description
A signal, violent event in the history of the United States Congress, the caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor embodied the complex North-South cultural divide of the mid-nineteenth century. Williamjames Hull Hoffer's vivid account of the brutal act demonstrates just how far the sections had drifted apart and explains why the coming war was so difficult to avoid. Sumner, a noted abolitionist and gifted speaker, was seated at his Senate desk on May 22, 1856, when Democratic Congressman Preston S. Brooks approached, pulled out a gutta-percha walking stick, and struck him on the head. Brooks continued to beat the stunned Sumner, forcing him to the ground and repeatedly striking him even as the cane shattered. He then pursued the bloodied, staggering Republican senator up the Senate aisle until Sumner collapsed at the feet of Congressman Edwin B. Morgan. Colleagues of the two intervened only after Brooks appeared intent on beating the unconscious Sumner severely—and, perhaps, to death. Sumner's crime? Speaking passionately about the evils of slavery, which dishonored both the South and Brooks’s relative, Senator Andrew P. Butler. Celebrated in the South for the act, Brooks was fined only three hundred dollars, dying a year later of a throat infection. Sumner recovered and served out a distinguished Senate career until his death in 1873. Hoffer's narrative recounts the caning and its aftermath, explores the depths of the differences between free and slave states in 1856, and explains the workings of the Southern honor culture as opposed to Yankee idealism. Hoffer helps us understand why Brooks would take such great offense at a political speech and why he chose a cane—instead of dueling with pistols or swords—to meet his obligation under the South’s prevailing code of honor. He discusses why the courts meted out a comparatively light sentence. He addresses the importance of the event in the national crisis and shows why such actions are not quite as alien to today’s politics as they might at first seem.
Author: Stephen Puleo
Publisher: Westholme Pub Llc
ISBN: 9781594161872
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
A Turning Point in American History, the Beating of U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and the Beginning of the War Over Slavery Early in the afternoon of May 22, 1856, ardent pro-slavery Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina strode into the United States Senate Chamber in Washington, D.C., and began beating renowned anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner with a gold-topped walking cane. Brooks struck again and again—more than thirty times across Sumner's head, face, and shoulders—until his cane splintered into pieces and the helpless Massachusetts senator, having nearly wrenched his desk from its fixed base, lay unconscious and covered in blood. It was a retaliatory attack. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sumner had concluded a speech on the Senate floor that had spanned two days, during which he vilified Southern slaveowners for violence occurring in Kansas, called Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois a “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal,” and famously charged Brooks's second cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as having “a mistress. . . who ugly to others, is always lovely to him. . . . I mean, the harlot, Slavery.” Brooks not only shattered his cane during the beating, but also destroyed any pretense of civility between North and South. One of the most shocking and provocative events in American history, the caning convinced each side that the gulf between them was unbridgeable and that they could no longer discuss their vast differences of opinion regarding slavery on any reasonable level.The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War tells the incredible story of this transformative event. While Sumner eventually recovered after a lengthy convalescence, compromise had suffered a mortal blow. Moderate voices were drowned out completely; extremist views accelerated, became intractable, and locked both sides on a tragic collision course. The caning had an enormous impact on the events that followed over the next four years: the meteoric rise of the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln; the Dred Scott decision; the increasing militancy of abolitionists, notably John Brown's actions; and the secession of the Southern states and the founding of the Confederacy. As a result of the caning, the country was pushed, inexorably and unstoppably, to war. Many factors conspired to cause the Civil War, but it was the caning that made conflict and disunion unavoidable five years later.
Author: T. Lloyd Benson
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
In May of 1856, when Southern Congressman Preston S. Brooks caned Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, he shocked the nation and shattered the fragile truce that had existed between North and South. Part of the American Stories series, Benson's book introduces students to this key turning point in the coming of the War and as one of the most pivotal moments in American history. Because its story incorporates so many of the era's key issues like slavery and abolition, personal liberty laws and state rights, "Bleeding Kansas" and territorial expansion, ideals of gender and manhood, competing visions of labor and the economic order, and the revolutionary shift between the Whig-based "second party system" and its Republican-dominated third party successor, it provides an excellent window into the mind of a nation on the brink of conflict. These broad implications and the incident's inherent drama make this a natural topic for the American Stories series. The passionate language and sharp controversy of the collection's editorials and speech excerpts should appeal to a wide range of undergraduates. The narrative is complemented by a number of graphics, including images of the incident and maps showing the politics and intellectual geography of the era and how they were affected by the incident.
Author: Joanne B. Freeman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717613
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
"One of the best history books I've read in the last few years." —Chris Hayes The Field of Blood recounts the previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF SMITHSONIAN'S BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR Historian Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities—the feel, sense, and sound of it—as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
Author: J. Michael Martinez
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538130807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
"American history buffs will savor this detailed yet accessible roundup of political imbroglios." —Publishers Weekly Political scandals have become an indelible feature of the American political system since the creation of the republic more than two centuries ago. In his previous book, Libertines: American Political Sex Scandals from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump, Michael Martinez explored why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. In Scoundrels, Martinez examines thirteen of the most famous (or infamous) and not-so-famous political scandals of other sorts in American history, including the Teapot Dome case from the 1920s, the Watergate break-in and cover-up in the 1970s, the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Combining riveting storytelling with insights into 200 years of American political corruption, Martinez has once again written a book that will enlighten all readers interested in human nature and political history.
Author: Stephen Puleo
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250200482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
“Puleo has found a new way to tell the story with this well-researched and splendidly written chronicle of the Jamestown, its captain, and an Irish priest who ministered to the starving in Cork city...Puleo’s tale, despite the hardship to come, surely is a tribute to the better angels of America’s nature, and in that sense, it couldn’t be more timely.” —The Wall Street Journal The remarkable story of the mission that inspired a nation to donate massive relief to Ireland during the potato famine and began America's tradition of providing humanitarian aid around the world More than 5,000 ships left Ireland during the great potato famine in the late 1840s, transporting the starving and the destitute away from their stricken homeland. The first vessel to sail in the other direction, to help the millions unable to escape, was the USS Jamestown, a converted warship, which left Boston in March 1847 loaded with precious food for Ireland. In an unprecedented move by Congress, the warship had been placed in civilian hands, stripped of its guns, and committed to the peaceful delivery of food, clothing, and supplies in a mission that would launch America’s first full-blown humanitarian relief effort. Captain Robert Bennet Forbes and the crew of the USS Jamestown embarked on a voyage that began a massive eighteen-month demonstration of soaring goodwill against the backdrop of unfathomable despair—one nation’s struggle to survive, and another’s effort to provide a lifeline. The Jamestown mission captured hearts and minds on both sides of the Atlantic, of the wealthy and the hardscrabble poor, of poets and politicians. Forbes’ undertaking inspired a nationwide outpouring of relief that was unprecedented in size and scope, the first instance of an entire nation extending a hand to a foreign neighbor for purely humanitarian reasons. It showed the world that national generosity and brotherhood were not signs of weakness, but displays of quiet strength and moral certitude. In Voyage of Mercy, Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the famine, the Jamestown voyage, and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts, and established the United States as the leader in international aid. The USS Jamestown’s heroic voyage showed how the ramifications of a single decision can be measured not in days, but in decades.
Author: Joanne B. Freeman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300097559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Offering a reassessment of the tumultuous culture of politics on the national stage during America's early years, when Jefferson, Burr, and Hamilton were among the national leaders, Freeman shows how the rituals and rhetoric of honor provides ground rules for political combat. Illustrations.
Author: Michael F. Holt
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429930276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
How partisan politics lead to the Civil War What brought about the Civil War? Leading historian Michael F. Holt convincingly offers a disturbingly contemporary answer: partisan politics. In this brilliant and succinct book, Holt distills a lifetime of scholarship to demonstrate that secession and war did not arise from two irreconcilable economies any more than from moral objections to slavery. Short-sighted politicians were to blame. Rarely looking beyond the next election, the two dominant political parties used the emotionally charged and largely chimerical issue of slavery's extension westward to pursue reelection and settle political scores, all the while inexorably dragging the nation towards disunion. Despite the majority opinion (held in both the North and South) that slavery could never flourish in the areas that sparked the most contention from 1845 to 1861-the Mexican Cession, Oregon, and Kansas-politicians in Washington, especially members of Congress, realized the partisan value of the issue and acted on short-term political calculations with minimal regard for sectional comity. War was the result. Including select speeches by Lincoln and others, The Fate of Their Country openly challenges us to rethink a seminal moment in America's history.
Author: Christopher J. Einolf
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806182601
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 428
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Book Description
One of the North’s greatest generals—the Rock of Chickamauga Most Southerners in the U.S. Army resigned their commissions to join the Confederacy in 1861. But at least one son of a distinguished, slaveholding Virginia family remained loyal to the Union. George H. Thomas fought for the North and secured key victories at Chickamauga and Nashville. Thomas’s wartime experiences transformed him from a slaveholder to a defender of civil rights. Remembered as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” Thomas became one of the most prominent Union generals and was even considered for overall command of the Union Army in Virginia. Yet he has been eclipsed by such names as Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Offering vivid accounts of combat, Einolf depicts the fighting from Thomas’s perspective to allow a unique look at the real experience of decision making on the battlefield. He examines the general’s recurring confrontations with the Union high command to make a strong case for Thomas’s integrity and competence, even as he exposes Thomas’s shortcomings and poor decisions. The result is a more balanced, nuanced picture than has previously been available. Probing Thomas’s personal character, Einolf reveals how a son of the South could oppose the views of friends and family. George Thomas: Virginian for the Union offers a fresh appraisal of an important career and lends new insight into the inner conflicts of the Civil War.
Author: Stephen Puleo
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250065747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
The dramatic, never-before-told stories behind the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address: America's crown jewels that define its commitment to freedom.
