The Louisiana Purchase by
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson approved the Louisiana Purchase, a land deal with France that roughly doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson and supporters argued that this vast territory would enrich the young nation and enable it to grow. Opponents, however, argued that it would weaken the United States and increase discord between North and South. They also argued that the president had no power to make the acquisition. Is the Louisiana Purchase a source of national strength, or an ill-advised breach of constitutional authority?
A Wilderness So Immense by
The remarkable story of the land purchase that doubled the size of our young nation, set the stage for its expansion across the continent, and confronted Americans with new challenges of ethnic and religious diversity. In a saga that stretches from Paris and Madrid to Haiti, Virginia, New York, and New Orleans, Jon Kukla shows how rivalries over the Mississippi River and its vast watershed brought France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States to the brink of war and shaped the destiny of the new American republic. We encounter American leaders--Jefferson and Jay, Monroe and Pickering among them--clashing over the opening of the West and its implications for sectional balance of power. We see these disagreements nearly derailing the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and spawning a series of separatist conspiracies long before the dispute over slavery in the territory set the stage for the Missouri Compromise and the Civil War. Kukla makes it clear that as the French Revolution and Napoleon’s empire-building rocked the Atlantic community, Spain’s New World empire grew increasingly vulnerable to American and European rivals. Jefferson hoped to take Spain’s territories--piece by piece,--while Napoleon schemed to reestablish a French colonial empire in the Caribbean and North America. Interweaving the stories of ordinary settlers and imperial decision-makers, Kukla depicts a world of revolutionary intrigue that transformed a small and precarious union into a world power--all without bloodshed and for about four cents an acre. (less)
Duel by
General nurses his wounds -- Quarrelsome men of Gotham -- New Caesar's long shadow -- Temptations of a vice president -- Politicians in the wilderness -- Wary candidate tests the waters -- From migraine to miracle -- Resist, resist, resist the demagogues! -- Does impeachment justify secession? -- Mudslingers front and center -- From the Low Road to the depths -- Distracted dictator and an etiquette-mad president -- Ruined politician has a midnight visitor -- Light in the labyrinth -- Honor's deadly ritual -- Why soldiers why? -- This is a mortal wound, doctor -- Muffled drums and beckoning destiny.
Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by
Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition explores the people, places, ideas, plants, animals, and tools involved in one of America's most important expeditions, on the celebration of its 200th anniversary.
On November 30, 1803, France formally transferred 828,000 square miles to the United States in exchange for $15 million. This land, the Louisiana Purchase, doubled the size of the nation. While negotiations for this deal had been going on, Thomas Jefferson had already begun thinking about a transcontinental expedition to explore the lands west of the Mississippi. Besides the commercial and scientific benefits of such an exploration, there was the issue of asserting America’s sovereignty over the new territory. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were hired to undertake this journey. They kept detailed journals on the flora and fauna they observed, and members of their team—the Corps of Discovery, as the group is often referred to—were also the first non-Indians to make contact with a number of tribes.
This indispensable encyclopedia provides a complete reference to this great American expedition, covering all major elements from the preparatory work initiated by President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 to the corps' return from the Pacific Ocean in 1806. Containing a wealth of informative, cross-referenced A-to-Z entries, as well as an extensive chronology with mileage markers, an introductory essay, a strong general bibliography and further reading lists to the specific entries, many maps, and more than 100 black-and-white photographs, Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition details a fascinating and important expedition in American history.
Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes by
At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark's journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling's illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant's attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner's comparisons of the explorer's journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.
The War of 1812 by
This abridged version of Donald Hickey's popular War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict covers the military campaigns and the political and diplomatic history of the war. Intended for a general audience and students in introductory and upper division U.S. history courses, the volume is gripping reading. It includes a chronology of important events during the war and a list of suggested readings.
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath by
Robert Pierce Forbes goes behind the scenes of the crucial Missouri Compromise, the most important sectional crisis before the Civil War, to reveal the high-level deal-making, diplomacy, and deception that defused the crisis, including the central, unexpected role of President James Monroe. Although Missouri was allowed to join the union with slavery, the compromise in fact closed off nearly all remaining federal territories to slavery.
When Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed barring slavery from the new state of Missouri, he sparked the most candid discussion of slavery ever held in Congress. The southern response quenched the surge of nationalism and confidence following the War of 1812 and inaugurated a new politics of racism and reaction. The South's rigidity on slavery made it an alluring electoral target for master political strategist Martin Van Buren, who emerged as the key architect of a new Democratic Party explicitly designed to mobilize southern unity and neutralize antislavery sentiment. Forbes's analysis reveals a surprising national consensus against slavery a generation before the Civil War, which was fractured by the controversy over Missouri.
Bureau of Indian Affairs by
Bureau of Indian Affairs tells the fascinating and important story of an agency that currently oversees U.S. policies affecting over 584 recognized tribes, over 326 federally reserved lands, and over 5 million Native American residents. Written by one of our foremost Native American scholars, this insider's view of the BIA looks at the policies and the personalities that shaped its history, and by extension, nearly two centuries of government-tribal relations. Coverage includes the agency's forerunners and founding, the years of relocation and outright war, the movement to encourage Indian urbanization and assimilation, and the civil rights era surge of Indian activism. A concluding chapter looks at the modern BIA and its role in everything from land allotments and Indian boarding schools to tribal self-government, mineral rights, and the rise of the Indian gaming industry.
The Fires of Jubilee by
The bloody slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 and the savage reprisals that followed shattered beyond repair the myth of the contented slave and the benign master, and intensified the forces of change that would plunge America into the Civil War. The true story behind the major motion picture The Birth of a Nation, this acclaimed and definitive history is now reissued with the complete text of Turner’s riveting firsthand account, “The Confessions of Nat Turner.”
In The Fires of Jubilee, Stephen B. Oates, the award-winning biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., presents a gripping and insightful narrative of the rebellion—the complex, gifted, and driven man who led it, the social conditions that produced it, and the legacy it left. Here is the dramatic re-creation of the turbulent period that marked a crucial turning point in America’s history.
Democracy in America by
Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (De la démocratie en Amérique) is a classic text detailing the United States of the 1830s, showing a primarily favorable view by Tocqueville as he compares it to his native France. Considered to be an important account of the U.S. democratic system, it has become a classic work in the fields of political science and history. It quickly became popular in both the United States and Europe. Democracy in America was first published as two volumes, one in 1835 and the other in 1840; both are included in this edition.
Amistad by
This Steven Spielberg-directed exploration into a long-ago episode in African-American history recounts the trial that followed the 1839 rebellion aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and captures the complex political maneuverings set in motion by the event. Filmed in New England and Puerto Rico, the 152-minute drama opens with a pre-credit sequence showing Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) and the other Africans in a violent takeover of the Amistad. Captured, they are imprisoned in New England where former slave Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman), viewing the rebels as "freedom fighters," approaches property lawyer Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), who attempts to prove the Africans were "stolen goods" because they were kidnapped. Running for re-election, President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) overturns the lower court's decision in favor of the Africans. Former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) is reluctant to become involved, but when the case moves on to the Supreme Court, Adams stirs emotions with a powerful defense. The storyline occasionally cuts away to Spain where the young Queen Isabella (Anna Paquin) plays with dolls; she later debated the Amistad case with seven U.S. presidents. The character portrayed by Morgan Freeman is a fictional composite of several historical figures. For authentic speech, the Africans speak the Mende language, subtitled during some scenes but not others.
The Oregon Trail: Adventures on the Prairies in the 1840's by 
Across the Great Divide by
In the tradition of Lewis and Clark in "Undaunted Courage" comes the never-before-told story of Robert Stuart, whose discovery of the Oregon Trail changed America forever.
The Oregon Trail in American History by
Explores the great westward migration on the Oregon Trail in the nineteenth century and the experiences of those who traveled that way.
So Far from God by
The Mexican-American War of the 1840s, precipitated by border disputes and the U.S. annexation of Texas, ended with the military occupation of Mexico City by General Winfield Scott. In the subsequent treaty, the United States gained territory that would become California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. In this highly readable account, John S.D. Eisenhower provides a comprehensive survey of this frequently overlooked war.
The Best Land under Heaven by
In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, historian Michael Wallis continues his life's work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history.
The Indifferent Stars Above by
A chronicle of the mid-nineteenth-century wagon train tragedy draws on the perspectives of one of its survivors, Sarah Graves, recounting how her new husband and she joined the Donner party on their California-bound journey and encountered violent perils, in an account that also offers insight into the scientific reasons that some died while others survived.
Rush for Riches - Gold Fever and the Making of California by
In this vivid account of the birth of modern California, J.S. Holliday frames the gold rush years within the larger story of the state's transformation from the quietude of a Mexican hinterland in the 1840s to the forefront of entrepreneurial capitalism by the 1890s. No other state, no nation experienced such an adolescence of freedom and success. By 1883 California was hailed as "America, only more so."
Holliday's boldly interpretive narrative has the authority and immediacy of an eyewitness account. This eminent historian recreates the masculine world of mining camps and rough cities, where both business and pleasure were conducted far from hometown eyes and conventional inhibitions. He follows gold mining's swift evolution from treasure hunt to vast industry; traces the prodigal plunder of California's virgin rivers and abundant forests; and describes improvised feats of engineering, breathtaking in their scope and execution.
Holliday also conjures the ambitious, often ruthless Californians whose rush for riches rapidly changed the state: the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode, the timber barons of the Sierra forests, the Big Four who built the first transcontinental railroad, and the lesser profit-seekers who owned steamboats, pack mules, gambling dens and bordellos--and, most important for California's future, the farmers who prospered by feeding the rapidly growing population. This wildly laissez-faire economy created California's image as a risk-taking society, unconstrained by fear of failure.
The central theme of Rush for Riches is how, after decades of careless freedom, the miners were finally reined in by the farmers, and how their once mutually dependent relationship soured into hostility. This potential violence led to a dramatic courtroom decision in 1884 that shut down the mighty hydraulic mining operations--the end of California's free-for-all youthful exuberance.
Unique in its format, this beautiful book offers not only a compelling narrative but also almost two hundred fifty illustrations, one hundred in full color, that richly illuminate the themes and details of the text: daguerreotypes, photographs, paintings, lithographs, sketches, and specially drawn maps.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by
It was quickly translated into thirty-seven languages and has never gone out of print. The book had a far-reaching impact and deeply affected the national conscience of antebellum America. The Norton Critical Edition text is that of the 1852 book edition, published in two volumes by John P. Jewett and Company, Boston; original illustrations are included. Annotations are provided to assist the reader with obscure historical terms and biblical allusions. Backgrounds and Contexts includes a wealth of historical material relevant to slavery and abolitionism. Among the documents presented are Josiah Henson's 1849 slave narrative (named by Stowe as one of the sources for the novel); Solomon Northup's eyewitness account of an 1841 slave auction; Harriet Jacobs's narrative of her life as a fifteen-year-old slave; two epistolary accounts by ex-slave and abolitionist William Wells Brown, which document events in Uncle Tom's Cabin; two crucial excerpts from Stowe's Key to "Uncle Tom's Cabin " which provide the real-life basis for characters and events in the novel; and accounts of Tom-Shows and the anti-Uncle Tom literature that sprang up in response to the novel's publication. Illustrative material includes slave advertisements, runaway slave posters, and illustrations for the first British edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Britain's premier illustrator, George Cruikshank, as well as popular illustrations from American editions of the novel. Criticism is arranged under two headings. "Nineteenth-Century Reviews and Reception" includes critiques by George Sand, William G. Allen and Ethiop (both from Frederick Douglass' Paper), George F. Holmes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others. Twentieth-Century Criticism collects five of the best critical assessments of the novel's continuing impact on American society. With the exception of James Baldwin's groundbreaking essay, "Everybody's Protest Novel," the critical essays date from the years 1985 to 1992. Jane P. Tompkins investigates why the text was excluded from the canon for most of the twentieth century. Robert S. Levine provides an overview of the text's popular reception and influence since publication, including current critical schools and critics. Hortense J. Spillers takes a textual/linguistic view in her comparison between Stowe and Ishmael Reed as "impression points in the literary imagination of slavery." And Christina Zwarg traces the influence Stowe's feminism had on her treatment of fatherhood and its effect on the home. A Chronology of Stowe's life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
William Walker's Wars by
In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot--and illegal--forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering , and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably. William Walker was the outlier. Short, slender, and soft-spoken with no military background--he trained as a doctor before becoming a lawyer and then a newspaper editor--Walker was an unlikely leader of rough-hewn men and adventurers. But in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua. Neighboring governments saw Walker as a risk to the region and worked together to drive him out--efforts aided, incongruously, by the United States' original tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt. William Walker's Wars is a story of greedy dreams and ambitions, the fate of nations and personal fortunes, and the dark side of Manifest Destiny, for among Walker's many goals was to build his own empire based on slavery. This little-remembered story from US history is a cautionary tale for all who dream of empire.
The impending crisis of the South by 
American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows by
In September 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah laden with gold was attacked. Approximately 140 people were slaughtered; only 17 children under the age of eight were spared. This incident in an open field called Mountain Meadows has ever since been the focus of passionate debate: Is it possible that official Mormon dignitaries were responsible for the massacre? In her riveting book, Sally Denton makes a fiercely convincing argument that they were. The author–herself of Mormon descent–first traces the extraordinary emergence of the Mormons and the little-known nineteenth-century intrigues and tensions between their leaders and the U.S. government, fueled by the Mormons’ zealotry and exclusionary practices. We see how by 1857 they were unique as a religious group in ruling an entire American territory, Utah, and commanding their own exclusive government and army. Denton makes clear that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the church began placing the blame on a discredited Mormon, John D. Lee, and on various Native Americans. She cites contemporaneous records and newly discovered documents to support her argument that, in fact, the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, bore significant responsibility–that Young, impelled by the church’s financial crises, facing increasingly intense scrutiny and condemnation by the federal government, incited the crime by both word and deed. Finally, Denton explains how the rapidly expanding and enormously rich Mormon church of today still struggles to absolve itself of responsibility for what may well be an act of religious fanaticism unparalleled in the annals of American history. American Massacre is totally absorbing in its narrative as it brings to life a tragic moment in our history. From the Hardcover edition
Blood of the Prophets by
The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the thirty-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians. Based on extensive investigation of the events surrounding the murder of over 120 men, women, and children, and drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Bagley explains how the murders occurred, reveals the involvement of territorial governor Brigham Young, and explores the subsequent suppression and distortion of events related to the massacre by the Mormon Church and others.
Lincoln and Douglas by
What carried this one-term congressman from obscurity to fame was his Senate campaign against the country's most formidable politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer and fall of 1858. Lincoln challenged Douglas directly in one of his greatest speeches--"A house divided against itself cannot stand"--and confronted Douglas on the questions of slavery and the inviolability of the Union in seven fierce debates. Of course, the great issue was slavery. Douglas was the champion of letting states and territories decide for themselves whether to legalize slavery. Lincoln drew a moral line, arguing that no majority could ever make slavery right. Lincoln lost that Senate race to Douglas, though he came close to toppling the "Little Giant," but he emerged a predominant national figure. Guelzo's book brings alive their debates and this whole year of campaigns, and underscores their centrality in the greatest conflict in American history.--From publisher description.
Comstock Women by
When it comes to Nevada history, men get most of the ink. Comstock Women is a collection of 14 historical studies that helps to rectify that reality. The authors of these essays, who include some of Nevada's most prominent historians, demographers, and archaeologists, explore such topics as women and politics, jobs, and ethnic groups. Their work goes far in refuting the exaggerated popular images of women in early mining towns as dance hall girls or prostitutes. Relying primarily on newspapers, court decisions, census records, as well as sparse personal diaries and records left by the woman, the essayists have resurrected the lives of the women who lived on the Comstock during the boom years.
The Secret Six by
Most Americans know that John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia -- a raid he believed would ignite a bloody slave revolution -- was one of the events that sparked the Civil War. But very few know the story of how Brown was covertly aided by a circle of prosperous and privileged Northeasterners who supplied him with money and weapons, and, before the raid, even hid him in their homes while authorities sought Brown on a murder charge. These men called themselves the Secret Six. The Secret Six included Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, author, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Samuel Howe, world-famous physician; Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister whose rhetoric helped shape Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; Franklin Sanborn, an educator and close friend of Emerson and Thoreau; and the immensely wealthy Gerrit Smith and George Luther Stearns. The existence of the Six has been known to scholars, but there has never been a book devoted to them. Now, drawing on archives from Boston to Kansas, Edward J. Renehan, Jr., has created a vivid portrait of this unlikely cabal, showing how six pillars of the establishment came to believe that armed conflict was necessary in order to purge the United States of a government-sanctioned evil, slavery. The messianic zealot Brown -- also brilliantly portrayed-streaked across their path like a meteor. Renehan traces how the Six became involved with Brown, and how their lives were forever changed by the events at Harpers Ferry and the war they helped to start
The Pony Express Trail by
It operated less than two years. It lost an enormous amount of money. But the Pony Express delivered the mail across a continent at a critical time and captured the imagination of people all over the world like few events in the history of the American West.
Orphans Preferred by
"WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED." —California newspaper help wanted ad, 1860 The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States. It is a story of the all-American traits of bravery, bravado and entrepreneurial risk that are part of the very fabric of the Old West. No image of the American West in the mid-1800s is more familiar, more beloved, and more powerful than that of the lone rider galloping the mail across hostile Indian territory. No image is more revered. And none is less understood. Although rooted in actual events and real people, the saga of the Pony Express has become an American legend, embellished in everything from Mark Twain’sRoughing It, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and dime novels, to the western film classics of John Ford, the art of Frederic Remington, and scores of children’s books.Orphans Preferredis both a revisionist history of this magnificent and ill-fated adventure and an entertaining look at the often larger-than-life individuals who created and perpetuated the myth of “the Pony,” as it is known along the Pony Express trail that runs from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The Pony Express is a story that exists in the annals of Americana where fact and fable collide, a story as heroic as the journey of Lewis and Clark, as complex and revealing as the legacy of Custer’s Last Stand and as muddled and freighted with yarns as Paul Revere’s midnight ride.Orphans Preferredis a fresh and exuberant reexamination of this great American story.
Freedom National by
Traces the history of emancipation and its impact on the Civil War, discussing how Lincoln and the Republicans fought primarily for freeing slaves throughout the war, not just as a secondary objective in an effort to restore the country.
America's War by
These readings provide a glimpse of the vast sweep and profound breadth of Americans' war among and against themselves, adding crucial voices to our understanding of the war and its meaning.
Emancipating Lincoln by
Emancipating Lincoln seeks a new approach to the Emancipation Proclamation, a foundational text of American liberty that in recent years has been subject to woeful misinterpretation. These seventeen hundred words are Lincoln's most important piece of writing, responsible both for his being hailed as the Great Emancipator and for his being pilloried by those who consider his once-radical effort at emancipation insufficient and half-hearted. Harold Holzer, an award-winning Lincoln scholar, invites us to examine the impact of Lincoln's momentous announcement at the moment of its creation, and then as its meaning has changed over time. Using neglected original sources, Holzer uncovers Lincoln's very modern manipulation of the media--from his promulgation of disinformation to the ways he variously withheld, leaked, and promoted the Proclamation--in order to make his society-altering announcement palatable to America. Examining his agonizing revisions, we learn why a peerless prose writer executed what he regarded as his "greatest act" in leaden language. Turning from word to image, we see the complex responses in American sculpture, painting, and illustration across the past century and a half, as artists sought to criticize, lionize, and profit from Lincoln's endeavor. Holzer shows the faults in applying our own standards to Lincoln's efforts, but also demonstrates how Lincoln's obfuscations made it nearly impossible to discern his true motives. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Proclamation, this concise volume is a vivid depiction of the painfully slow march of all Americans--white and black, leaders and constituents--toward freedom.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation by
"Prizewinning Lincoln scholar Allen C. Guelzo presents, for the first time, a full scale study of Lincoln's greatest state paper. Using unpublished letters and documents, little-known accounts from Civil War-era newspapers, and Congressional memoirs and correspondence, Guelzo tells the story of the complicated web of statesmen, judges, slaves, and soldiers who accompanied, and obstructed, Abraham Lincoln on the path to the Proclamation."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad by Month of the Freezing Moon by
Now that Native Americans may receive more recognition at Little Big Horn National Park, it is appropriate to have a new book recounting the Sand Creek Massacre, yet another sad chapter in the story of ``Manifest Destiny.'' The story has been written about before brilliantly but briefly in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (LJ 2 2/15/70); Stan Hoig's The Sand Creek Massacre (LJ 9/15/61); and Irving Werstein's Massacre at Sand Creek (LJ 9/15/63). Schultz's book is a meticulously researched narrative of compelling readability. It relates the events leading to, and the characters involved in, the massacre and mutilation at Sand Creek of over 100 Cheyenne Indians, mostly women and children, by ill-trained Colorado militia led by one-time minister and abolitionist J.M. Chivington. It is a common theme--lust for gold and greed for power--that so scarred our relations with our most invisible ethnic minority. This book helps us never to forget. Highly recommended.
The Lincoln Assassination in American History by
Discusses the people and events connected with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as well as its effect on the history of the United States.
A. Lincoln by
John W. Starr published Lincoln's Last Day (1922), New Light on Lincoln's Last Day (1926), and Further Light on Lincoln's Last Day (1930); Jim Bishop's The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1955) created best-selling journalism. Reck, a retired university administrator and public relations consultant, has researched that same subject for some 30 years and presents the findings in well-written and carefully annotated fashion. His exhaustive research includes many manuscript collections. Reck's purpose is narrative; critical examination of sources and interpretation lag behind. Details fascinate Reck, who writes that Lincoln at breakfast ``may have had a bit of bacon, of which he was fond.'' The book is recommended to those who share such interests as well as to research libraries.-J.Y. Simon, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Stony the Road by
"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring stain on the American mind. The story of the abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar one, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: If emancipation came in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In a history that moves from Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African American experience, brings a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual to answer that question. Interwoven with this history, Stony the Road examines America's first postwar clash of images utilizing modern mass media to divide, overwhelm--and resist. Enforcing a stark color line and ensuring the rollback of the rights of formerly enslaved people, racist images were reproduced on an unprecedented scale thanks to advances in technology such as chromolithography, which enabled their widespread dissemination in advertisements, on postcards, and on an astonishing array of everyday objects. Yet, during the same period when the Supreme Court stamped 'separate but equal' as the law of the land, African Americans advanced the concept of the 'New Negro' to renew the fight for Reconstruction's promise. Against the steepest of odds, they waged war by other means: countering depictions of black people as ignorant, debased, and inhuman with images of a vanguard of educated and upstanding black women and men who were talented, cosmopolitan, and urbane. The story Gates tells begins with Union victory in the Civil War and the liberation of nearly four million enslaved people. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and diminished Northern will, restored 'home rule' to the South. One of the most violent periods in our history followed the retreat from Reconstruction, with thousands of African Americans murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation. An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, [this book] is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures from Frederick Douglass to W E. B. Du Bois created a counternarrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. Gates charts the noble struggle of black people to defeat racism and force the country to honor the 'new birth of freedom' that Lincoln pledged would be the legacy of the Civil War, and uncovers the roots of racism in our time. Understanding this bitter struggle is essential if America's deepest wounds are ever truly to heal."
The Ordeal of the Reunion: a new history of Reconstruction by
"For a generation, scholarship on the Reconstruction era has rightly focused on the struggles of the recently enslaved for a meaningful freedom and defined its success or failure largely in those terms. Summers goes beyond this vitally important question, focusing on Reconstruction's need to form an enduring Union without sacrificing the framework of federalism and republican democracy. This book offers a fresh explanation for Reconstruction's demise and a case for its essential successes as well as its great failures. Indeed, this book demonstrates the extent to which the victors' aims in 1865 were met--and at what cost"
Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution, 1863-1877 by
Describes the changes brought about by the Civil War, discusses the impact of slavery's end, and looks at the political, economic, and social aspects of Reconstruction
Reconstruction: America after the Civil War by
Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents an examination of one of the most consequential and least understood chapters in U.S. history when, after the Civil War, the nation struggled to reunite North and South while living up to the promise of citizenship for millions of freed African Americans.
Impeached by
An account of the attempt to remove Andrew Johnson from the presidency. It demolishes the myth that Johnson's impeachment was unjustified.
Empire of the Summer Moon by
Describes the actions of both whites and Comanches during a 40-year war over territory, in a story that begins with the kidnapping of a white girl, who grew up to marry a Comanche chief and have a son, Quanah, who became a great warrior.
Killing Custer by
General George Custer's ill-fated attack on a huge encampment of Plains Indians on 25th June, 1876, has gone down as one of the most disastrouos defeats in American military history. Much less understood is how disastroous the encounter was for the victors, the Sioux and the Cheyenne under the leadership of Sitting Bull. Within 15 years no American Indians resided outside reservations and their ancient culture lay in ruins.
Thunder in the Mountains by
"Chronicles the epic clash between General Oliver Otis Howard, who took on a mission in the Pacific Northwest to force Native Americans onto reservations, and the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph, who refused to leave his ancestral land"--
"Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny. Chosen to lead the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the era's most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the country's great struggles for liberty and equality, were God's plan for himself and the nation. To honor his righteous commitment to a new American freedom, Howard University was named for him. But as the nation's politics curdled in the 1870s, General Howard exiled himself from Washington, D.C., rejoined the army, and was sent across the continent to command forces in the Pacific Northwest. Shattered by Reconstruction's collapse, he assumed a new mission: forcing Native Americans to become Christian farmers on government reservations. Howard's plans for redemption in the West ran headlong into the resistance of Chief Joseph, a young Nez Perce leader in northeastern Oregon who refused to leave his ancestral land. Claiming equal rights for Native Americans, Joseph was determined to find his way to the center of American power and convince the government to acknowledge his people's humanity and capacity for citizenship. Although his words echoed the very ideas about liberty and equality that Howard had championed during Reconstruction, in the summer of 1877 the general and his troops ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families through the stark and unforgiving Northern Rockies. An odyssey and a tragedy, their devastating war transfixed the nation and immortalized Chief Joseph as a hero to generations of Americans. Re-creating the Nez Perce War through the voices of its survivors, Daniel J. Sharfstein's visionary history of the West casts Howard's turn away from civil rights alongside the nation's rejection of racial equality and embrace of empire. The conflict becomes a pivotal struggle over who gets to claim the American dream: a battle of ideas about the meaning of freedom and equality, the mechanics of American power, and the limits of what the government can and should do for its people. The war that Howard and Joseph fought is one that Americans continue to fight today."--Jacket.
The Last Indian War by
This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, ofshort-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom.To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the NezPerce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accomodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen,officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people"). The book sheds light on the war's legacy, including the near sainthood that was bestowed upon Chief Joseph, whose speech of surrender, "I will fight no more forever," became as celebrated asthe Gettysburg Address.Based on a rich cache of historical documents, from government and military records to contemporary interviews and newspaper reports, The Last Indian War offers a searing portrait of a moment when the American identity - who was and who was not a citizen - was being forged.
American Nightmare by
For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life - and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge - and an understanding of how it happened - remain alive in the nation's collective memory.
Remembering Jim Crow by
Remembering Jim Crow, the groundbreaking sequel to Remembering Slavery, is an extraordinary opportunity to read and hear the voices of black southerners who were firsthand witnesses to one of the most heartbreaking and troubling chapters in America's history. 50 photos.
The Age of Edison: electric light and the invention of modern America by
The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the lightbulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity. The lightbulb became a catalyst for the nation's transformation from a rural to an urban-dominated culture. City streetlights defined zones between rich and poor, and the electrical grid sharpened the line between town and country. "Bright lights" meant "big city." Like moths to a flame, millions of Americans migrated to urban centers in these decades, leaving behind the shadow of candle and kerosene lamp in favor of the exciting brilliance of the urban streetscape. The Age of Edison places the story of Edison's invention in the context of a technological revolution that transformed America and Europe in these decades. Edison and his fellow inventors emerged from a culture shaped by broad public education, a lively popular press that took an interest in science and technology, and an American patent system that encouraged innovation and democratized the benefits of invention. And in the end, as Freeberg shows, Edison's greatest invention was not any single technology, but rather his reinvention of the process itself. At Menlo Park he gathered the combination of capital, scientific training, and engineering skill that would evolve into the modern research and development laboratory. His revolutionary electrical grid not only broke the stronghold of gas companies, but also ushered in an era when strong, clear light could become accessible to everyone. In The Age of Edison, Freeberg weaves a narrative that reaches from Coney Island and Broadway to the tiniest towns of rural America, tracing the progress of electric light through the reactions of everyone who saw it. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility, in which the greater forces of progress and change are made visible by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects
Fleet Fire by
The electric revolution, which eclipsed the Industrial Revolution by the end of the 19th century and continues to this day, changed our world forever. FLEET FIRE tells us how it all began. In an engaging and entertaining narrative, L. J. Davis fields a cast of both prominent and forgotten characters, from dedicated scientists and mischievous rogues to enlightened amateurs who lit the sparks of discovery. Franklin+s kite, Davenport+s electromagnet, Morse+s telegraph, Cyrus Field+s transatlantic cable, and Edison+s phonograph are but a few of the achievements Davis discusses. Explaining the science in lucid prose, FLEET FIRE conveys the arc of discovery during one of the most creative epochs in the history of mankind.
Ruthless Tide by
Presents a narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood to chronicle key events, the damage that rendered the flood one of America's worst disasters, and the pivotal contributions of key figures, from dam engineer John Parke to American Red Cross founder Clara Barton. "A gripping new history celebrating the remarkable heroes of the Johnstown Flood--the deadliest flood in U.S. history--from NBC host and legendary weather authority Al Roker. Central Pennsylvania, May 31, 1889: After a deluge of rain--nearly a foot in less than twenty-four hours--swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork dam, built to create a private lake for a fishing and hunting club that counted among its members Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie. Though the engineers telegraphed neighboring towns on this last morning in May warning of the impending danger, residents--factory workers and their families--remained in their homes, having grown used to false alarms. At 3:10 P.M., the dam gave way, releasing 20 million tons of water. Gathering speed as it flowed southwest, the deluge wiped out nearly everything in its path and picked up debris--trees, houses, animals--before reaching Johnstown, a vibrant steel town fourteen miles downstream. Traveling 40 miles an hour, with swells as high as 60 feet, the deadly floodwaters razed the mill town--home to 20,000 people--in minutes. The Great Flood, as it would come to be called, remains the deadliest in US history, killing more than 2,200 people and causing $17 million in damage. In Ruthless Tide, Al Roker follows an unforgettable cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; the robber barons whose fancy sport fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the dam; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts in the United States. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Ruthless Tide is testament to the power of the human spirit in times of tragedy and also a timely warning about the dangers of greed, inequality, neglected infrastructure, and the ferocious, uncontrollable power of nature.