Download or read book Antebellum State Constitution making written by George Phillip Parkinson and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution written by Simon J. Gilhooley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to the articulation of this constitutional interpretation, which constrained the radical potential of the constitutional text. To reconstruct the origins of this interpretation, Gilhooley draws on rich sources that include historical newspapers, pamphlets, and congressional debates. Examining free black activism in the North, Abolitionism in the 1830s, and the evolution of pro-slavery thought, this book shows how in navigating the existence of slavery in the District and the fundamental constitutional issue of the enslaved's personhood, Antebellum opponents of abolition came to promote an enduring but constraining constitutional imaginary.
Download or read book The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution written by Simon J. Gilhooley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locates the origins of the modern sense of a Founder's Constitution in Antebellum debates over slavery in the nation's capital.
Download or read book The First American Constitutions written by Willi Paul Adams and published by Chapel Hill : Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last twenty years this book has been cited by every serious writer on early American constitutional development. Any constitutional history of the independent United States must begin with this comprehensive study. This volume contains two new chapters: one demonstrating precedents in the state constitutions for the U.S. Constitution, and another chapter critically testing the republicanism over liberalism thesis against political ideas and institutional arrangements that constitute the first state constitutions.
Download or read book Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders Union written by Peter Radan and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1869, in Texas v White, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the unilateral secession of a state from the Union was unconstitutional because the Constitution created "an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states." This meant that once a state became part of the Union, "[t]here was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the states." In this iconoclastic work, Peter Radan demonstrates why the court's ruling was wrong and why, on the basis of American constitutional law in 1860-1861, the unilateral secessions of the Confederate States were lawful on the grounds that the United States was forged as a "Slaveholders' Union." Creating a more perfect Slaveholders' Union deals with two constitutional issues: first, whether the states in 1860 had a right to secede from the Union, and second, what significance slavery had in defining the constitutional Union. The two matters came together when the states seceded on the grounds that the system of government the Confederate States had agreed to-namely, a system of human enslavement-had been violated by the incoming Republican administration. The legitimacy of this secession was anchored, as Radan shows, in the compact theory of the Constitution, which held that, because the Constitution was a compact between the member states of the Union, breaches of its fundamental provisions gave affected states the right to unilaterally secede from the Union. In so doing the Confederate States sought to preserve and protect their peculiar institution by forming a more perfect Slaveholders' Union"--
Download or read book Birthright Citizens written by Martha S. Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision, as a story of black Americans' pre-Civil War claims to belonging.
Download or read book The Evolution of state constitutions in the antebellum United States written by Oscar B.. Chamberlain and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Between Authority Liberty written by Marc W. Kruman and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Authority and Liberty: State Constitution-making in Revolutionary America
Download or read book From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters written by James Rutledge Roesch and published by Shotwell Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2018-08 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The United States" was a confederate union, created by the acts of the peoples of sovereign States. In the Constitution they delegated specific, limited powers to a federal government that was to handle certain matters common to them all. It was nobody's intention to create a government of unlimited and eternal power. No honest student can doubt that the Southern "state rights" interpretation of the Constitution was the correct one, however much condemned by the lies and bluster of centralists. The case has been re-made by truth-seekers in every generation. James Rutledge Roesch has made the case afresh for our own times, bringing to light much new and original evidence and reasoning. ___________________ James Roesch here sets himself the worthy task of describing the southern states'-rights tradition, which is the basis of the Declaration of Independence and much else, in its foremost advocates' own words. Lay and expert readers alike will find much in this tome to admire. -Kevin R. C. Gutzman, author of James Madison and the Making of America, Virginia's American Revolution, and Thomas Jefferson-Revolutionary Mr. Roesch's frustration with the status quo in politics is palpable in this book, and rightfully so. For the careful reader Roesch makes clear that the current political order's illness will not be cured by election cycles. To cure the disease (centralization) it is first necessary to diagnose the extent of the disease and provide the appropriate hard medicine (robust States' Rights). The body politic will survive, either as a centralized secularized system devouring its opposition and enslaving the rest, or as a revitalized decentralized system of self-governing States. Consider this book as a vaccination for patriots in the 1776 and 1861 vein, making them immune to the disease of centralization. Even the best intentioned patriots, once infected, become either the Behemoth's fodder or its unwitting serfs. -Dr. Marshal DeRosa Rarely does a book come along that fairly and accurately presents the antebellum constitutional thought of the notable writers and thinkers of the American South. . . . Here, for the first time in many, many years, we are presented with the writings of such luminaries as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, St. George Tucker, John Taylor of Caroline, John Randolph of Roanoke, and others about the role the States actually played in the formation of the Union and the profound difference that makes in understanding the constitution. Roesch makes it absolutely clear that "the great treatises of the Old South prove that the constitutional doctrine of State's rights was never a pretense for slavery, but reflected a deep passion for self-government that was rooted in southern culture, as well as an earnest understanding of the constitution." This book is long overdue and will serve as a valuable resource for honest, thinking Americans to assess, for themselves, the meaning of the nation's organic law and, consequently, the nature of our federal Union. I heartily recommend it. -Kent Masterson Brown, author, Retreat From Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign
Download or read book The Crooked Path to Abolition Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution written by James Oakes and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
Download or read book The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War written by Michael F. Conlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates the crucial role that the Constitution played in the coming of the Civil War.
Download or read book The Sources of Anti Slavery Constitutionalism in America 1760 1848 written by William M. Wiecek and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious book examines the constitutional and legal doctrines of the antislavery movement from the eve of the American Revolution to the Wilmot Proviso and the 1848 national elections. Relating political activity to constitutional thought, William M. Wiecek surveys the antislavery societies, the ideas of their individual members, and the actions of those opposed to slavery and its expansion into the territories. He shows that the idea of constitutionalism has popular origins and was not the exclusive creation of a caste of lawyers. In offering a sophisticated examination of both sides of the argument about slavery, he not only discusses court cases and statutes, but also considers a broad range of "extrajudicial" thought—political speeches and pamphlets, legislative debates and arguments.
Download or read book The American State Constitutional Tradition written by John J. Dinan and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2006-04-14 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long, the American constitutional tradition has been defined solely by the U.S. Constitution drafted in 1787. Yet constitutional debates at the state level open a window on how Americans, in different places and at different times, have chosen to govern themselves. From New Hampshire in 1776 to Louisiana in 1992, state constitutional conventions have served not only as instruments of democracy but also as forums for revising federal principles and institutions. In The American State Constitutional Tradition, John Dinan shows that state constitutions are much more than mere echoes of the federal document. The first comprehensive study of all 114 state constitutional conventions for which there are recorded debates, his book shows that state constitutional debates in many ways better reflect the accumulated wisdom of American constitution-makers than do the more traditional studies of the federal constitution. Wielding extraordinary command over a mass of historical detail, Dinan clarifies the alternatives considered by state constitution makers and the reasons for the adoption or rejection of various governing principles and institutions. Among other things, he shows that the states are nearly universal in their rejection of the rigid federal model of the constitutional amendment process, favoring more flexible procedures for constitutional change; they often grant citizens greater direct participation in law-making; they have debated and at times rejected the value of bicameralism; and they have altered the veto powers of both the executive and judicial branches. Dinan also shows that, while the Founders favored a minimalist design and focused exclusively on protecting individuals from government action, state constitution makers have often adopted more detailed constitutions, sometimes specifying positive rights that depend on government action for their enforcement. Moreover, unlike the federal constitution, state constitutions often contain provisions dedicated to the formation of citizen character, ranging from compulsory schooling to the regulation of gambling or liquor. By integrating state constitution making with the federal constitutional tradition, this path-breaking work widens and deepens our understanding of the principles by which we've chosen to govern ourselves.
Download or read book Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America written by Nancy Isenberg and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this book, Nancy Isenberg illuminates the origins of the women's rights movement. Rather than herald the singular achievements of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, she examines the confluence of events and ideas--before and after 1848--that, in her view, marked the real birth of feminism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, she demonstrates that women's rights activists of the antebellum era crafted a coherent feminist critique of church, state, and family. In addition, Isenberg shows, they developed a rich theoretical tradition that influenced not only subsequent strains of feminist thought but also ideas about the nature of citizenship and rights more generally. By focusing on rights discourse and political theory, Isenberg moves beyond a narrow focus on suffrage. Democracy was in the process of being redefined in antebellum America by controversies over such volatile topics as fugitive slave laws, temperance, Sabbath laws, capital punishment, prostitution, the Mexican War, married women's property rights, and labor reform--all of which raised significant legal and constitutional questions. These pressing concerns, debated in women's rights conventions and the popular press, were inseparable from the gendered meaning of nineteenth-century citizenship.
Download or read book Slavery s Constitution written by David Waldstreicher and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery's place at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. This "peculiar institution" was not a moral blind spot for America's otherwise enlightened framers, nor was it the expression of a mere economic interest. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution's framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself. For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery's place in the new republic. Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery's Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation's founding document.
Download or read book A Companion to U S Foreign Relations written by Christopher R. W. Dietrich and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-03-04 with total page 1518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers the entire range of the history of U.S. foreign relations from the colonial period to the beginning of the 21st century. A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations is an authoritative guide to past and present scholarship on the history of American diplomacy and foreign relations from its seventeenth century origins to the modern day. This two-volume reference work presents a collection of historiographical essays by prominent scholars. The essays explore three centuries of America’s global interactions and the ways U.S. foreign policies have been analyzed and interpreted over time. Scholars offer fresh perspectives on the history of U.S. foreign relations; analyze the causes, influences, and consequences of major foreign policy decisions; and address contemporary debates surrounding the practice of American power. The Companion covers a wide variety of methodologies, integrating political, military, economic, social and cultural history to explore the ideas and events that shaped U.S. diplomacy and foreign relations and continue to influence national identity. The essays discuss topics such as the links between U.S. foreign relations and the study of ideology, race, gender, and religion; Native American history, expansion, and imperialism; industrialization and modernization; domestic and international politics; and the United States’ role in decolonization, globalization, and the Cold War. A comprehensive approach to understanding the history, influences, and drivers of U.S. foreign relation, this indispensable resource: Examines significant foreign policy events and their subsequent interpretations Places key figures and policies in their historical, national, and international contexts Provides background on recent and current debates in U.S. foreign policy Explores the historiography and primary sources for each topic Covers the development of diverse themes and methodologies in histories of U.S. foreign policy Offering scholars, teachers, and students unmatched chronological breadth and analytical depth, A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present is an important contribution to scholarship on the history of America’s interactions with the world.
Download or read book Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil written by Mark A. Graber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil , first published in 2006, concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a 'more perfect union' with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus was required to resolve all constitutional questions not settled in 1787. Dred Scott challenges persons committed to human freedom to determine whether antislavery northerners should have provided more accommodations for slavery than were constitutionally strictly necessary or risked the enormous destruction of life and property that preceded Lincoln's new birth of freedom.
