Download or read book Free Soil Free Labor Free Men written by Eric Foner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-04-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its publication twenty-five years ago, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern American historians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. Now with a new introduction, Eric Foner puts his argument into the context of contemporary scholarship, reassessing the concept of free labor in the light of the last twenty-five years of writing on such issues as work, gender, economic change, and political thought. A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny. In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks. Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare.
Download or read book Free Soil written by Joseph G. Rayback and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presidential election of 1848, known as the Free Soil election, marked the emergence of antislavery sentiment as a determining political force on a national scale. In this book Joseph G. Rayback provides the first comprehensive history of the campaign and the election, documenting his analysis with contemporary letters and newspaper accounts. The progress of the campaign is examined in light of the Free Soil movement: agitation for Free Soil candidates and platforms at the national conventions proved ineffective, and the nominations of Zachary Taylor and Lewis Cass completed the major parties' alienation of the various antislavery groups. Thwarted in their attempts to capture the national parties, the Free-Soilers formed a massive coalition, which met in Buffalo, and formally created the Free Soil party, nominating their own candidate, ex-President Martin Van Buren. The Whigs and the Democrats, forced by the new party to take a position on the touchy slavery question, attempted to use Free Soil to elect their candidates—in the North by claiming, it in the South by disclaiming it. Rayback concludes that the Free Soil election was one of the most significant in American history, a turning point in national politics that marked the end of the Jacksonian Era. Although Taylor was elected president, Van Buren took about ten percent of the popular vote away from the Whigs and the Democrats. It was the first presidential election in which a third party made substantial inroads on major party loyalties, one in which the electorate indicated a desire for a moderate solution to the problem of slavery extension—a solution that was attempted by the Thirty-first Congress with its Compromise of 1850.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party written by Michael F. Holt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 1298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written. He offers a panoramic account of the tumultuous antebellum period, a time when a flurry of parties and larger-than-life politicians--Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay--struggled for control as the U.S. inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, when local concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events--like the Annexation of Texas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act--rocked the country. Amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, emerging as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession.
Download or read book A Political Text book for 1860 written by and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Liberty Power written by Corey M. Brooks and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-01-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American politics and society were transformed by the antislavery movement. But as Corey M. Brooks shows, it was the antislavery third parties not the Democrats or Whigs that had the largest and least-understood impact. Third-party abolitionists exploited opportunities to achieve outsized influence and shaping the national debate. Political abolitionists key contribution was the elaboration and dissemination of the notion of the Slave Power the claim that slaveholders wielded disproportionate political power and therefore threatened the liberties and political power of northern whites. By convincing northerners of the Slave Power menace, abolitionists paved the way for broader coalitions, and ultimately for Abraham Lincoln s Republican Party."
Download or read book Free Soil in the Atlantic World written by Sue Peabody and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free Soil in the Atlantic World examines the principle that slaves who crossed particular territorial frontiers- from European medieval cities to the Atlantic nation states of the nineteenth century- achieved their freedom. Based upon legislation and judicial cases, each essay considers the legal origins of Free Soil and the context in which it was invoked: medieval England, Toulouse and medieval France, early modern France and the Mediterranean, the Netherlands, eighteenth-century Portugal, nineteenth-century Angola, nineteenth-century Spain and Cuba, and the Brazilian-Paraguay borderlands. On the one hand, Free Soil policies were deployed by weaker polities to attract worker-settlers; however, by the eighteenth century, Free Soil was increasingly invoked by European imperial centres to distinguish colonial regimes based in slavery from the privileges and liberties associated with the metropole. This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery and Abolition.
Download or read book The Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery written by Eric Foner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.
Download or read book The Liberty Party 1840 1848 written by Reinhard O. Johnson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2009-06-15 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1840, abolitionists founded the Liberty Party as a political outlet for their antislavery beliefs. A mere eight years later, bolstered by the increasing slavery debate and growing sectional conflict, the party had grown to challenge the two mainstream political factions in many areas. In The Liberty Party, 1840?1848, Reinhard O. Johnson provides the first comprehensive history of this short-lived but important third party, detailing how it helped to bring the antislavery movement to the forefront of American politics and became the central institutional vehicle in the fight against the ?peculiar institution.? As the major instrument of antislavery sentiment, the Liberty organization was more than a political party and included not only eligible voters but also disfranchised African Americans and women. Most party members held evangelical beliefs, and as Johnson relates, an intense religiosity permeated most of the group?s activities. At least eight U.S. senators, eighteen members of the House of Representatives, five state governors, and two justices of the Supreme Court were among the many Liberty Party members with distinguished careers in the public and private sectors. Though most early Liberty supporters came from the Whig Party, an increasing number of former Democrats joined the party as it matured. Johnson discusses the Liberty Party?s founding and its national growth through the presidential election of 1844; its struggles to define itself amid serious internal disagreements over philosophy, strategy, and tactics in the ensuing years; and the reasons behind its decline and merger into the Free Soil coalition in 1848. Since most Liberty Party activities occurred at the state level, Johnson treats the history of each state party in considerable detail, demonstrating how the party developed differently state by state and illustrating how these differences blended with the national view of the party.Informative appendices include statewide results for all presidential and gubernatorial elections between 1840 and 1848, the Liberty Party?s 1844 platform, and short biographies of every Liberty member mentioned in the main text of the book. Epic in scope and encyclopedic in detail, The Liberty Party, 1840?1848 will serve as an invaluable reference for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics.
Download or read book Grand Old Party written by Lewis L. Gould and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly readable narrative history of the Republican Party profiles the G.O.P. from its emergence as an antislavery party during the 1850s to its current place as champion of political conservatism.
Download or read book The Emerging Democratic Majority written by John B. Judis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-02-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY'S ANNUAL POLITICAL BOOK AWARD Political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. In the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book, The Emerging Republican Majority, became an indispensable guide for all those attempting to understand political change through the 1970s and 1980s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the country in Republican hands, The Emerging Democratic Majority is the indispensable guide to this era. In five well-researched chapters and a new afterword covering the 2002 elections, Judis and Teixeira show how the most dynamic and fastest-growing areas of the country are cultivating a new wave of Democratic voters who embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism" and take umbrage at Republican demands to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. As the GOP continues to be dominated by neoconservatives, the religious right, and corporate influence, this is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.
Download or read book The Birth of Mass Political Parties written by Ronald P. Formisano and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first mass political parties appeared in the United States in the 1830's, as the majority of adult white males identified ardently with the Democratic and Whig parties. Ronald Formisano opens a window on American political culture in this case study of antebellum voting and party formation in Michigan. Examining the social bases of voter commitment and the dynamics of grass roots loyalties from Jackson to Lincoln, he proposes that the forming of parties had little to do with issues of political economy, but rather with value conflicts generated by the evangelicals' promotion of a moral society. Borrowing from other disciplines, and elaborating some of the analytical techniques used by Lee Benson in The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, Professor Formisano studies demographic and voting data to determine patterns of partisan loyalty. His study throws light on the roots of the modern Republican Party, links between religion and politics, and the role of ethnic and cultural loyalties in political life. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America written by Thomas G. Mitchell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-03-30 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a narrative history of the thirty-year struggle to outlaw slavery, starting with the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1834 and extending until the abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War. The core of the book consists of two sections: 1) the 20-year political struggle to restrict slavery through a succession of anti-extensionist parties starting in 1840 with the founding of the Liberty Party, extending through the Free Soil Party (1848-54) and ending with Abraham Lincoln being elected president as a Republican on the same basic platform as the Liberty Party in 1844. 2) The struggle by abolitionists to use the outbreak of the Civil War as a chance to rid the country of slavery using the executive wartime powers of the presidency.
Download or read book Storm over Texas written by Joel H. Silbey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1844, a fiery political conflict erupted over the admission of Texas into the Union. This hard-fought and bitter controversy profoundly changed the course of American history. Indeed, as Joel Silbey argues in Storm Over Texas, it marked the crucial moment when partisan differences were transformed into a North-vs-South antagonism, and the momentum towards Civil War leaped into high gear. Silbey, one of America's most renowned political historians, offers a swiftly paced and compelling narrative of the Texas imbroglio, which included an exceptional cast of characters, from John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams, to James K. Polk and Martin Van Buren. We see how a series of unexpected moves, some planned, some inadvertent, sparked a crisis that intensified and crystallized the North-South divide. Sectionalism, Silbey shows, had often been intense, but rarely widespread and generally well contained by other forces. After Texas statehood, it became a driving force in national affairs, ultimately leading to Southern secession and Civil War. With subtlety, great care, and much imagination, Joel Silbey shows that this brief political struggle became, in the words of an Alabama congressman, "the greatest question of the age"--and a pivotal moment in American history.
Download or read book Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858 in Illinois written by Abraham Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Political History A Very Short Introduction written by Donald T. Critchlow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founding Fathers who drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 distrusted political parties, popular democracy, centralized government, and a strong executive office. Yet the country's national politics have historically included all those features. In American Political History: A Very Short Introduction, Donald Critchlow takes on this contradiction between original theory and actual practice. This brief, accessible book explores the nature of the two-party system, key turning points in American political history, representative presidential and congressional elections, struggles to expand the electorate, and critical social protest and third-party movements. The volume emphasizes the continuity of a liberal tradition challenged by partisan divide, war, and periodic economic turmoil. American Political History: A Very Short Introduction explores the emergence of a democratic political culture within a republican form of government, showing the mobilization and extension of the mass electorate over the lifespan of the country. In a nation characterized by great racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, American democracy has proven extraordinarily durable. Individual parties have risen and fallen, but the dominance of the two-party system persists. Fierce debates over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution have created profound divisions within the parties and among voters, but a belief in the importance of constitutional order persists among political leaders and voters. Americans have been deeply divided about the extent of federal power, slavery, the meaning of citizenship, immigration policy, civil rights, and a range of economic, financial, and social policies. New immigrants, racial minorities, and women have joined the electorate and the debates. But American political history, with its deep social divisions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonistic partisanship provides valuable lessons about the meaning and viability of democracy in the early 21st century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book American Suffrage written by Chilton Williamson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Americans have long taken price in universal suffrage and the secret ballot as foundations of democracy, it is surprising that one of its growth and reform. Mr. Williamson, focusing on the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, provides a state-by-state analysis of the growth of suffrage in its relation to partisan politics, the intellectual currents of the time, and such crises as war and rumors of war. Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Rude Republic written by Glenn C. Altschuler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-12 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this look at Americans and their politics, the authors argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in 19th-century American society and culture.
