Download or read book The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens January 1814 March 1865 written by Thaddeus Stevens and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as "the most important congressman in the House of Representatives during the Civil War" and still honored in Pennsylvania as the father of its public school system, Thaddeus Stevens grappled in his day with many of the issues that confront us today: racial and economic equality, affirmative action, and equal access to education. Volume one of the projected two-volume edition of The Papers of Thaddeus Stevens covers Steven's political career from his Vermont youth to the end of the Civil War. It includes letters and speeches from his early days as a Gettysburg lawyer and as a representative in the Pennsylvania assembly through his antislavery efforts to the 1865 passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves.

Download or read book The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens April 1865 August 1868 written by Thaddeus Stevens and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1997 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thaddeus Stevens has been called “the greatest dictator Congress ever had, ” a man who in 1867 held more political power than any man in the nation, including the president. In his day Stevens grappled with many of the issues that confront us today: racial and economic equality, affirmative action, and equal access to education. The second volume of a two-volume edition covers Steven’s later years during the tumultuous period from the end of the Civil War to his death in1868. It includes letters, speeches, and remarks Stevens delivered as he championed equal rights for the freedmen and steered key Reconstruction measures through Congress. This volume also contains letters from loyalists and ex-Confederates to Stevens reflecting their reactions to conditions in the South.

Download or read book The Papers Of Thaddeus Stevens Volume 1 written by Thaddeus Stevens and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1997-07-15 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as “the most important congressman in the House of Representatives during the Civil War” and still honored in Pennsylvania as the father of its public school system, Thaddeus Stevens grappled in his day with many of the issues that confront us today: racial and economic equality, affirmative action, and equal access to education. Volume one of the projected two-volume edition of The Papers of Thaddeus Stevens covers Steven’s political career from his Vermont youth to the end of the Civil War. It includes letters and speeches from his early days as a Gettysburg lawyer and as a representative in the Pennsylvania assembly through his antislavery efforts to the 1865 passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves.

Download or read book The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens written by Michael J. Birkner and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system. Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in the federal government to encourage economic development and social reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction. Considering Buchanan and Stevens’s divergent lives alongside their political and social worlds reveals the dynamics and directions of American politics, especially northern interests and identities. While focusing on these individuals, the contributors also explore the roles of parties and patronage in informing political loyalties and behavior. They further track personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of details like who regularly dined and conversed with whom, the complex social milieu of Washington, the role of rumor in determining political allegiances, and the ways personality and failing relationships mattered in a hothouse of national politics fueled by slavery and expansion. The essays in The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens collectively invite further consideration of how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the political interests and actions of an age affected by race, religion, region, civil war, and reconstruction.

Download or read book The Papers Of Thaddeus Stevens Volume 2 written by Thaddeus Stevens and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 1998-07-15 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thaddeus Stevens has been called “the greatest dictator Congress ever had,” a man who in 1867 held more political power than any man in the nation, including the president. In his day Stevens grappled with many of the issues that confront us today: racial and economic equality, affirmative action, and equal access to education. The second volume of a two-volume edition covers Steven’s later years during the tumultuous period from the end of the Civil War to his death in1868. It includes letters, speeches, and remarks Stevens delivered as he championed equal rights for the freedmen and steered key Reconstruction measures through Congress. This volume also contains letters from loyalists and ex-Confederates to Stevens reflecting their reactions to conditions in the South.

Download or read book Thaddeus Stevens written by Bruce Levine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “powerful” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century’s greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America. Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution—a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies—including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies—would prove crucial to the Union war effort. During the Reconstruction era that followed, Stevens demanded equal civil and political rights for Black Americans—rights eventually embodied in the 14th and 15th amendments. But while Stevens in many ways pushed his party—and America—towards equality, he also championed ideas too radical for his fellow Congressmen ever to support, such as confiscating large slaveholders’ estates and dividing the land among those who had been enslaved. In Thaddeus Stevens, acclaimed historian Bruce Levine has written a “vital” (The Guardian), “compelling” (James McPherson) biography of one of the most visionary statesmen of the 19th century and a forgotten champion for racial justice in America.

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic Reconstruction 1860 1920 written by Manisha Sinha and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sinha not only has taken on this vast subject, but has greatly expanded its definition, both temporally and spatially. . . . She covers these difficult issues with remarkable skill and clarity." —S. C. Gwynne, New York Times Book Review We are told that the present moment bears a strong resemblance to Reconstruction, the era after the Civil War when the victorious North attempted to create an interracial democracy in the unrepentant South. That effort failed—and that failure serves as a warning today about violent backlash to the mere idea of black equality. In The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, acclaimed historian Manisha Sinha expands our view beyond the accepted temporal and spatial bounds of Reconstruction, which is customarily said to have begun in 1865 with the end of the war, and to have come to a close when the "corrupt bargain" of 1877 put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in exchange for the fall of the last southern Reconstruction state governments. Sinha’s startlingly original account opens in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln that triggered the secession of the Deep South states, and take us all the way to 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote—and which Sinha calls the "last Reconstruction amendment." Within this grand frame, Sinha narrates the rise and fall of what she calls the "Second American Republic." The Reconstruction of the South, a process driven by the alliance between the formerly enslaved at the grassroots and Radical Republicans in Congress, is central to her story, but only part of it. As she demonstrates, the US Army’s conquest of Indigenous nations in the West, labor conflict in the North, Chinese exclusion, women’s suffrage, and the establishment of an overseas American empire were all part of the same struggle between the forces of democracy and those of reaction. The main concern of Reconstruction was the plight of the formerly enslaved, but its fall affected other groups as well: women, workers, immigrants, and Native Americans. From the election of black legislators across the South in the late 1860s to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 to the colonial war in the Philippines in the 1890s, Sinha narrates the major episodes of the era and introduces us to key individuals, famous and otherwise, who helped remake American democracy, or whose actions spelled its doom. A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.

Download or read book Historical Documentary Editions written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Uncommon Woman written by Mark Kelley and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813–1884) was a prominent African American businesswoman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the longtime housekeeper, life companion, and collaborator of the state’s abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In his biography of this remarkable woman, Mark Kelley reveals how Smith served the cause of abolition, managed Stevens’s household, acquired property, and crossed racialized social boundaries. Born a free woman near Gettysburg, Smith began working for Stevens in 1844. Her relationship with Stevens fascinated and infuriated many, and it made Smith a highly recognizable figure both locally and nationally. The two walked side by side in Lancaster and in Washington, DC, as they worked to secure the rights of African Americans, sheltered people on the Underground Railroad, managed two households, raised her sons and his nephews, and built a real-estate business. In the last years of Stevens’s life, as his declining health threatened to short-circuit his work, Smith risked her own well-being to keep him alive while he led the drive to end slavery, impeach Andrew Johnson, and push for the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. An Uncommon Woman is a vital history that accords Lydia Hamilton Smith the recognition that she deserves. Every American should know Smith’s inspiring story.

Download or read book Amendment XIV Citizenship for All written by Jeff Hay and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2008-11-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rather than a dry, hard-to-understand reference book on our Constitutional rights, this collection of essays presents a lively discussion of what "citizenship for all" really means. Essay resources include Akhil Reed Amar, James F. Wilson, Priscilla Huang, Horace Gray, Melville Fuller, and Dmitri Vasillaros. Essay topics include slavery, federal despotism, naturalized citizens, undocumented immigrants, and dual citizenship.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era 2 volumes written by Richard Zuczek and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 933 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstruction sought to bring order from the tremendous social, political, economic, physical, and constitutional changes wrought by secession and the Civil War, changes that included the abolition of slavery, the expansion of governmental power and constitutional jurisdiction, the rise of the Republican Party, the explosion of northern industry and the national market, and the appearance of a social dynamism that supported struggles by new social groups for political and civil equality. In American history, Reconstruction is the term applied to the period 1862-1877, when the United States sought to bring order from the tremendous social, political, economic, physical, and constitutional changes wrought by secession and the Civil War.The decision by eleven southern states to attempt secession and reject the national government, and the decision by the federal government under President Abraham Lincoln to deny that attempt and enforce federal law, unleashed forces that forever changed the American Republic. These changes included the abolition of slavery, the expansion of governmental power and constitutional jurisdiction, the rise of the Republican Party, the explosion of northern industry and the national market, and the appearance of a social dynamism that supported struggles by new social groups for political and civil equality. No one anticipated the totality, the viciousness, and the intensity of the civil war, and as a result no one was prepared to deal with its consequences. Topics covered include who should direct Reconstruction; how the federal government treated conquered states, their governments, and their soldiers; the role of the freed people in the new republic; and how the war altered the Constitution, the party system, and the American economy, among many others. Many entries describe and analyze the lives, careers, and impacts of the individuals, North and South, black and white, who shaped the course of Reconstruction, including the following: Ames, Adelbert Bruce, Blanche K. Douglass, Frederick Gordon, John B. Hancock, Winfield S. Howard, Oliver O. Pinchback, Pinckney B.S. Revels, Hiram R. Sheridan, Philip H. Wade, Benjamin F. Other entries deal with broad topics and themes related to Reconstruction and its consequences, including the following: Abolition of Slavery, Black Politicians, Black Suffrage, Bloody Shirt, Economic Policies, Race Riots, Reconstruction, Theories of Scandals During Reconstruction, State Constitutional Conventions, Violence During Reconstruction. Still other entries cover a wide variety of events, groups, acts, agencies, and amendments that were part of the story of Reconstruction, including the following: American Indians, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Compromise of 1877, Democratic Party, Fourteenth Amendment, Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Loyalty Oaths, Military Reconstruction Acts, Stalwarts, Tenure of Office Act. Among the more than 270 entries are 11 that discuss the course and consequences of Reconstruction in each of the former Confederate states, and 6 that discuss the outcome and significance of the presidential and key congressional elections held between 1864 and 1876. The encyclopedia also offers a timeline of Reconstruction, a bibliography of print and electronic information resources, a selection of primary documents, a table of important dates, numerous illustrations, and a detailed subject index.

Download or read book Annotation written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Just and Lasting Peace written by John David Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology of primary documents traces Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War, chronicling the way Americans—Northern, Southern, black, and white—responded to the changes unleashed by the surrender at Appomattox and the end of slavery. Showcasing an impressive collection of original documents, including government publications, newspaper articles, speeches, pamphlets, and personal letters, this book captures the voices of a broad range of Americans, including Civil War veterans, former slaveholders, Northerners living in the South, and African-American men and women who lived through one of the most trying, complex, and misunderstood periods of American history.

Download or read book Abraham Lincoln written by Michael Burlingame and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 2008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burlingame interprets Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son Willie to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

Download or read book Secession on Trial written by Cynthia Nicoletti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the post-Civil War treason prosecution of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, which was seen as a test case on the major question that animated the Civil War: the constitutionality of secession. The case never went to trial because it threatened to undercut the meaning and significance of Union victory. Cynthia Nicoletti describes the interactions of the lawyers who worked on both sides of the Davis case - who saw its potential to disrupt the verdict of the battlefield against secession. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Americans engaged in a wide-ranging debate over the legitimacy and effectiveness of war as a method of legal adjudication. Instead of risking the 'wrong' outcome in the highly volatile Davis case, the Supreme Court took the opportunity to pronounce secession unconstitutional in Texas v. White (1869).

Download or read book Emancipation the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln written by Jonathan W. White and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Union army's overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864 has led many Civil War scholars to conclude that the soldiers supported the Republican Party and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil War historiography, arguing instead that the soldier vote in the presidential election of 1864 is not a reliable index of the army's ideological motivation or political sentiment. Although 78 percent of the soldiers' votes were cast for Lincoln, White contends that this was not wholly due to a political or social conversion to the Republican Party. Rather, he argues, historians have ignored mitigating factors such as voter turnout, intimidation at the polls, and how soldiers voted in nonpresidential elections in 1864. While recognizing that many soldiers changed their views on slavery and emancipation during the war, White suggests that a considerable number still rejected the Republican platform, and that many who voted for Lincoln disagreed with his views on slavery. He likewise explains that many northerners considered a vote for the Democratic ticket as treasonous and an admission of defeat. Using previously untapped court-martial records from the National Archives, as well as manuscript collections from across the country, White convincingly revises many commonly held assumptions about the Civil War era and provides a deeper understanding of the Union Army.

Download or read book James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War written by John W. Quist and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As James Buchanan took office in 1857, the United States found itself at a crossroads. Dissolution of the Union had been averted and the Democratic Party maintained control of the federal government, but the nation watched to see if Pennsylvania's first president could make good on his promise to calm sectional tensions. Despite Buchanan's central role in a crucial hour in U.S. history, few presidents have been more ignored by historians. In assembling the essays for this volume, Michael Birkner and John Quist have asked leading scholars to reconsider whether Buchanan’s failures stemmed from his own mistakes or from circumstances that no president could have overcome. Buchanan's dealings with Utah shed light on his handling of the secession crisis. His approach to Dred Scott reinforces the image of a president whose doughface views were less a matter of hypocrisy than a thorough identification with southern interests. Essays on the secession crisis provide fodder for debate about the strengths and limitations of presidential authority in an existential moment for the young nation. Although the essays in this collection offer widely differing interpretations of Buchanan's presidency, they all grapple honestly with the complexities of the issues faced by the man who sat in the White House prior to the towering figure of Lincoln, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a turbulent and formative era.