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Blackwell Companions to American History: A Companion to 19th-Century America
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Blackwell Companions to American History: A Companion to American Indian History
A Companion to American Indian History captures the thematic breadth of Native American history. Twenty-five original essays by leading scholars in the field, both American Indian and non-American Indian, bring an exciting modern perspective to Native American histories that were at one time related exclusively by Euro-American settlers. Contains 25 original essays by leading experts in Native American history. Covers the breadth of American Indian history, including contacts with settlers, religion, family, economy, law, education, gender issues, and culture. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.
Blackwell Companions to American History: A Companion to the American West
A Companion to the American West is a rigorous, illuminating introduction to the history of the American West. Essays by expert scholars synthesize the best and most provocative work in the field. The essays are lively, well written, and suited to the student, scholar, and all interested readers of the history of the American West.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian Story of the American West
The "fascinating" #1 New York Times bestseller that awakened the world to the destruction of American Indians in the nineteenth-century West (The Wall Street Journal). First published in 1970, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee generated shockwaves with its frank and heartbreaking depiction of the systematic annihilation of American Indian tribes across the western frontier. In this nonfiction account, Dee Brown focuses on the betrayals, battles, and massacres suffered by American Indians between 1860 and 1890. He tells of the many tribes and their renowned chiefs--from Geronimo to Red Cloud, Sitting Bull to Crazy Horse--who struggled to combat the destruction of their people and culture. Forcefully written and meticulously researched, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee inspired a generation to take a second look at how the West was won. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dee Brown including rare photos from the author's personal collection.
Civil War: People and Perspectives
This volume offers a social historian's view of the Civil War, shifting the focus away from political and military leaders to look at how the war affected, and was affected by, ordinary citizens of all kinds. * Primary source documents provide firsthand accounts of what life was like away from the spotlight of history during the Civil War * Each essay contains two biographical sidebars that personalize the experiences discussed in the chapter
Defining Moments: Reconstruction
Defining Moments: Reconstruction tells the story of the tumultuous period immediately following the Civil War, when the United States faced the enormous challenges of restoring ties with the shattered South and helping four million formerly enslaved people make the transition to new lives as free citizens.
Defining Moments in American History: The Battle of Gettysburg
Provides a detailed account of the American Civil War and the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg. Examines the forces that contributed to the war; early military battles and the Battle of Gettysburg; and the legacy of the Civil War.
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
Covers all aspects of 19th century history: population, politics and government, economy and work, society and culture, religion, social problems and reform, everyday life, and foreign policy are explored in A-to-Z articles.
The Long Civil War
In this wide-ranging volume, eminent historians John David Smith and Raymond Arsenault assemble a distinguished group of scholars to build on the growing body of work on the "Long Civil War" and break new ground. They cover a variety of related subjects, including antebellum missionary activity and colonialism in Africa, the home front, the experiences of disabled veterans in the US Army Veteran Reserve Corps, and Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal struggles with the war's legacy amid the growing civil rights movement. The contributors offer fresh interpretations and challenging analyses of topics such as ritualistic suicide among former Confederates after the war and whitewashing in Walt Disney Studios' historical Cold War-era movies. Featuring many leading figures in the field, The Long Civil War meaningfully expands the focus of mid-nineteenth-century history as it was understood by previous generations of historians.
Making of the American West: People and Perspectives
A richly researched, evocative account of the individuals and institutions involved in the settling of the non-Indian West--and of the impact of the development of the West on the nation as a whole. * A series of primary documents that give insight into direct experiences of groups featured and debates about Western issues at the time * A rich variety of images and illustrations depicting the people and places covered in the book and capturing the various myths of the West circulated at the time
The New York City Draft Riots
For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history. In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the "winners" and "losers" of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime. An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible.
Reconstruction: People and Perspectives
This entry in the Perspectives in Social History series examines the course and consequences of Reconstruction on the former Confederate states by focusing on the everyday people who lived through it. * Primary documents provide first-hand insight into the lives and times of diverse individuals during one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history * Includes a bibliography of key works on the Reconstruction era as well as a reference chapter of terms, people, and events, including "carpetbaggers," "Gideon's band," and "the Colfax massacre"
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And There Was Light : Abraham Lincoln and the American struggle
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how--and why--he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. "In his captivating new book, Jon Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents--a remote icon--or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln--an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln's story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.
Freedom National : The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
Freedom National is a groundbreaking history of emancipation that joins the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress with the courageous actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. It shatters the widespread conviction that the Civil War was first and foremost a war to restore the Union and only gradually, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. These two aims--"Liberty and Union, one and inseparable"--were intertwined in Republican policy from the very start of the war. By summer 1861 the federal government invoked military authority to begin freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines in the disloyal South. In the loyal Border States the Republicans tried coaxing officials into gradual abolition with promises of compensation and the colonization abroad of freed blacks. James Oakes shows that Lincoln's landmark 1863 proclamation marked neither the beginning nor the end of emancipation: it triggered a more aggressive phase of military emancipation, sending Union soldiers onto plantations to entice slaves away and enlist the men in the army. But slavery proved deeply entrenched, with slaveholders determined to re-enslave freedmen left behind the shifting Union lines. Lincoln feared that the war could end in Union victory with slavery still intact. The Thirteenth Amendment that so succinctly abolished slavery was no formality: it was the final act in a saga of immense war, social upheaval, and determined political leadership. Fresh and compelling, this magisterial history offers a new understanding of the death of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.
From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West
A sweeping and lively history of one of the most dramatic stories never told--of the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is difficult to imagine now, but for all of its cloudy peaks and gorgeous coastline, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While gauzy advertising promotions of the West as a paradise on earth intrigued citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile--until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities. But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private investments and determination to build an empire across the Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J. Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the "little family" of his Rio Grande, coming down from Denver, hoping to showcase the majesty of the Rockies, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the corporate-minded Santa Fe, venturing west from Kansas. What begins as an accidental rivalry when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out battle as each man tries to outdo the other--claiming exclusive routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain information; and even using the power of the press and incurring the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould--to emerge victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled success--and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty thousand called "Los Angeles" into a booming metropolis that will forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history--and one of the last great untold tales of the Wild West.
Grant
The #1 New York Times bestseller. Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency. Before the Civil War, Grant was flailing. His business ventures had ended dismally, and despite distinguished service in the Mexican War he ended up resigning from the army in disgrace amid recurring accusations of drunkenness. But in war, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential, soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at the battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign, and ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Along the way, Grant endeared himself to President Lincoln and became his most trusted general and the strategic genius of the war effort. Grant's military fame translated into a two-term presidency, but one plagued by corruption scandals involving his closest staff members. More important, he sought freedom and justice for black Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him "the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race." After his presidency, he was again brought low by a dashing young swindler on Wall Street, only to resuscitate his image by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are recognized as a masterpiece of the genre. With lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds the threads that bind these disparate stories together, shedding new light on the man whom Walt Whitman described as "nothing heroic... and yet the greatest hero." Chernow's probing portrait of Grant's lifelong struggle with alcoholism transforms our understanding of the man at the deepest level. This is America's greatest biographer, bringing movingly to life one of our finest but most underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography, Grant is a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Grant's life, explaining how this simple Midwesterner could at once be so ordinary and so extraordinary.
History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893
For many years, a single volume covering the "History of the West" did not exist. Paxson’s masterwork rectifies this problem – offering an essential, sweeping account of the American West and westward expansion from 1763-1893.
The American pioneer is followed to every frontier for nearly 150 years across fifty-nine chapters. Full of world-class insight, Paxson masterfully paints a picture of how the land mass of the United States was settled – starting with English settlers in New England to the wayward expansion across the continent and ending with the sunny shores of California.
Paxson’s literary genius does not shine in quotations from secondary and source material; he has made his material a part of himself. Indeed, rather than conforming to a social history, Paxson takes a historical, geographic, and pragmatic view of Westward expansion. He masterfully covers American history from the War for Independence to the Louisiana Purchase, conflicts with Native Americans and Civil War, Presidential edicts from Washington to Roosevelt, and even offers keen insight into the little-studied intricacies of frontier finance and the inside workings of canal and railroad corporations.
Horace Greeley and the Politics of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
Horace Greeley (1811-1872) was a major figure in nineteenth century American history. As a newspaper editor, politician, and reformer, Greeley was involved with the major events and trends of the era. He was the influential editor of the New York Tribune from 1841 until his death and was instrumental in the rise of the Whig and Republican parties. Snay's biography places Greeley in his historical context--considering the ways that he shaped and was influenced by the rise of the Jacksonian party system, the varieties of antebellum reform, the evolution of urban class relations, and the politics of slavery and emancipation.
Lincoln's Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation
A major addition to the history of the Civil War, Lincoln's Spies is a riveting account of the secret battles waged by Union agents to save a nation. Filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue, it is also a striking portrait of a shrewd president who valued what his operatives uncovered. Veteran journalist Douglas Waller, who has written ground-breaking intelligence histories, turns his sights on the shadow war of four secret agents for the North--three men and one woman. From the tense days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1861 to the surrender at Appomattox four years later, Waller delivers a fast-paced narrative of the heroes--and scoundrels--who informed Lincoln's generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration to foil an assassination attempt. But he failed as General George McClellan's spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union's Army of the Potomac. Recruiting skilled operatives, some of whom dressed in Rebel uniforms, Sharpe ran highly successful intelligence operations that outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe's most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion, with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of the war. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton's operatives. The unscrupulous Baker assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, D.C. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these secret operatives was a president, one of our greatest, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take chances to win the war. Lincoln's Spies, as Waller vividly depicts in his excellent new book, set the template for the dark arts the CIA would practice in the future.
A People at War : Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War, 1854-1877
Claiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless numbers of common soldiers and civilians, even as it brought freedom to millions. This book shows how average Americans coped with despair as well as hope during this vast upheaval. A People at War brings to life the full humanity of the war's participants, from women behind their plows to their husbands in army camps; from refugees from slavery to their former masters; from Mayflower descendants to freshly recruited Irish sailors. We discover how people confronted theirown feelings about the war itself, and how they coped with emotional challenges (uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, guilt, betrayal, grief) as well as physical ones (displacement, poverty, illness, disfigurement). The book explores the violence beyond the battlefield, illuminating the sharp-edgedconflicts of neighbor against neighbor, whether in guerilla warfare or urban riots. The authors travel as far west as China and as far east as Europe, taking us inside soldiers' tents, prisoner-of-war camps, plantations, tenements, churches, Indian reservations, and even the cargo holds of ships.They stress the war years, but also cast an eye at the tumultuous decades that preceded and followed the battlefield confrontations. An engrossing account of ordinary people caught up in life-shattering circumstances, A People at War captures how the Civil War rocked the lives of rich and poor, black and white, parents and children--and how all these Americans pushed generals and presidents to make the conflict a people'swar.
Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragist's Story From the Jim Crow South
A compelling reconstruction of the life of a black suffragist, Adella Hunt Logan, blending family lore, historical research, and literary imagination Born during the Civil War into a slaveholding family that included black, white, and Cherokee forebears, Adella Hunt Logan dedicated herself to advancing political and educational opportunities for the African American community. She taught at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute but also joined the segregated woman suffrage movement, passing for white in order to fight for the rights of people of color. Her determination--as a wife, mother, scholar, and activist --to challenge the draconian restraints of race and gender generated conflicts that precipitated her tragic demise. Historian Adele Logan Alexander--Adella Hunt Logan's granddaughter--portrays Adella, her family, and contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Theodore Roosevelt, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Alexander bridges the chasms that frustrate efforts to document the lives of those who traditionally have been silenced, weaving together family lore, historical research, and literary imagination into a riveting, multigenerational family saga.
Reconstruction: A Concise History
The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what todo with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy and allowed repressive measures such as the "black codes," would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction. While Reconstruction saw the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, expanding the rights and suffrage of African Americans, it largely failed to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and the rise of Jim Crow. It also struggled to manage the Southernresistance towards a Northern free-labor economy. However, these failures cannot obscure a number of accomplishments with long-term consequences for American life, among them the Civil Rights Act, the election of the first African American representatives to Congress, and the avoidance of renewedcivil war. Reconstruction suffered from poor leadership and uncertainty of direction, but it also laid the groundwork for renewed struggles for racial equality during the civil rights movement.In this concise history, award-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo delves into the constitutional, political, and social issues behind Reconstruction to provide a lucid and original account of a historical moment that left an indelible mark on the American social fabric.
Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning social historian Kluger comes this comprehensive and balanced chronicle of how the vast territory of the United States was assembled to accommodate the aspirations of its people--regardless of who objected.
Sing Not War: The Lives of Union & Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America
After the Civil War, white Confederate and Union army veterans reentered--or struggled to reenter--the lives and communities they had left behind. In Sing Not War, James Marten explores how the nineteenth century's "Greatest Generation" attempted to blend back into society and how their experiences were treated by nonveterans. Many soldiers, Marten reveals, had a much harder time reintegrating into their communities and returning to their civilian lives than has been previously understood. Although Civil War veterans were generally well taken care of during the Gilded Age, Marten argues that veterans lost control of their legacies, becoming best remembered as others wanted to remember them--for their service in the war and their postwar political activities. Marten finds that while southern veterans were venerated for their service to the Confederacy, Union veterans often encountered resentment and even outright hostility as they aged and made greater demands on the public purse. Drawing on letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources, Sing Not War illustrates that during the Gilded Age "veteran" conjured up several conflicting images and invoked contradicting reactions. Deeply researched and vividly narrated, Marten's book counters the romanticized vision of the lives of Civil War veterans, bringing forth new information about how white veterans were treated and how they lived out their lives.
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave‑owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave‑owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.
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