Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster
Author: Harold D. Moser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2005-03-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313068674

Daniel Webster captured the hearts and imagination of the American people of the first half of the nineteenth century. This bibliography on Webster brings together for the first time a comprehensive guide to the vast amount of literature written by and about this extraordinary man who dwarfed most of his contemporaries. This bibliography also provides references to materials on slavery, the tariff, banking, Indian affairs, legal and constitutional development, international affairs, western expansion, and economic and political developments in general. This bibliography is divided into fifteen sections and covers every aspect of Webster's distinguished career. Sections I and II deal primarily with Webster's writings and with those of his contemporaries. Sections III through X cover the literature dealing with his family background; childhood and education, his long service in the United States House of Representatives and in the Senate, his two stints as secretary of state, and his career in law. Section X provides guidance in locating materials relating to his associates. Finally, Sections XI through XV provide coverage of his personal life, his death, historiographical materials, and iconography.

The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath

The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath
Author: Robert Pierce Forbes
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2009-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807877581

Robert Pierce Forbes goes behind the scenes of the crucial Missouri Compromise, the most important sectional crisis before the Civil War, to reveal the high-level deal-making, diplomacy, and deception that defused the crisis, including the central, unexpected role of President James Monroe. Although Missouri was allowed to join the union with slavery, the compromise in fact closed off nearly all remaining federal territories to slavery. When Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed barring slavery from the new state of Missouri, he sparked the most candid discussion of slavery ever held in Congress. The southern response quenched the surge of nationalism and confidence following the War of 1812 and inaugurated a new politics of racism and reaction. The South's rigidity on slavery made it an alluring electoral target for master political strategist Martin Van Buren, who emerged as the key architect of a new Democratic Party explicitly designed to mobilize southern unity and neutralize antislavery sentiment. Forbes's analysis reveals a surprising national consensus against slavery a generation before the Civil War, which was fractured by the controversy over Missouri.

Freedom's Battle

Freedom's Battle
Author: Gary J. Bass
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2008-08-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307269299

This gripping and important book brings alive over two hundred years of humanitarian interventions. Freedom’s Battle illuminates the passionate debates between conscience and imperialism ignited by the first human rights activists in the 19th century, and shows how a newly emergent free press galvanized British, American, and French citizens to action by exposing them to distant atrocities. Wildly romantic and full of bizarre enthusiasms, these activists were pioneers of a new political consciousness. And their legacy has much to teach us about today’s human rights crises.

Fugitive Justice

Fugitive Justice
Author: Steven Lubet
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2011-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674059468

During the tumultuous decade before the Civil War, no issue was more divisive than the pursuit and return of fugitive slaves—a practice enforced under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When free Blacks and their abolitionist allies intervened, prosecutions and trials inevitably followed. These cases involved high legal, political, and—most of all—human drama, with runaways desperate for freedom, their defenders seeking recourse to a “higher law” and normally fair-minded judges (even some opposed to slavery) considering the disposition of human beings as property. Fugitive Justice tells the stories of three of the most dramatic fugitive slave trials of the 1850s, bringing to vivid life the determination of the fugitives, the radical tactics of their rescuers, the brutal doggedness of the slavehunters, and the tortuous response of the federal courts. These cases underscore the crucial role that runaway slaves played in building the tensions that led to the Civil War, and they show us how “civil disobedience” developed as a legal defense. As they unfold we can also see how such trials—whether of rescuers or of the slaves themselves—helped build the northern anti-slavery movement, even as they pushed southern firebrands closer to secession. How could something so evil be treated so routinely by just men? The answer says much about how deeply the institution of slavery had penetrated American life even in free states. Fugitive Justice powerfully illuminates this painful episode in American history, and its role in the nation’s inexorable march to war.