American Mobbing, 1828-1861

American Mobbing, 1828-1861
Author: David Grimsted
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 1998-05-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195353668

American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War is a comprehensive history of mob violence related to sectional issues in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions from authorities. In the South, riots against suspected abolitionists and slave insurrectionists were widely tolerated as a means of quelling anti-slavery sentiment. In the North, both pro-slavery riots attacking abolitionists and anti-slavery riots in support of fugitive slaves provoked reluctant but often effective riot suppression. Hundreds died in riots in both regions, but in the North, most deaths were caused by authorities, while in the South more than 90 percent of deaths were caused by the mobs themselves. These two divergent systems of violence led to two distinct public responses. In the South, widespread rioting quelled public and private questioning of slavery; in the North, the milder, more controlled riots generally encouraged sympathy for the anti-slavery movement. Grimsted demonstrates that in these two distinct reactions to mob violence, we can see major origins of the social split that infiltrated politics and political rioting and that ultimately led to the Civil War.

American Mobbing, 1828-1861

American Mobbing, 1828-1861
Author: David Grimsted
Publisher:
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1998
Genre: Antislavery movements
ISBN: 9786610470372

American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War is a comprehensive history of mob violence related to sectional issues in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions from authorities. In the South, riots against suspected abolitionists and slave insurrectionists were widely tolerated as a means of quelling anti-slavery sentiment. In the North, both pro-slavery riots attacking abolitionists and anti-slavery riots in support of fugitive slaves provoked reluctant but often effective riot suppression. Hundreds died in riots in both regions, but in the North, most deaths were caused by authorities, while in the South more than 90 percent of deaths were caused by the mobs themselves. These two divergent systems of violence led to two distinct public responses. In the South, widespread rioting quelled public and private questioning of slavery; in the North, the milder, more controlled riots generally encouraged sympathy for the anti-slavery movement. Grimsted demonstrates that in these two distinct reactions to mob violence lay major sources of the social split that infiltrated politics and political rioting and that ultimately led to the Civil War.

America's First Black Socialist

America's First Black Socialist
Author: Nikki Marie Taylor
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2013-03-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813140773

Highlights the life of Peter Humphries Clark, who fought for full and equal citizenship for African Americans and was the first black principal in Ohio.

The Roots of Rough Justice

The Roots of Rough Justice
Author: Michael J. Pfeifer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252093097

In this deeply researched prequel to his 2006 study Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947, Michael J. Pfeifer analyzes the foundations of lynching in American social history. Scrutinizing the vigilante movements and lynching violence that occurred in the middle decades of the nineteenth century on the Southern, Midwestern, and far Western frontiers, The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching offers new insights into collective violence in the pre-Civil War era. Pfeifer examines the antecedents of American lynching in an early modern Anglo-European folk and legal heritage. He addresses the transformation of ideas and practices of social ordering, law, and collective violence in the American colonies, the early American Republic, and especially the decades before and immediately after the American Civil War. His trenchant and concise analysis anchors the first book to consider the crucial emergence of the practice of lynching of slaves in antebellum America. Pfeifer also leads the way in analyzing the history of American lynching in a global context, from the early modern British Atlantic to the legal status of collective violence in contemporary Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Seamlessly melding source material with apt historical examples, The Roots of Rough Justice tackles the emergence of not only the rhetoric surrounding lynching, but its practice and ideology. Arguing that the origins of lynching cannot be restricted to any particular region, Pfeifer shows how the national and transatlantic context is essential for understanding how whites used mob violence to enforce the racial and class hierarchies across the United States.

America's Unending Civil War

America's Unending Civil War
Author: William Nester
Publisher: Frontline Books
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2025-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1399081217

The Civil War fascinates Americans like no other war in their history. Many Americans are still fighting some of the war’s issues in an Odyssey that stretches back to the first settlement and will persist until the end of time. The war itself was an Iliad of brilliant generals like Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan for the Union, or Lee, Jackson, and Forrest for the Confederacy; epic battles like Gettysburg and Chickamauga; epic sieges like Vicksburg and Petersburg; and epic naval combats such as Monitor versus Merrimack, or Kearsarge versus Alabama. It was America’s most horrific war, with more dead than all others combined. Around 625,000 soldiers and 125,000 civilians died from various causes, bringing the total to 750,000 people. Of 31 million Americans, 2.1 million northerners and 880,000 southerners donned uniforms. Why did eleven states eventually ban together to rebel against the United States? President Jefferson Davis began an answer when he said: ‘If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, Died of a Theory.’ That theory justified the enslavement of blacks by whites as a natural right and duty of a superior race over an inferior race; a theory, it was believed, that morally and economically elevated both races. Although slavery was the Civil War’s core cause, there were related chronic conflicts over the nature of government, citizenship, liberty, property, equality, wealth, race, identity, justice, crime, voting, power, and history – some of which issues have never entirely gone away. America’s Unending Civil War is unique among thousands of books on the subject. None before has explored the Civil War’s related and enduring conflicts of ideas and principles through four centuries of a nation’s history.

Documenting American Violence

Documenting American Violence
Author: Christopher Waldrep
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2006-01-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199724326

Violence forms a constant backdrop to American history, from the revolutionary overthrow of British rule, to the struggle for civil rights, to the present-day debates over the death penalty. It has served to challenge authority, defend privilege, advance causes, and throttle hopes. In the first anthology of its kind to appear in over thirty years, Documenting American Violence brings together excerpts from a wide range of sources about incidents of violence in the United States. Each document is set into context, allowing readers to see the event through the viewpoint of contemporary participants and witnesses and to understand how these deeds have been excused, condemned, or vilified by society. Organized topically, this volume looks at such diverse topics as famous crimes, vigilantism, industrial violence, domestic abuse, and state-sanctioned violence. Among the events these primary sources describe are: --Benjamin Franklin's account of the Conestoga massacre, when an entire village of American Indians was killed by the Paxton Boys, a group of frontier settlers --militant abolitionist John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry --Ida B. Wells' condemnation of lynchings in the South --the massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn, as witnessed by Cheyenne war chief Two Moon --Nat Turner's confession about the slave revolt he led in Southampton County, Virginia --Oliver Wendell Holmes' diaries and letters as a young infantry officer in the Civil War --a police officer's account of the Haymarket Trials --Harry Thaw's murder of the Gilded Age's most prominent architect, Stanford White, through his own published version of the events --the post-trial, public confessions of Ray Bryant and J.W. Milam for the murder of Emmett Till --the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation into the causes of the 1992 riot Taken as a whole, this anthology opens a new window on American history, revealing how violence has shaped America's past in every era.

An American Aristocracy

An American Aristocracy
Author: Daniel Kilbride
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781570036569

Placing class rather than race or gender at the center of this comparative study of North and South, Kilbride exposes the close connections that united privileged southerners and Philadelphians in the years leading to the Civil War. He finds that the bonds between these similarly educated and socialized groups to be so durable that they resisted sectional warfare. Kilbride notes that southern planters were drawn particularly to Philadelphia because of its proximity to the South and perception of the city as being untainted by northern radicalism. In addition, Philadelphia possessed well-regarded schools, prestigious intellectual societies, historical landmarks, and fashionable shopping districts. In the city's parlors, ballrooms, and classrooms, privileged northerners and southerners forged a republican aristocracy that ignored the Mason-Dixon line.

Encyclopedia of American Social Movements

Encyclopedia of American Social Movements
Author: Immanuel Ness
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1625
Release: 2015-07-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 131747189X

This four-volume set examines every social movement in American history - from the great struggles for abolition, civil rights, and women's equality to the more specific quests for prohibition, consumer safety, unemployment insurance, and global justice.

American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era

American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era
Author: Robert Emmett Curran
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2023-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807179655

Robert Emmett Curran’s masterful treatment of American Catholicism in the Civil War era is the first comprehensive history of Roman Catholics in the North and South before, during, and after the war. Curran provides an in-depth look at how the momentous developments of these decades affected the entire Catholic community, including Black and indigenous Americans. He also explores the ways that Catholics contributed to the reshaping of a nation that was testing the fundamental proposition of equality set down by its founders. Ultimately, Curran concludes, the revolution that the war touched off remained unfinished, indeed was turned backward, in no small part by Catholics who marred their pursuit of equality with a truncated vision of who deserved to share in its realization.

Slavery and Racism in American Politics, 1776-1876

Slavery and Racism in American Politics, 1776-1876
Author: Michael C. Thomsett
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476636346

From the very inception of the United States, few issues have been so divisive and defining as American slavery. Even as the U.S. was founded on principles of liberty, independence and freedom, slavery advocates and sympathizers positioned themselves in every aspect of American influence. Over the centuries, the characterization of early American figures, legislation and party platforms has been debated. The author seeks to clarify often unanswered--or ignored--questions about notable figures, sociopolitical movements and their positions on slavery. From early legislation like the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 to Reconstruction and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, this book explores some of America's most controversial moments. Spanning the first American century, it offers a detailed chronology of slavery and racism in early U.S. politics and society.