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Few figures in American political history are as reviled as Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States. Taking office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he clashed constantly with Congress during the tumultuous early years of Reconstruction. He opposed federally-mandated black suffrage and the Fourteenth Amendment and vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights bills. In this new book, Paul H. Bergeron, a respected Johnson scholar, brings a new perspective on this often vilified figure. Previous books have judged Johnson out of the context of his times or through a partisan lens. But this volume-based on Bergeron's work as the editor of The Papers of Andrew Johnson-takes a more balanced approach to Johnson and his career. Admiring Johnson's unswerving devotion to the Union, Lincoln appointed him as military governor of Tennessee, a post, Bergeron argues, that enhanced Johnson's executive experience and his national stature. While governor, Johnson implemented the emancipation of slaves in the state and laid the foundation for a new civilian government. Bergeron also notes that Johnson developed a close connection with the president which eventually resulted in his vice-presidential candidacy. In many respects, therefore, Johnson's Civil War years served as preparation for his presidency. Bergeron moves beyond simplistic arguments based on Johnson's racism to place his presidency within the politics of the day. Putting aside earlier analyses of the conflict between Johnson and the Republican Radicals as ideological disputes, Bergeron discusses these battles as a political power struggle. In doing so, he does not deny Johnson's racism but provides a more nuanced and effective perspective on the issues as Johnson tried to pursue the \"politics of the possible.\" Bergeron interprets Johnson as a strong-willed, decisive, fearless, authoritarian leader in the tradition of Andrew Jackson. While never excusing Johnson's inflexibility and extreme racism, Bergeron makes the case that, in proper context, Johnson can be seen at times as a surprisingly effective commander-in-chief-one whose approach to the problems of reestablishing the Union was defensible and consistent. With its fresh insight on the man and his times, Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction is indispensable reading for students and scholars of the U.S. presidency and the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.

Joseph Holt, the stern, brilliant, and deeply committed Unionist from Kentucky, spent the first several months of the American Civil War successfully laboring to maintain Kentucky's loyalty to the Union, then went on to serve as President Lincoln's judge advocate general. InLincoln's Forgotten Ally, Elizabeth Leonard offers the first full-scale biography of Holt, who has long been overlooked and misunderstood by historians and students of the war.In his capacity as the administration's chief arbiter and enforcer of military law, Holt strove tenaciously, often against strong resistance, to implement Lincoln's wartime policies, including emancipation. After Lincoln's assassination, Holt accepted responsibility for pursuing and bringing to justice everyone involved in John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy. It was because of this role, in which he is often portrayed as a brutal prosecutor, and because of his hard position toward the South, Leonard contends, that Holt's reputation suffered. Leonard argues, however, that Holt should not be defined by what Southern sympathizers and proponents of the Lost Cause came to think of him.Lincoln's Forgotten Allyseeks to restore Holt, who dedicated both his energy and his influence to ensuring that the Federal victory would bring about lasting positive change for the nation, to his rightful place in American memory.

Since the early twentieth century, historians have traditionally defined manifest destiny as the belief that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast. This generation of historians has posed manifest destiny as a unifying ideology of the nineteenth century, one that was popular and pervasive and ultimately fulfilled in the late 1840s when the United States acquired the Pacific Coast. However, the story of manifest destiny was never quite that simple. In A Failed Vision of Empire Daniel J. Burge examines the belief in manifest destiny over the nineteenth century by analyzing contested moments in the continental expansion of the United States, arguing that the ideology was ultimately unsuccessful. By examining speeches, plays, letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources, Burge reveals how Americans debated the wisdom of expansion, challenged expansionists, and disagreed over what the boundaries of the United States should look like. A Failed Vision of Empire is the first work to capture the messy, complicated, and yet far more compelling story of manifest destiny's failure, debunking in the process one of the most pervasive myths of modern American history.

From abject poverty to undisputed political boss of Pennsylvania, Lincoln's secretary of war, senator, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a founder of the Republican Party, Simon Cameron (1799-1889) was one of the nineteenth century's most prominent political figures. In his wake, however, he left a series of questionable political and business dealings and, at the age of eighty, even a sex scandal.Far more than a biography of Cameron,Amiable Scoundrelis also a portrait of an era that allowed-indeed, encouraged-a man such as Cameron to seize political control. The political changes of the early nineteenth century enabled him not only to improve his status but also to exert real political authority. The changes caused by the Civil War, in turn, allowed Cameron to consolidate his political authority into a successful, well-oiled political machine. A key figure in designing and implementing the Union's military strategy during the Civil War's crucial first year, Cameron played an essential role in pushing Abraham Lincoln to permit the enlistment of African Americans into the U.S. Army, a stance that eventually led to his forced resignation. Yet his legacy has languished, nearly forgotten save for the fact that his name has become shorthand for corruption, even though no evidence has ever been presented to prove that Cameron was corrupt.Amiable Scoundrelputs Cameron's actions into a larger historical context by demonstrating that many politicians of the time, including Abraham Lincoln, used similar tactics to win elections and advance their careers. This study is the fascinating story of Cameron's life and an illuminating portrait of his times.

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.

This impressive collection joins the recent outpouring of exciting new work on American politics and political actors in the mid-nineteenth century. For several generations, much of the scholarship on the political history of the period from 1840 to 1877 has carried a theme of failure; after all, politicians in the antebellum years failed to prevent war, and those of the Civil War and Reconstruction failed to take advantage of opportunities to remake the nation. Moving beyond these older debates, the essays in this volume ask new questions about mid-nineteenth-century American politics and politicians. InA Political Nation,the contributors address the dynamics of political parties and factions, illuminate the presence of consensus and conflict in American political life, and analyze elections, voters, and issues. In addition to examining the structures of the United States Congress, state and local governments, and other political organizations, this collection emphasizes political leaders-those who made policy, ran for office, influenced elections, and helped to shape American life from the early years of the Second Party System to the turbulent period of Reconstruction. The book moves chronologically, beginning with an antebellum focus on how political actors behaved within their cultural surroundings. The authors then use the critical role of language, rhetoric, and ideology in mid-nineteenth-century political culture as a lens through which to reevaluate the secession crisis. The collection closes with an examination of cultural and institutional influences on politicians in the Civil War and Reconstruction years. Stressing the role of federalism in understanding American political behavior,A Political Nationunderscores the vitality of scholarship on mid-nineteenth-century American politics. Contributors:Erik B. Alexander, University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Jean Harvey Baker, Goucher College · William J. Cooper, Louisiana State University · Daniel W. Crofts, The College of New Jersey · William W. Freehling, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities · Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia · Sean Nalty, University of Virginia · Mark E. Neely Jr., Pennsylvania State University · Rachel A. Shelden, Georgia College and State University · Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University · J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The definitive biography of America's 20th president, James A. Garfield. Exhaustively researched and skillfully written. Winner of the Ohio Academy of History Award, the Ohioana Book Award in History, and a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. \"Garfield's military career, the congressional years, the Presidency, receive thorough attention and evaluation, and one of the delights of this massive biography is that Peskin writes so well... This is a brilliant and skillful portrait of a man of many parts, of the political and social landscape of his time.\"—Publi

In 1855, this former Mexican War colonel and Indiana congressman entered Kansas Territory to take a leading role in its quest for statehood, and over the next twelve years he followed a seemingly inconsistent ideological path from pro-Douglas Democrat to Free Stater to pro-Lincoln Republican. His fiery stump speeches and radical ideas won him a Senate seat-along with an army of critics and a cloud that hangs over his reputation to this day. Spurgeon reassesses both Lane's position swings and his role in history, finding a consistency in his ideals that few historians have recognized. He argues that Lane was a steadfast champion of both the Union and his own conception of democratic principles.

This volume explores the lives and works of nine Northern women who wrote during the Civil War period, examining the ways in which, through their writing, they engaged in the national debates of the time. Lyde Sizer shows that from the 1850 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin through Reconstruction, these women, as well as a larger mosaic of lesser-known writers, used their mainstream writings publicly to make sense of war, womanhood, Union, slavery, republicanism, heroism, and death. Among the authors discussed are Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Although direct political or partisan power was denied to women, these writers actively participated in discussions of national issues through their sentimental novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and letters to the editor. Sizer pays close attention to how these mostly middle-class women attempted to create a \"\"rhetoric of unity,\"\" giving common purpose to women despite differences in class, race, and politics. This theme of unity was ultimately deployed to establish a white middle-class standard of womanhood, meant to exclude as well as include. |Explores the lives and works of nine Northern women who wrote during the Civil War period, examining the ways in which they engaged in the national debates of the time. Authors discussed are Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.