The election of 1860 put to rest a tumultuous decade of legislative contest over the institution of slavery-even as it set in motion events that led directly to its demise by civil war. While some scholarship tends to minimize the role of slavery in the secession of the Southern states in the early 1860s, Dwight Pitcaithley's Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History takes the opposite approach, examining the many factors that both fueled and complicated Tennessee's unique journey toward secession in 1861. Organized chronologically by source and speaker, Tennessee Secedes presents a selection of primary sources from December 1860 through the summer of 1861, inviting students to examine the arc of Tennessee's secession march. Pitcaithley introduces proclamations, declarations, addresses, resolutions, proposed constitutional amendments, and other materials from Tennessee legislators, members of Congress, and delegates to the East Tennessee Convention. These sources highlight the political divisions apparent in the Volunteer State during this season of unrest. While many other Southern states saw little support for Unionism in the early 1860s, Tennessee stood in stark contrast, with a large and vocal population that ardently opposed secession. Complete with appendices featuring 1861 election returns, communications from the Tennessee Congressional Delegation of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and a timeline for Secession Winter-as well as questions for further discussion-Tennessee Secedes is an invaluable resource for students of the Civil War and Tennessee history, offering an insightful analysis of Tennessee's uncertain path to the Confederacy in the summer of 1861.

From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith, Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915 brings the voices and experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic, social, and political politics as a nonmajority racial group. At the same time, Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout the state during the same period. By examining southern African American life mainly through Reconstruction and the civil rights movement, historians have long mischaracterized African Americans in Mississippi by linking their empowerment and progression solely to periods of federal assistance. This book shatters that model and reframes the postslavery era as a Liberation Era to examine how African Americans pursued land, labor, education, politics, community building, and progressive race relations to position themselves as societal equals. Ashford salvages Attala County from this historical misconception to give Mississippi a new history. He examines African Americans as autonomous citizens whose liberation agenda paralleled and intersected the vicious redemption agenda, and he shows the struggle between Black and white citizens for societal control. Mississippi Zion provides a fresh examination into the impact of Black politics on creating the anti-Black apparatuses that grounded the state's infamous Jim Crow society. The use of photographs provides an accurate aesthetic of rural African Americans and their connection to the historical moment. This in-depth perspective captures the spectrum of African American experiences that contradict and nuance how historians write, analyze, and interpret southern African American life in the postslavery era.

This volume assembles the papers presented at the conference The International Context of the Galician Language Brotherhoods and the Nationality Question in Interwar Europe (Council of Galician Culture, Santiago de Compostela, October 2016). The different contributions, written by historians, political scientists and linguists, shed new light on the political development of the nationality question in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath, covering theoretical developments and debates, social mobilization and cultural perspectives. They also address the topic from different scales, blending the global and transnational outlook with the view from below, from the local contexts, with particular attention to peripheral areas, whilst East European and West European nationalities are dealt with on an equal footing, covering from Iberian Galicia to the Caucasus. Contributors are: Bence Bari, Stefan Berger, Miguel Cabo, Stefan Dyroff, Lourenzo Fernandez Prieto, Johannes Kabatek, Joep Leerssen, Ramon Maiz, Xose M. Nunez Seixas, Malte Rolf, Ramon Villares, and Francesca Zantedeschi.