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A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a
balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original
meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the
Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving
the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the
fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the
states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the
Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original
meaning of the amendment's key clauses, covering the privileges and
immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal
protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the
Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates
about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery
advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the
Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized
what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their
arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to
advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about
abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart
Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth
Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the
Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted
Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality
before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass
Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the
original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to
primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment
shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to
modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for
implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death.
The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil
War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition:
they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom. They
planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish
freedom: the western territories, the District of Columbia, the
high seas. By constricting slavery they would induce a crisis:
slaves would escape in ever-greater numbers, the southern economy
would falter, and finally the southern states would abolish the
institution themselves. For their part the southern states fully
understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as
they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's
election.
The scorpion's sting is the centerpiece of this fresh, incisive
exploration of slavery and the Civil War: Was there a peaceful
route to abolition? Was Lincoln late to emancipation? What role did
race play in the politics of slavery? With stunning insight James
Oakes moves us ever closer to a new understanding of the most
momentous events in our history.
The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has
often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of
anti-slavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes's
brilliant history of Lincoln's anti-slavery strategies reveals a
striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The
linchpin of anti-slavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the
United States. Lincoln adopted the anti-slavery view that the
Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery
the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where
state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery
and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state
action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With
this understanding, Lincoln and his anti-slavery allies used every
tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the
Constitution empowered direct federal action-in the western
territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade-they
intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to
abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He re-entered politics in 1854
to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the
territories to slavery by the Kansas/Nebraska Act. He attempted to
persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition
with compensation for slaveholders and the colonisation of free
Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the
anti-slavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who
escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation
Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery
across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which
then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King's
cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in
1865 finally abolished slavery.
The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has
often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of
antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes's
brilliant history of Lincoln's antislavery strategies reveals a
striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The
linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the
United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the
Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery
the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where
state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery,
and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state
action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With
this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every
tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the
Constitution empowered direct federal action-in the western
territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade-they
intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to
abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to
oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the
territories to slavery by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He attempted to
persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition
with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free
Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the
antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who
escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation
Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery
across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which
then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King's
cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in
1865 finally abolished slavery.
Though not blind to Abraham Lincoln's imperfections, Black
Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the
same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president's
image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and
Matthew D. Norman's anthology explores the complex nature of views
on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass,
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Thurgood Marshall,
Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Barack Obama,
and dozens of others. The selections move from speeches to letters
to book excerpts, mapping the changing contours of the
bond--emotional and intellectual--between Lincoln and Black
Americans over the span of one hundred and fifty years. A
comprehensive and valuable reader, Knowing Him by Heart examines
Lincoln's still-evolving place in Black American thought.
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."
The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the
political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the
era's most prominent politicians as well as the political
landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During
the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive
as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system.
Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in
the federal government to encourage economic development and social
reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction.
Considering Buchanan and Stevens's divergent lives alongside their
political and social worlds reveals the dynamics and directions of
American politics, especially northern interests and identities.
While focusing on these individuals, the contributors also explore
the roles of parties and patronage in informing political loyalties
and behavior. They further track personal connections across lines
of gender and geography and underline the importance of details
like who regularly dined and conversed with whom, the complex
social milieu of Washington, the role of rumor in determining
political allegiances, and the ways personality and failing
relationships mattered in a hothouse of national politics fueled by
slavery and expansion. The essays in The Worlds of James Buchanan
and Thaddeus Stevens collectively invite further consideration of
how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the
political interests and actions of an age affected by race,
religion, region, civil war, and reconstruction.
Historian James Oakes's pathbreaking interpretation of the
slaveholding South demonstrates that slavery and freedom were not
mutually exclusive but were intertwined in every dimension of life
in the South, influencing relations between masters and slaves,
slaveholders and non-slaveholders, and resulting in the rise of a
racist ideology. ". . . a solidly researched, provocative account
of the Old South that will make its readers think and
rethink".--NEWSDAY.
A History of American Slaveholders With a new introduction "A sweeping and spirited history of Southern slaveholders."—David Herbert Donald
This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values of honor, race, and section. Instead they emerge as having much in common with their entrepreneurial counterparts in the North: they were committed to free-market commercialism and political democracy for white males. The Civil War was not an inevitable conflict between civilizations on different paths but the crack-up of a single system, the result of people and events.
"Invaluable."—Los Angeles Times
The image of a scorpion surrounded by a ring of fire, stinging
itself to death, was widespread among antislavery leaders before
the Civil War. It captures their long-standing strategy for
peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a
cordon of freedom, constricting slavery and inducing the social
crisis in which the peculiar institution would die. The image opens
a fresh perspective on antislavery and the coming of the Civil War,
brilliantly explored here by one of our greatest historians of the
period.
To fully understand and appreciate Abraham Lincoln's legacy, it is
important to examine the society that influenced the life,
character, and leadership of the man who would become the Great
Emancipator. Editors Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara Vaughn Gabbard
have done just that in Lincoln's America: 1809-1865, a collection
of new and original essays by ten eminent historians that place
Lincoln within his nineteenth-century cultural context.
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Lincoln's America - 1809-1865 (Hardcover)
Joseph R Fornieri, Sara Vaughn Gabbard; Contributions by Herman Belz, Joseph R Fornieri, Allen C Guelzo, …
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R793
Discovery Miles 7 930
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This book explores the life of Abraham Lincoln on the eve of his
bicentennial. To fully understand and appreciate Abraham Lincoln's
legacy, it is important to examine the society that influenced the
life, character, and leadership of the man who would become the
Great Emancipator. Editors Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara Vaughn
Gabbard have done just that in ""Lincoln's America: 1809-1865"", a
collection of new and original essays by ten eminent historians
that place Lincoln within his nineteenth-century cultural
context.Among the topics explored in ""Lincoln's America"" are
religion, education, middle-class family life, the antislavery
movement, politics, and law. Of particular interest are the
transition of American intellectual and philosophical thought from
the Enlightenment to Romanticism and the influence of this
evolution on Lincoln's own ideas.By examining aspects of Lincoln's
life - his personal piety in comparison with the beliefs of his
contemporaries, his success in self-schooling when frontier youths
had limited opportunities for a formal education, his marriage and
home life in Springfield, and his legal career - in light of
broader cultural contexts such as the development of democracy, the
growth of visual arts, the question of slaves as property, and
French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on America, the
contributors delve into the mythical Lincoln of folklore and
discover a developing political mind and a changing nation. As
""Lincoln's America"" shows, the sociopolitical culture of
nineteenth-century America was instrumental in shaping Lincoln's
character and leadership. The essays in this volume paint a vivid
picture of a young nation and its sixteenth president, arguably its
greatest leader.
My husband considered you a dear friend, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote to
Frederick Douglass in the weeks after Lincoln s assassination. The
frontier lawyer and the former slave, the cautious politician and
the fiery reformer, the President and the most famous black man in
America their lives traced different paths that finally met in the
bloody landscape of secession, Civil War, and emancipation.
Opponents at first, they gradually became allies, each influenced
by and attracted to the other. Their three meetings in the White
House signaled a profound shift in the direction of the Civil War,
and in the fate of the United States. James Oakes has written a
masterful narrative history, bringing two iconic figures to life
and shedding new light on the central issues of slavery, race, and
equality in Civil War America.
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