IWilliam Lowndes Yancey (1814–63) was one of the leading secessionists of the Old South. In this first comprehensive biography, Eric H. Walther examines the personality and political life of the uncompromising fire-eater.Born in Georgia but raised in the North by a fiercely abolitionist stepfather and an emotionally unstable mother, Yancey grew up believing that abolitionists were cruel, meddling, and hypocritical. His personal journey led him through a series of mentors who transf...

The 1850s offered the last remotely feasible chance for the United States to steer clear of Civil War. Yet fundamental differences between North and South about slavery and the meaning of freedom caused political conflicts to erupt again and again throughout the decade as the country lurched toward secession and war. With their grudging acceptance of the Compromise of 1850 and the election of Franklin Pierce as president in 1852, most Americans hoped that sectional strife and political uph...

The American Civil War was the first military conflict in history to be fought with railroads moving troops and the telegraph connecting civilian leadership to commanders in the field. New developments arose at a moment’s notice. As a result, the young nation’s political structure and culture often struggled to keep up. When war began, Congress was not even in session. By the time it met, the government had mobilized over 100,000 soldiers, battles had been fought, casualties had been taken...

AS SEEN IN THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE“One of the most esoteric and far-fetched crimes in 21st-century annals.”―The Hollywood Reporter“A rare book heist that Danny Ocean may have applauded―except for one mistake.”―Vanity Fair“A tragicomedy of errors.”―Salon“They are the young people, the people with the idealism, the passion, the courage to do something interesting with their lives: an act of daring almost artistic in...

The Enigmatic South brings together leading scholars of the Civil War period to challenge existing perceptions of the advance to secession, the Civil War, and its aftermath. The pioneering research and innovative arguments of these historians bring crucial insights to the study of this era in American history.Christopher Childers, Sarah L. Hyde, and Julia Huston Nguyen consider the ways politics, religion, and education contributed to southern attitudes toward secession in the anteb...

Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives engages current scholarship on women in Texas, the South, and the United States. It provides insights into Texas’s singular geographic position, bordering on the West and sharing a unique history with Mexico, while analyzing the ways in which Texas stories mirror a larger American narrative. The biographies and essays illustrate an uncommon diversity among Texas women, reflecting experiences ranging from those of dispossessed enslaved wome...

The proceedings represent the state of knowledge in the area of algorithmic differentiation (AD). The 31 contributed papers presented at the AD2012 conference cover the application of AD to many areas in science and engineering as well as aspects of AD theory and its implementation in tools. For all papers the referees, selected from the program committee and the greater community, as well as the editors have emphasized accessibility of the presented ideas also to non-AD experts. In the AD...

Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis. The fifteen years since the original publication of Apostle...

"From the death of John Quincy Adams through the Civil War to the tragedy of Reconstruction, Wineapple tells the American story brilliantly." —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning authorA New York Times Notable Book of 2013A Kirkus Best Book of 2013A Bookpage Best Book of 2013Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous ...

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality-in the face of murderous violence-in the years after the Civil War.By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and thirteen years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph H...

Here is history in the grand manner, a powerful narrative peopled with dozens of memorable portraits, telling this important story with skill and relish. Freehling highlights all the key moments on the road to war, including the violence in Bleeding Kansas, Preston Brooks's beating of Charles Sumner in the Senate chambers, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and much more. As Freehling shows, the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a political crisis, but at first...

In this comprehensive analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina, Manisha Sinha offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. Challenging works that portray secession as a fight for white liberty, she argues instead that it was a conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery.Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum era — including nullification, the ...