Search

The article analyzes and critiques revisionist historians that lay blame for the secession of U.S. southern states and the U.S. Civil War on U.S. president Abraham Lincoln and the antislavery element of the U.S. Republican Party. It discusses Lincoln's first inaugural address and the concept of separate state secession, public opinion concerning secession, and the constitutional questions regarding secession. It also discusses interpretations that portray Lincoln as unwillingness to compromise.

The article discusses how British military thinkers analyzed the impact of the U.S. Civil War between 1880 and 1940, focusing on how the results of the war shaped the U.S. into a global power. Other topics include how the different meanings of the Civil War shaped British understanding of it, the relationship between Great Britain and the Confederacy during the War, and the role of war in initiating social, political, and military change.

The article discusses the putative role that African American slaves played in causing the American Civil War, with a particular focus on the Underground Railroad's role in this regard. The geographic elements related to American slavery and the concept of freedom for African Americans, including the opportunity for liberty north of the Mason-Dixon Line, are discussed. The article compares the American Northern States and Southern States, including Southern elites' perspective on the U.S. Congress' power to legislate against slavery.

An essay is presented on the role of Republican conceptions of liberty in the U.S. Civil War. Particular focus is given to the implications of the universal liberty discussed in the statesman Thomas Jefferson's U.S. Declaration of Independence. According to the author, white Republicans such as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln recognized that slavery threatened white liberty by defining it as a privilege from which certain groups could be excluded rather than a universal human right.

This article discusses the secession of the lower southern U.S. states during the U.S. civil war. The article provides information regarding the connection between slaveholding and support for succession in lower South, analyzes the votes for secession conventions in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and investigates the nature of division between pro-Union and pro-north groups.

This article discusses the implications of the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court case "Dred Scott v. Sandford," as written by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, on the issues of citizenship, corporations, and race in the U.S. The case raised fundamental questions concerning race relations within U.S. society and the author explores public response to the court's decision.

This essay replies to critics of my earlier piece in Historical Materialism (Volume 19, Issue 4, zon) which looked at the origins of the American Civil War. The essay re-emphasises the importance of the shift to wage labour in the North, it re-asserts the need to incorporate slave resistance as a key factor in any causal account of the sectional conflict, and it argues that the ultimate northern victory ill that conflict should be seen as constituting a 'bourgeois revolution'. It engages specifically with the criticisms and some of the alternative interpretations offered by Charles Post, Eric Foner and Neil Davidson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal history of South Carolina Democratic U.S. Congressman Preston S. Brooks' cane-related assault of Republican U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on May 22, 1856 on the floor of the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C., focusing on the attack's potential role as a cause of the nation's Civil War. It states that Sumner was an abolitionist and Brooks was an advocate of states' rights in regards to slavery. America's Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is examined.

The article discusses the impact of the reportedly pro-slavery U.S. Constitution on the secession of South Carolina in 1860 and the nation's Civil War as of January 2013, focusing on analyses of several slavery-protection measures in America's Constitution such as the Fugitive Slave Clause. The economic importance of slavery to the nation prior to the Civil War is addressed, along with the book "Notes on the State of Virginia" by Thomas Jefferson, and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

By taking into account recent scholarship on the economics of slavery and the prospects for slavery in the mid-nineteenth-century United States, this article reassesses both the rationale for John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry and the claims for the martyred abolitionist’s historical significance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of the US Civil War have long been a central topic of debate among historians, both Marxist and non-Marxist. John Ashworth's Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic is a major Marxian contribution to a social interpretation of the US Civil War. However, Ashworth's claim that the War was the result of sharpening political and ideological - but not social and economic - contradictions and conflicts between slavery and capitalism rests on problematic claims about the rôle of slave-resistance in the dynamics of plantation-slavery, the attitude of Northern manufacturers, artisans, professionals and farmers toward wage-labour, and economic restructuring in the 1840s and 1850s. An alternative social explanation of the US Civil War, rooted in an analysis of the specific path to capitalist social-property relations in the US, locates the War in the growing contradiction between the social requirements of the expanded reproduction of slavery and capitalism in the two decades before the War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on French historian Alexis de Tocqueville and his thoughts on American democracy leading up to the U.S. Civil War. It examines social capital, social trust, and voluntary associations, including political and religious associations. The author comments on the U.S. sectional crises of the mid-nineteenth century, reflecting on immigration, abolitionism, and the westward expansion of slavery. Tocqueville's book "Democracy in America," is also considered.

An essay is presented on the political causes of the U.S. Civil War. Particular focus is given to Northern and Southern political viewpoints and compromises surrounding the issue of slavery. According to the author, the election of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated Northern voters' rejection of compromises proposed by Senator John J. Crittendon and thus triggered the political crisis which led to the war. Politicians Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas are also discussed.

An essay is presented on the role of economic change in the political and social tensions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. It is suggested that the reorientation of the northern U.S. economy around an east-west axis and the increasing need for new land in the southern states were key causes of the war, ultimately carrying more weight than moral concerns over slavery. Topics discussed include political compromises, the Erie Canal, and the role of the so-called Deep south in secessionism.

The article discusses the use of primary historical documents from the Confederate States of America in teaching students about the causes of the U.S. Civil War. The author critiques what he sees as the widespread misconception that issues surrounding states' rights, rather than conflict over the institution of slavery, were the primary motivators of southern secession. He urges teachers to help students think critically about the messages they receive from media and textbooks. Neo-Confederates and the historiography of the U.S. Civil War are discussed. The text of South Carolina's declaration of secession from the U.S. is also presented.

The article presents a speech by historian William J. Cooper Jr., delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association held in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 5, 2010, in which he discussed the secession crisis of 1860 and 1861, focusing especially on the book "The Road to Disunion, Volume 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861," by William W. Freehling, as well as providing a historiography of studies of the crisis of the Union.

The article explores how the historical memory of Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini impacted nineteenth-century American society. Orsini was executed in France after he was involved in an attempt to assassinate French Emperor Napoleon III. The February 27, 1860 Cooper Union speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln compares Orsini with radical abolitionist John Brown, who was notable for his raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Other subjects include Atlantic history, the trans-national causes of the U.S. Civil War, and the historiography of American and European studies of nationalism, social movements, and violence of the 1850s.

The article focuses on an 1860 resolution introduced by U.S. Republican legislator Harrison Gray Otis Blake, often referred to as H. G. Blake, of Ohio into the U.S. House of Representatives. It mentions Blake's reading of the resolution in session and its implicit condemnation of slavery within the language of the document. This article looks at its contribution to the escalating political events leading to the U.S. Civil War and divisions within Congress. Other topics include voting on the resolution, coverage of the resolution in national newspapers, and the raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia led by John Brown.

The article presents a speech by historian R. J. M. Blackett delivered at the British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) Conference in September 2008, in which he discussed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, nullification attempts of the law by Wisconsin and Massachusetts, fugitive slaves from slave states which bordered free states, the Underground Railroad, newspaper advertisements regarding escaped slaves, and the legal, political, and social implications of fugitive slaves.

The article discusses the controversies surrounding the fire that broke out in Savannah, Georgia on January 11, 1820, linking the events to the regional political-social conflicts between Northern and Southern States over slavery and the eventual start of the U.S. Civil War. The events of the disaster are described, noting the large-scale economic damage done to the city. Details are given relating how Northern financial aid with stipulations regarding slavery aggravated political tension between the regions. Further discussion is given linking the conflict to contemporary debates of the status of Missouri's statehood.

The article discusses politician John C. Calhoun and the Secession Movement of 1850. The author talks about how prior to the U.S. Civil War, almost every state in the Union declared its sovereignty. The element of slavery in the schism of the Union is examined. The article also discusses the political and social views of Calhoun, including his belief that the economic life of the South was destined to grow divergent from that of the North. Subjects of the article also include the doctrine of nullification, the Wilmot Proviso which would have banned slavery, and Calhoun's involvement in state politics.

The article profiles abolitionist clergyman George Barrell Cheever and discusses the role of religious emotionalism and morality in antislavery movements that contributed to the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. As a pastor, Cheever delivered sermons and speeches characterizing slavery as a sin. The influence of religion and morality on the views of abolitionists such as former U.S. senators Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams and journalist William Lloyd Garrison is also discussed. Moral aspects of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln are also commented on.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics including the Underground Railroad, Missouri during the U.S. Civil War and the role that slaves putatively played in causing the American Civil War.

The article notes that the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) is reevaluating battlefield interpretations in light of a federal law promoting attention to the role of slavery in causing the U.S. Civil War, noting an article in the March 2000 issue of the newsletter of the organization American Historical Association.