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Between 1808 and 1820, the United States transformed the foreign slave trade from a legitimate form of commerce into a capital crime. This transformation reflected the determination of the American public and their representatives to extricate the United States from participation in the foreign slave trade. Yet, in the spring of 1824, a group of U.S. senators refused to approve the renomination of a customs collector who had sought to suppress the illegal slave trade emanating from his home district. A few weeks later, this same group of senators effectively scuttled the anti-slave trade treaty that the Monroe administration had negotiated with Great Britain. This article will expose why this group of lawmakers opted to weaken the nation's ability to suppress the illegal traffic. It will argue that – as members of William Crawford's faction – they set aside their ideological support for suppressing the foreign slave trade in order to secure the allegiance of another senator, James D'Wolf of Rhode Island, and then, with D'Wolf's crucial assistance, strike a blow against John Quincy Adams, who was one of Crawford's intraparty rivals in the upcoming presidential election of 1824. But the fallout from this particular deal – or "corrupt bargain," as such political horse-trading would soon come to be known – was not limited to the election. On the contrary, Crawford's faction had severely undermined the federal government's effort to suppress the slave trade in an ultimately futile effort to hurt Adams. This article will therefore reveal how even popular policy measures were vulnerable to electoral ambitions and that seemingly small political deals could have longstanding and widespread repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes various events related to the anti-slavery movement in Illinois, which culminated from the passing of a resolution in 1823 calling for a constitutional convention to legalize slavery in Illinois. Influence of Southern yeomen on the resistance; Pro- and anti-slavery groups and their sentiments.

The article discusses the role that the War of 1812 had on U.S. state building and finance in the post-war years, through examining the career of the government financier Jacob Barker. An overview of the relationship between the U.S. banking industry and the state, including the development of state-charted banks, is provided.

The article focuses on the practices of cattle breeders in the U.S. during the 1830s. Topics discussed include the importance given to portraits of domestic animals, the links between human and animal bodily knowledge and ways that American breeders have committed themselves to British animals and British theories of heritability and taste.

Recirculating the assertion of magazine historian Frank Luther Mott, subsequent generations of scholars maintained that Godey's Lady's Magazine eschewed content treating the social, political, and economic issues of the day. This article challenges that nearly universal reading of Godey's by arguing for the importance of a close reading of the “match plates” commissioned by Godey for his magazine. Appearing between 1840 and 1860, these plates, many engraved from pendant paintings created expressly for Godey, draw on the popularity of stage melodrama, dramatic tableau, and tableaux vivants to enact a performative morality addressing major social, economic, and political issues. Early match plates contrast virtue and vice, capitalizing on the enormous popularity of William Hogarth's engraving series Industry and Idleness. Match plates appear also in the popular fashion plates of the magazine – echoing the city mystery novels, plays, and prints first popularized by Eugene Sue – in Christmas for the Rich/Christmas for the Poor and Dress the Maker/Dress the Wearer. By 1860, even the magazine's “useful” contents, such as the pattern work prized by Godey's readers, echo the popularity of match plates: hence Fruit for Working/Flowers for Working. Closer attention to Godey's engravings calls for a reassessment of Mott's assertion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the twenty-five years before 1850, southern writers of regional literature and ex-slave autobiographers constructed a narrative of United States slavery that was mutually contradictory and yet mutually influential. That process involved a dynamic hybridization of genres in which authors contested meanings of slavery, arriving at opposing conclusions. They nevertheless focussed on family and the South's distinctive culture. This article explores the dialectic of that argument and contends that white regionalists created a plantation-paternalist romance to which African American ex-slaves responded with depictions of slavery's cruelty and immorality. However, by the 1840s, ex-slaves had domesticated their narratives in part to sell their works in a literary marketplace in which their adversaries’ sentimental fiction sold well. Scholars have not examined white southern literature and ex-slave autobiography in comparative context, and this article shows how both labored to construct a peculiar institution in readers’ imagination. Southern regionalists supplied the elements of a pro-slavery argument and ex-slave autobiographers infused their narratives with abolitionist rhetoric at a time in which stories Americans told about themselves became increasingly important in the national political crisis over slavery extension and fugitive slaves. It was on that discursive ground that the debates of the 1850s were carried forth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that American federalism led both to a greater national role in rail promotion and more centralized railroads in the antebellum period. Local competition among states led Congressional representatives from state unable to build local railroads to turn to federal assistance. Early support for railroads came from representatives in the South and frontier, who were primarily drawn into rail coalitions because of their own inability to build local rail networks. However, over time, competition among states within the coalition as well as concerns about federal power led many initial members of the coalition to drop out. In their place, states that favored a stronger federal state stepped into the coalition and subsequently built a more nationally oriented rail system. This analysis argues that the shifting of policies from local control to national oversight due to local resource shortages is an important aspect of American states building. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article attempts to identify the causes of intraregional great power expansion. Using the state-to-nation balance theory we argue that, in many cases, such great power expansion can be explained as being the result of the incongruence within a given region between the nationalist aspirations and identities of the various peoples inhabiting it and the region's division into territorial states. The existence of the external type of such incongruence within a great power (that is, a pan-nationalist ideology) turns it into a revisionist state eager to expand, using all means available, in order to 'resolve' this incongruence. In addition, this incongruence also creates various nationalistic trans-border groups (like terrorists, private military expeditions/filibusters, settlers, etc.). Often these groups try, through various independent efforts (usually in nearby weak states), to achieve these revisionist goals as well, thus complementing and aiding the revisionist great power's own efforts. After demonstrating the weaknesses in other existing explanations, this argument is illustrated in the case of the territorial expansion by the United States in the Southwest at the expense of Mexico in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay synthesizes conclusions about the agency of enslaved people drawn from three books by William Dusinberre: Them Dark Days; Slavemaster President; and Strategies for Survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of the United States Navy in the early history of Liberia, particularly commenting on the founding of the colony for free blacks at Cape Mesurado, later Monrovia, Liberia. It examines the role of the American Colonization Society (ACS), an organization that advocated for the removal of freed African American slaves to Africa. The author particularly reflects on American expansionism, American views on imperialism, and efforts to suppress the slave trade near Liberia. Several U.S. naval and political leaders are discussed, including Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, Lieutenant Robert F. Stockton, and U.S. President James Monroe.

Traditionally scholars have downplayed the importance of southern calls to reopen the transatlantic slave trade in the 1850s. Those who have paid serious attention to this effort see it as another endeavor by aristocratic planters to enshrine their social, economic, and political power in the antebellum South. The advocates were, as one puts it, 'no champions of the common white man.' Two Irish-American leaders who supported the reopening, John Mitchel and Andrew Gordon Magrath, complicate this view of the attempt as just a planters' plot. Their actions and opinions indicate that some proponents did see importing African slaves as something that would benefit all whites and not just the elite, and, as a result, protect the overall 'interests' of the South. Mitchel and Magrath's support of Ireland and Irish immigrants and their opposition to British power influenced their positions on the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 1829 book "A Son of the Forest: The Experience of William Apess, a Native of the Forest, Comprising a Notice of the Pequot Tribe of Indians," by Native American author William Apess. The author considers how Apess's former career as a Methodist Church preacher helped him promote social and political reforms which encouraging the rights and political organization of Native Americans. He also considers how Apess used rhetoric to describe Indians as capable of moral behavior and Christian work ethics. Other subjects considered include temperance, anti-colonialism, and Apess's use of sentiment.

This essay adds to a growing body of scholarship that challenges the image of the United States Military Academy at West Point and US Army officer corps as institutions that were isolated in the nineteenth century from developments in civilian society. It does so by calling attention to parallels between the ideas that shaped the antebellum military academy's approach to cadet education and socialization and those of the Scottish-American 'common sense' school of moral philosophy that was popular among members of America's emerging middle class before the Civil War. It describes these parallels, how they reflected a common cultural milieu that shaped the outlook of the common sense philosophers, their adherents and education theorists in antebellum America, and the authorities at West Point, and identifies traits that distinguished how many West Point graduates conducted themselves during the American Civil War that are suggestive of these parallels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a broad historiographical study of U.S. slavery, examining the development of writing on antebellum slavery throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Discussion is offered regarding the systematic treatment of slavery within U.S. history from the 1830s onward, focusing on several trends which have developed in the later 20th century including cross-cultural contextual studies, the treatment of the theme of agency, and the rise of slave stories as a popular medium. Additional related subjects such as gender and law are also mentioned.

A foreword to this issue's theme on antebellum slavery is presented.

The article discusses key issues concerning the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which provided Mexico with financial compensation for the territorial losses it suffered after its war with the United States. The author argues that the war indemnity for Mexico was adequate and was not a derisory sum, citing the disposition of funds for use by Mexico as sovereign debt service. The article explores the value of the sum that the U.S. paid to Mexico in the wake of the War of 1847, how the money was spent and discusses the reasons why the payment has become historically devalued and dismissed.

The article discusses how depictions of nature and science in literature during the antebellum period were used to educate U.S. children about their republican responsibilities. Particular attention is paid to examining key texts of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Jacob Abbot, two of the era's most popular children's authors. Assumptions these authors made about the search for scientific knowledge and its proper relationship to the larger polity as expressed in their writing is assessed. The creation of the character Peter Parley by Goodrich through a series of books is discussed. The creation of the character of Rollo by Abbot in beginning in the 1830s is examined.

Representations of Jessie Fremont, the wife of the Republican presidential candidate in 1856, had a prominent role in the campaign poetry of that year. The Jessie poems bind the period's cult of domesticity to the party's figurative anti-slavery system. According to these poems, Northerners intent on conciliating the Slave Power were spreading their own sterility, whereas men willing to make a home for Jessie in the White House were reproducing, through their own redemption, a future free West. The code of domesticity thus helped these poems to define collective political action as growing out of the strengths of free labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its beginnings in the 1820s, African-American newspapers have always been a strong and vocal ally for the rights of blacks throughout the United States. This article delineates how and why these papers from the mid-1830s to the Civil War became important as platforms of political agency for those who were denied conventional means of political participation in the government. In particular, this study focuses on four avenues through which the newspapers were utilized to afford political agency to Africans Americans: the material and rhetorical support of black suffrage; the promotion and facilitation of public protest; the promotion of material and moral elevation; and the creation and promotion of a black national and historical identity. The success of the black press in these areas set a precedent for all subsequent African-American political struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Prior to the Iraq War, there had been a long series of American wars in which U.S. leaders often maneuvered the other side into “firing the first shot.” This strategy of “passive defense” amounts to an American way of going to war, and it dates back at least to the U.S.-Mexican War. The United States thus retained the moral and legal legitimacy, an asset which is especially important in a democratic political system. The Iraq War represents a fundamental departure from this American way. It might be the worst crisis since Vietnam. but that war was just another entry in the U.S. playbook for how to go to war. The Iraq War not only contradicts longstanding practices in American foreign policy, but it has the potential to issue in far greater international disorder than the Vietnam War. This catastrophe may make future presidents more heedful of John Quincy Adams’ prophetic words: go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the role of independent Indians in the U.S.-Mexican War and, more generally, their role in the political history of the United States and Mexico. The author remarks that historical scholars have often ignored the role of Indians in shaping the international history of North America. Campaigns of Comanche and Kiowa tribes into Mexico are discussed. The author states that Indian raiders helped to shape how Americans and Mexicans viewed each other before the U.S.-Mexican War. The author remarks how the U.S.-Mexican can be viewed as the pursuit of independent Indians pursuing their own interests at the margins of state power.

Lost for almost 160 years, a misplaced American consular report recently discovered among private manuscripts held by the College of William and Mary's Earl Gregg Swem Library sheds valuable light on a chapter of Atlantic history long dimly lit. Here excerpted at length, the report comprises a meticulous analysis of the West Indian free-labor experiment implemented by Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Compiled at the instruction of a high-ranking American officeholder with influential ties in the slaveholding American South, the report was meant to pinpoint economic rationale of British antislavery policies at the precise moment Americans moved to annex the Republic of Texas. Not by coincidence, the report spoke also to the future of American slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay explores the common relationship between Blackface minstrelsy and Harried Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The author relates the powerful influence both works had for the formation of racial identity in 19th century U.S. culture as well as the shared controversy regarding stereotyped roles and their positive and negative aspects.

Discusses the 19th Century Amistad affair, based on an 1841 US Supreme Court document. Film and opera adaptations of the Amistad affair; Availability of historic documents at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana; Historical account of the Amistad affair based on popular sources; Highlights of the decision in the matter of `United States v. The Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad.'

Focuses on the Transcontinental or Adams-Onis Treaty, and the circumstances which inspired John Long to lead a filibustering expedition into Texas. Long's opposition against the surrender of American Title to the region of Texas under the treaty's third article; Ratification of the treaty; Profile of Long; Foreign policy of John Monroe's administration.

Puts on record several new discoveries about one of Henry James, Sr.'s most turbulent and interesting periods when he resided in Albany, traveled to Washington, D.C., and undertook a six-month transatlantic trip. Founding events in his religious and intellectual life; Robert Sandeman's `Letters on Theron and Aspasio'; Regular and bitter attacks on all forms of clergy; More.

Focuses on the letter of teacher and publisher Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to the editor of the `New York Tribune' in 1853 indicating her support for the women's education in the industrial arts. Illumination of the design school movement; Advice offered to New Yorkers on their prospective schools.

Discusses the changes in the relationship between the native people of Texas and the European-descended newcomers during the 19th century. Formation of the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in 1842; Expansion of the German colony; Conflicts with the Indians in the later years; Collapse of the Society; Putting Indians in reservations.

Profiles Oregon writer and pioneer Thomas Jefferson Farnham and his involvement and account of the controversial `Graham Affair' in 1840 before the Mexican War. Farnham's 1844 book, `Travels in California and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean'; Writings reflect the restless, optimistic climate of Jacksonian America; Farnham's life and New England background; More.

The article presents a lesson plan for secondary education history students which teaches students about the everyday lives of slaves in the antebellum South of the U.S.

The article presents a lesson plan for secondary education history students which teaches about the importance of slavery to New England's economy before the U.S. Civil War in 1861.