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"Eugene Irving McCormac's James K. Polk: A Political Biography has been considered the authoritative study of the career of the eleventh President since its initial publication in 1922. McCormac offers a thorough and remarkably comprehensive portrait of one of America's most dedicated statesmen"--Excerpt from Collector's Notes.
"Eugene McCormac writes that running away was characteristic of servitude and that it cut into profits." - Liberation Theology Along the Potomac (2011) "In Eugene McCormac's study of indentured servants in Maryland, he notes that in the Assembly of 1637/38 there were fifteen former servants." - Social and Political Disorder in Proprietary Maryland (1970) "From Eugene McCormac in 1904...to Gloria Main...historians have seen the plantation system as inimicable to the interest of free craftsmen." - Colonial Chesapeake Society (2015) Is there any truth to claims that white people were kept as slaves on early colonial American plantations? University of California Professor of American History, E...
Go behind the scenes of one of America's most consequential presidencies with this detailed biography of James K. Polk, the eleventh president of the United States. Drawing on contemporary sources and years of research, Eugene Irving McCormac brings to life Polk's bold vision for the expansion of American territory, his struggles with Congress and the press, and his lasting impact on American politics. With compelling prose and a nuanced understanding of the political landscape, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in American history and the presidency. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civiliz...
The book offers a step-by-step blueprint of radical proposals for the U.S.-Mexican border that go far beyond traditional initiatives to ease restrictions on immigration. Up Against the Wall provides the background to understanding how the border has become a fraud, resulting in nothing more than the criminalization of Mexican and other migrants. The book argues that the border with Mexico should be completely open for Mexicans wishing to travel north.
Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But in The Slaveholding Republic, one of America's most eminent historians refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Fehrenbacher shows that the Constitution itself was more or less neutral on the issue of slavery and that, in the antebellum period, the idea that the Constitution protected slavery was hotly debated (many Northerners would concede only that slavery was protected by state law, not by federal law). Nevertheless, he also reveals that U.S. policy abroad and in the territories was consistently proslavery. Fehrenbacher makes clear why Lincoln's election was such a shock to the South and shows how Lincoln's approach to emancipation, which seems exceedingly cautious by modern standards, quickly evolved into a "Republican revolution" that ended the anomaly of the United States as a "slaveholding republic."
Historians generally consider James K. Polk one of the most effective presidents in United States history. Many of them doubt, however, that President Polk would have been successful without the counsel of his wife Sarah. The president dominated his cabinet and trusted no one--except for his wife. Sarah Childress Polk (1803-1891) was a highly educated woman who became President Polk's virtual secretary and more: She critiqued his speeches, evaluated his Cabinet decisions, and worked side by side with her husband. Mrs. Polk was praised for her astute views on matters of state by both Polk's supporters and his opponents. She outlived her husband by 42 years, and was often consulted by politicians who respected her opinions and trusted her instincts, including Confederate and Union officers in the Civil War. This is the story of a powerful and tireless first lady who became one of the most influential Americans of the middle and late nineteenth century.
Shines a light on the constitutional issues that confronted and shaped each presidency from George Washington to the Progressive Era Drawing from the monumental The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History, published in 2016, the nation’s foremost experts in the American presidency and the US Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how the first twenty-seven distinctive American presidents have confronted and shaped the Constitution and thus defined the most powerful office in human history. From George Washington to William Howard Taft, The Presidents and the Constitution, Volume 1 illuminates the evolving American presidency in a unique way—through the le...
Of unique interest to the student of nineteenth century America is this account of the Alabama Clays, who in their private life were typical of the slaveholding aristocracy of the old South, but as lawyer-politicians played significant roles in state and national politics, in the development of the Democratic party, and in the affairs of the Confederacy. In the period from 1811 to 1915, the Clays were involved in many of the great problems confronting the South. This study of the Clay family includes accounts of the wartime legislation of the Confederate Congress and the activities of the Confederate Commission in Canada. Equally interesting to many readers will be the intimate view of social life in ante-bellum Washington and the story of the domestic struggles of a plantation family during and after the war, as revealed through the letters of Clement Claiborne Clay and his wife Virginia.