You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A history of the activities of the Committee on the Conduct of the War (COCOW), established by the American Congress shortly before the beginning of the Civil War. The study focuses on the nature of its power and influence on military policy in order to show its true impact.
Every American war has brought conflict over the extent to which national security will permit protesters to exercise their constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The most famous case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln's Civil War policies and one of the most controversial figure in the nation's history. In the great crisis of his time, he insisted that no circumstance, even war, could deprive a citizen of his right to oppose government policy freely and openly. The consequence was a furor which shook the nation's legislative halls and filled the press with vituperation. The ultimate fate for Vallandigham was arrest, imprisonment, and exile. The burning issues raised by his case remain largely unresolved today. Mr. Klement follows the tragic irony of Vallandigham's career and reassesses the man and history's judgment of him. After his death, "Valiant Val'' became a symbol of the dissenter in wartime whose case continues to have relevance in American democracy.
"The articles in this book carefully consider the passionate and partisan documents of the era in order to arrive at a clear, dispassionate understanding of the prisons North and South, how they were administered, and what life for the captured soldiers was like" - from back cover.
None
None
Revelatory scholarship about New England women engaging mainstream politics in the antebellum period
The Confiscation Acts were designed to sanction slave holding states by authorizing the Federal Government to seize rebel properties and grant freedom to slaves who fought with or worked for the Confederate military. In the first full account in more than twenty years of them, John Syrett examines the political contexts of the Acts, especially the debates in Congress, and demonstrates how the failure of the confiscation acts during the war presaged the political and structural shortcomings of Reconstruction after the war.
"Chase wanted so much to make a name for himself in American politics that early in his career he considered changing his 'fishy' appellation to the more important sounding Spencer Paynce Cheyce. That alteration never came about, but even without a fancy name, the New England-born, Ohio-bred attorney devoted his life to public service at many levels of government. Chase served as Free-Soil Senator from Ohio, as Governor of that pivotal Midwestern state, as Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln, and as Chief Justice of the United States, although he never realized his primary ambition--the presidency. Complex, overly ambitious, and deeply religious, Chase perhaps undermined his presidential...