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Reconstruction policy after the Civil War, observes Mark Wahlgren Summers, was shaped not simply by politics, principles, and prejudices. Also at work were fears--often unreasonable fears of renewed civil war and a widespread sense that four years of war had thrown the normal constitutional process so dangerously out of kilter that the republic itself remained in peril. To understand Reconstruction, Summers contends, one must understand that the purpose of the North's war was--first and foremost--to save the Union with its republican institutions intact. During Reconstruction there were always fears in the mix--that the Civil War had settled nothing, that the Union was still in peril, and th...
Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction
Relations between the press and politicians in modern America have always been contentious. In The Press Gang, Mark Summers tells the story of the first skirmishes in this ongoing battle. Following the Civil War, independent newspapers began to separate themselves from partisan control and assert direct political influence. The first investigative journalists uncovered genuine scandals such as those involving the Tweed Ring, but their standard practices were often sensational, as editors and reporters made their reputations by destroying political figures, not by carefully uncovering the facts. Objectivity as a professional standard scarcely existed. Considering more than ninety different pa...
Much of late-nineteenth-century American politics was parade and pageant. Voters crowded the polls, and their votes made a real difference on policy. In Party Games, Mark Wahlgren Summers tells the full story and admires much of the political carnival, but he adds a cautionary note about the dark recesses: vote-buying, election-rigging, blackguarding, news suppression, and violence. Summers also points out that hardball politics and third-party challenges helped make the parties more responsive. Ballyhoo did not replace government action. In order to maintain power, major parties not only rigged the system but also gave dissidents part of what they wanted. The persistence of a two-party system, Summers concludes, resulted from its adaptability, as well as its ruthlessness. Even the reform of political abuses was shaped to fit the needs of the real owners of the political system--the politicians themselves.
In his first book, The Plundering Generation, Mark Wahlgren Summers dealt with corruption and the breakdown of ethics in public life from 1849 to 1861. Continuing his look at the post-Civil War years he examines the effects of the war on public ethics, raising important questions about the significance of corruption for policymaking and American political thought during the years 1865 to 1877. Who, thinking of Reconstruction fails to think of corruption? The Grant administration and the Great Barbecue remain inseparable in our minds. From grafting South Carolina Republicans to plundering Tammany Hall delegates, abuses of the public trust were all the fashion. Noting the effect of corruption ...
The presidential election of 1884, in which Grover Cleveland ended the Democrats' twenty-four-year presidential drought by defeating Republican challenger James G. Blaine, was one of the gaudiest in American history, remembered today less for its political significance than for the mudslinging and slander that characterized the campaign. But a closer look at the infamous election reveals far more complexity than previous stereotypes allowed, argues Mark Summers. Behind all the mud and malarkey, he says, lay a world of issues and consequences. Summers suggests that both Democrats and Republicans sensed a political system breaking apart, or perhaps a new political order forming, as voters began to drift away from voting by party affiliation toward voting according to a candidate's stand on specific issues. Mudslinging, then, was done not for public entertainment but to tear away or confirm votes that seemed in doubt. Uncovering the issues that really powered the election and stripping away the myths that still surround it, Summers uses the election of 1884 to challenge many of our preconceptions about Gilded Age politics.
This book describes the southern Republicans' post- Civil War railroad aid program--the central element of the Gospel of Prosperity" designed to reestablish a vigorous economy in the devastated South. Conceding that race and Unionism were basic issues, Mark W. Summers explores a neglected facet of the postwar era: the attempt to build a new South and a biracial Republican majority through railroad aid. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Set sail for high-seas hijinks and nautical nonsense with those paragons of Pirattitude who invented the famous International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Whether readers are old hands at pirating or hopeless landlubbers, the Pirate Guys will have them pirate-savvy in no time with sure-fire pirate pickup lines for any occasion, tips on how to make their pirate party a buccaneer ball that even Martha Stewart would be proud of, and help determining their true pirate monicker.
From the time he was in the first grade, Marc Summers feared that if his bedroom wasn't perfectly neat and his shirts didn't hang exactly one-fourth of an inch apart in the closet, something terrible would befall his parents or himself. It wasn't until many years later that the source of his anxiety became clear: like an estimated 6 million Americans today, Summers suffers the effects of obsessive compulsive disorder. A frank and often hilarious narrative, Everything in Its Place tells the story of Summers's journey from compulsive room cleaner to family man, television celebrity, and Obsessive Compulsive Foundation spokesperson. Describing his struggle to maintain personal relationships and build a career, the ups and downs of being on medication, and what it's like to be compelled to straighten the fringes of a rug at two o'clock in the morning, here is a compellingly readable and ultimately uplifting memoir.
This One Summer meets The Edge of Seventeen in this poignant coming-of-age YA graphic novel about two childhood friends at a crossroads in their lives and art from the author of Mastering Manga. Megan and Cass have been joined at the brush for as long as they can remember. For years, while spending summers together at a lakeside cabin, they created art together, from sand to scribbles . . . to anything available. Then Cass moved away to New York. When Megan finally convinces her parents to let her spend a week in the city, too, it seems like Cass has completely changed. She has tattoos, every artist in the city knows her. She even eats chicken feet now! At least one thing has stayed the same: They still make their best art together. But when one girl betrays the other's trust on the eve of what is supposed to be their greatest artistic feat yet, can their friendship survive? Can their art?