Bøger af William C. Harris

Reverdy Johnson (17961876), Maryland senator, and Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York, were two influential opponents of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans during the Civil War. But unlike the Copperheads, they staunchly supported the war to suppress the rebellion. The story of these two figures of the loyal opposition by Lincoln Prize-winning author William C. Harris provides a new way of understanding critical controversies relating to the purpose of the Civil War, its conduct, emancipation, white racial opinion, loyalty, military conscription, and civil liberties.Johnson, a distinguished lawyer, former Whig, and conservative Unionist, did not believe that the secessionist states had left the Union, an idea with broad implications for post-war reconstruction. Like Seymour, he opposed Republican efforts in Washington to end slavery, assuming such a policy would backfire against the Union. However, Johnson in 1864 spoke in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. Before the war, Seymour supported Stephen Douglas's popular sovereignty policies, allowing the territories to decide whether or not to permit slavery, and during the war he opposed any tampering with slavery. Two Against Lincoln explores how these two men negotiated issues of emancipation, reconstruction, and reconciliation, all while navigating the roiling currents of partisan politics. The book includes illuminating accounts of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, the ephemeral National Union (Democratic) Party of 1866, the role of Senator Johnson in the approval of the military reconstruction acts of 1867, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and, finally, the presidential election of 1868 in which Seymour as the Democratic candidate did better than expected against war hero U. S. Grant.Building on the authors award winning work on Lincoln and the border states, Two Against Lincoln illustrates the complexity of political divisions in the Union states, as embodied in two powerful, controversial leaders of the time.

Winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize. The first modern history of Lincoln's border-state policies during the Civil War which tells the story of how Confederate campaigns and guerrilla activities kept the border region in constant turmoil--and that the border states preoccupied Lincoln at every turning point of the war

Details the events leading up to North Carolina's secession from the Union on 20 May 1861 and provides a concise explanation of the state's political, social, and economic landscape in the antebellum era.

Are we using the best system of values to examine the nation's political problems? Must we forsake idealism for realism? These are two questions that Kenneth Thompson systematically discusses in his penetrating examination of the role that values play in America's political relations with the other nations of the world.

Over the course of the Civil War, fifty-nine men served as governors of the twenty-five Union states. In this revealing volume, award-winning historian William C. Harris explores the complex relationship between Lincoln and the governors of the Union states, illuminating the contributions of these often-overlooked state leaders to the preservation of the nation.

Harris maintains that Lincoln held a fundamentally conservative position on the process of reintegrating the South, one that permitted a large measure of self-reconstruction, and that he did not modify his position late in the war.

Adopting a different approach to an American icon, this work reexamines the life of Abraham Lincoln to demonstrate how his remarkable political acumen and leadership skills evolved during the intense partisan conflict in pre-Civil War Illinois.

Lincoln Prize winner Harris turns to the last months of Lincoln's life in an attempt to penetrate this central figure of the Civil War, and arguably America's greatest president. Lincoln's ability to master the daunting affairs of state during the final nine months of his life proved critical to his apotheosis as savior and saint of the nation.