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A Secession Crisis Enigma

2010-04-15 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2010-04-15
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 391/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A Secession Crisis Enigma by : Daniel W. Crofts

Download or read book A Secession Crisis Enigma written by Daniel W. Crofts. This book was released on 2010-04-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Diary of a Public Man," published anonymously in several installments in the North American Review in 1879, claimed to offer verbatim accounts of secret conversations with Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Stephen A. Douglas -- among others -- in the desperate weeks just before the start of the Civil War. Despite repeated attempts to decipher the Diary, historians never have been able to pinpoint its author or determine its authenticity. In A Secession Crisis Enigma, Daniel W. Crofts solves these longstanding mysteries. He identifies the author, unravels the intriguing story behind the Diary, and deftly establishes its contents as largely genuine. According to Crofts, the Diary was not a diary at all but a memoir, probably written shortly before it appeared in print. The mastermind who created it, New York journalist William Henry Hurlbert (1827--1895), successfully perpetrated one of the most difficult feats of historical license -- he pretended to have been a diarist who never existed. Crofts contends, however, that Hurlbert's work was far from fictional. Time after time, the Diary introduces material virtually impossible to fabricate along with previously concealed information that was corroborated only after its publication. The Diary bristles with precise details regarding the struggle to shape Lincoln's cabinet and the composition of his inaugural address. Crofts's careful analysis, accompanied by the full text of the Diary in an appendix, offers a bold new perspective on the frantic scramble to reverse southern secession while avoiding the abyss of war. Hurlbert, a long-forgotten eccentric genius, emerges vividly here. Part detective story, part biography, and part a detailed narrative of events in early 1861, A Secession Crisis Enigma presents a compelling answer to an enduring mystery and brings "The Diary of a Public Man" back into the historical lexicon.

Henry Adams in the Secession Crisis

2012-04-11 History
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Release : 2012-04-11
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 510/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Henry Adams in the Secession Crisis by : Mark J. Stegmaier

Download or read book Henry Adams in the Secession Crisis written by Mark J. Stegmaier. This book was released on 2012-04-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Secession Winter session of Congress, twenty-two-year-old Henry Adams worked as private secretary to his father, Representative Charles Francis Adams. Henry wrote four accounts of these crucial months in Washington -- an essay, letters to his brother, a segment in his famous autobiography, and twenty-one unsigned letters that Adams composed as a novice correspondent for the Boston Daily Advertiser. Henry Adams in the Secession Crisis presents the Advertiser letters for the first time since their original publication between 1860 and 1861. During the months prior to the Civil War, Adams provided unusual insights into the development of the secession crisis and the attempts of Congress to resolve it peacefully. Since his father and Senator William H. Seward of New York led the efforts of more moderate Republicans to reach a compromise that would at least hold the border slave states in the Union, Adams's letters emphasize and illuminate their efforts and those of their Unionist allies in the upper South. While praising their endeavors -- and particularly the statesmanship of Seward -- Adams attacked southern secessionists and, in several letters, critically analyzed and condemned the famous Crittenden Compromise as a measure impossible for any Republican to support. Fully annotated by historian Mark J. Stegmaier, the Advertiser letters illuminate the politics of the secession crisis while showcasing the youthful work of a man who would become one of the most famous American writers of the late nineteenth century.

Secession Winter

2013-05 History
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Release : 2013-05
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 953/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Secession Winter by : Robert J. Cook

Download or read book Secession Winter written by Robert J. Cook. This book was released on 2013-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What prompted southern secession in the winter of 1860–61 and why did secession culminate in the American Civil War? Politicians and opinion leaders on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line struggled to formulate coherent responses to the secession of the deep South states. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861 triggered civil war and the loss of four upper South states from the Union. The essays by three senior historians in Secession Winter explore the robust debates that preceded these events. For five months in the winter of 1860–1861, Americans did not know for certain that civil war was upon them. Some hoped for a compromise; others wanted a fight. Many struggled to understand what was happening to their country. Robert J. Cook, William L. Barney, and Elizabeth R. Varon take approaches to this period that combine political, economic, and social-cultural lines of analysis. Rather than focus on whether civil war was inevitable, they look at the political process of secession and find multiple internal divisions—political parties, whites and nonwhites, elites and masses, men and women. Even individual northerners and southerners suffered inner conflicts. The authors include the voices of Unionists and Whig party moderates who had much to lose and upcountry folk who owned no slaves and did not particularly like those who did. Barney contends that white southerners were driven to secede by anxiety and guilt over slavery. Varon takes a new look at Robert E. Lee's decision to join the Confederacy. Cook argues that both northern and southern politicians claimed the rightness of their cause by constructing selective narratives of historical grievances. Secession Winter explores the fact of contingency and reminds readers and students that nothing was foreordained.

Seward

2012-09-18 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2012-09-18
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 948/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Seward by : Walter Stahr

Download or read book Seward written by Walter Stahr. This book was released on 2012-09-18. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most acclaimed new biographers– the first full life of the leader of Lincoln’s “team of rivals” to appear in more than forty years. William Henry Seward was one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century. Progressive governor of New York and outspoken U.S. senator, he was the odds-on favorite to win the 1860 Republican nomination for president. As secretary of state and Lincoln’s closest adviser during the Civil War, Seward not only managed foreign affairs but had a substantial role in military, political, and personnel matters. Some of Lincoln’s critics even saw Seward, erroneously, as the power behind the throne; this is why John Wilkes Booth and his colleagues attempted to kill Seward as well as Lincoln. Seward survived the assassin’s attack, continued as secretary of state, and emerged as a staunch supporter of President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s controversial successor. Through his purchase of Alaska (“Seward’s Folly”), and his groundwork for the purchase of the Canal Zone and other territory, Seward set America on course to become a world empire. Seward was not only important, he was fascinating. Most nights this well-known raconteur with unruly hair and untidy clothes would gather diplomats, soldiers, politicians, or actors around his table to enjoy a cigar, a drink, and a good story. Drawing on hundreds of sources not available to or neglected by previous biographers, Walter Stahr sheds new light on this complex and central figure, as well as on pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath.

Unionists in Virginia

2014-11-04 History
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Release : 2014-11-04
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 797/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Unionists in Virginia by : Lawrence M. Denton

Download or read book Unionists in Virginia written by Lawrence M. Denton. This book was released on 2014-11-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the Civil War was preventable is a debate that began shortly after Appomattox and continues today. But even earlier, in 1861, a group of Union-loyal Virginians--led by George Summers, John Brown Baldwin, John Janney and Jubal Early--felt war was avoidable. In the statewide election for delegates to the Secession Convention that same spring, the Unionists defeated the Southern Rights Democrats with a huge majority of the votes across the state. These heroic men unsuccessfully negotiated with Secretary of State William Henry Seward to prevent the national tragedy that would ensue. Author and historian Lawrence M. Denton traces this remarkable story of Virginians working against all odds in a failed attempt to save a nation from war.

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