Tag: states’ rights

Adam I. P. Smith: Who in Civil War America really believed in “States’ Rights”?

For our first post of the new year, we welcome a guest post from Adam I.P. Smith, author of The Stormy Present:  Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics, 1846–1865. In The Stormy Present, an engaging and nuanced political history of Northern communities in the Civil War era, Adam I. P. Smith offers a new interpretation of the… Continue Reading Adam I. P. Smith: Who in Civil War America really believed in “States’ Rights”?

Excerpt: John Tyler, the Accidental President, by Edward P. Crapol

Never the weeping willow of a creature his enemies loved to mock and deride, President Tyler was a decisive and energetic leader who established several important executive precedents that helped shape the direction of America’s nineteenth-century imperial destiny. Continue Reading Excerpt: John Tyler, the Accidental President, by Edward P. Crapol

Confederate History Month and the Politics of Memory

We welcome a guest post today from Anne E. Marshall, author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, which we’ll publish in December 2010. The book traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that… Continue Reading Confederate History Month and the Politics of Memory

His Accidency

A Virginian, whose father was friends with Thomas Jefferson An accomplished orator, known for his sweet voice and famously  aquiline nose Fathered fifteen children Named his estate on the James River “Sherwood Forest” after the setting of the Robin Hood tales, because he saw himself as a political renegade and outlaw Voted for Virginia’s secession and was a representative-elect to… Continue Reading His Accidency