Reflecting a prodigious amount of research in primary and secondary sources, this book examines the efforts of American abolitionists to bring northern religious institutions to the forefront of the antislavery movement. John R. McKivigan employs both conventional and quantitative historical techniques to assess the positions adopted by various churches in the North during the growing conflict over slavery, and to analyze the stratagems adopted by American abolitionists during the 1840s and 1850s to persuade northern churches to condemn slavery and to endorse emancipation. Working for three decades to gain church support for their crusade, the abolitionists were the first to use many of the tactics of later generations of radicals and reformers who were also attempting to enlist conservative institutions in the struggle for social change. To correct what he regards to be significant misperceptions concerning church-oriented abolitionism, McKivigan concentrates on the effects of the abolitionists' frequent failures, the division of their movement, and the changes in their attitudes and tactics in dealing with the churches. By examining the pre-Civil War schisms in the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist denominations, he shows why northern religious bodies refused to embrace abolitionism even after the defection of most southern members. He concludes that despite significant antislavery action by a few small denominations, most American churches resisted committing themselves to abolitionist principles and programs before the Civil War. In a period when attention is again being focused on the role of religious bodies in influencing efforts to solve America's social problems, this book is especially timely.

The Civil War should be seen as America's 'bourgeois revolution'. So argues Dr John Ashworth in this novel reinterpretation, from a Marxist perspective, of American political and economic development in the forty years before the Civil War. This book, the first of a two-volume treatment of slavery, capitalism and politics, locates the political struggles of the antebellum period in the international context of the dismantling of unfree labor systems. With its sequel, the volume will demonstrate that the conflict resulted from differences between capitalist and slave modes of production. With a careful synthesis of existing scholarship on the economics of slavery, the origins of abolitionism, the proslavery argument and the second party system, Ashworth maintains that the origins of the American Civil War are best understood in terms derived from Marxism.

The struggle to abolish slavery is one of the grandest quests - and central themes - of modern history. These movements for freedom have taken many forms, from individual escapes, violent rebellions, and official proclamations to mass organizations, decisive social actions, and major wars. Every emancipation movement - whether in Europe, Africa, or the Americas - has profoundly transformed the country and society in which it existed. This unique A-Z encyclopedia examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources. While it centers on the United States, the set also includes authoritative accounts of emancipation and abolition in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. "The Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition" provides definitive coverage of one of the most significant experiences in human history. It features primary source documents, maps, illustrations, cross-references, a comprehensive chronology and bibliography, and specialized indexes in each volume, and covers a wide range of individuals and the major themes and ideas that motivated them to confront and abolish slavery.

From the earliest texts of the colonial period to works contemporary with Emancipation, African American literature has been a dialogue across color lines, and a medium through which black writers have been able to exert considerable authority on both sides of that racial demarcation. Dickson D. Bruce argues that contrary to prevailing perceptions of African American voices as silenced and excluded from American history, those voices were loud and clear. Within the context of the wider culture, these writers offered powerful, widely read, and widely appreciated commentaries on American ideals and ambitions. The Origins of African American Literature provides strong evidence to demonstrate just how much writers engaged in a surprising number of dialogues with society as a whole. Along with an extensive discussion of major authors and texts, including Phillis Wheatley's poetry, Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Martin Delany's Blake, Bruce explores less-prominent works and writers as well, thereby grounding African American writing in its changing historical settings. The Origins of African American Literature is an invaluable revelation of the emergence and sources of the specifically African American literary tradition and the forces that helped shape it.

As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents. But the story of his rise to greatness is as complex as it is compelling. In this superb, prize-winning biography, acclaimed historian Richard Carwardine examines Lincoln’s dramatic political journey, from his early years in the Illinois legislature to his nation-shaping years in the White House. Here, Carwardine combines a new perspective with a compelling narrative to deliver a fresh look at one of the pillars of American politics. He probes the sources of Lincoln’s moral and political philosophy and uses his groundbreaking research to cut through the myth and expose the man behind it.

Nicholas Guyatt offers a completely new understanding of a central question in American history: how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations? Tracing the story of American providentialism, this book uncovers the British roots of American religious nationalism before the American Revolution and the extraordinary struggles of white Americans to reconcile their ideas of national mission with the racial diversity of the early republic. Making sense of previously diffuse debates on manifest destiny, millenarianism, and American mission, Providence and the Invention of the United States explains the origins and development of the idea that God has a special plan for America. This conviction supplied the United States with a powerful sense of national purpose, but it also prevented Americans from clearly understanding events and people that could not easily be fitted into the providential scheme.