The Political Thought of the Civil War

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7006-2911-4
Verlag: University Press of Kansas

Buch, Englisch, 432 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Why does the Civil War still speak to us so powerfully? If we listen to the most thoughtful, forceful, and passionate voices of that day we find that many of the questions at the heart of that conflict are also central to the very idea of America—and that many of them remain unresolved in our own time. The Political Thought of the Civil War offers us the opportunity to pursue these questions from a new, critical perspective as leading scholars of American political science, history, and literature engage in some of the crucial debates of the Civil War era—and in the process illuminate more clearly the foundation and fault lines of the American regime.

The essays in this volume use practical dilemmas of the Civil War to reveal and probe fundamental questions about the status of slavery and race in the American founding, the tension between moralism and constitutionalism, and the problem of creating and sustaining a multiracial society on the basis of the original principles of the American regime. Adopting a deliberative approach, the authors revisit the words and deeds of the most important political actors of era, from William Lloyd Garrison, John C. Calhoun, and Abraham Lincoln to Alexander Stephens and Frederick Douglass, with reference to the American Founders and the architects of Reconstruction. The essays in this volume consider the difficult choices each of these figures made, the specific problems they were responding to, and the consequences of those choices. As this book exposes and explores the theoretical principles at play within their historical context, it also offers vivid reminders of how the great controversies surrounding the Civil War continue to shape American political life to this day.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface
- Introduction: the civil War as a Regime Question, Thomas W. Merrill, Alan Levine, and James R. Stoner, Jr.
- Part I: The Problem
- 1. The Later Jefferson and the Problem of Natural Rights, Thomas W. Merrill
- 2. Slavery and the US Supreme Court, Keith E. Whittington
- 3. Antebellum Natural Rights Liberalism, Daniel S. Malachuk
- 4. Scientific Racism in Antebellum America, Alan Levine
- 5. From Calhoun to Secession, James H. Read
- Part II: Hard Choices
- 6. Lincoln and "the Public Estimate of the Negro": From Anti-Amalgamation to Antislavery, Diana J. Schaub
- 7. Why Did Lincoln Go to War?, Steven B. Smith
- 8. The Lincolnian Constitution, Caleb Verbois
- 9. To Preserve, Protect, and Defend: The Emancipation Proclamation, W. B. Allen
- 10. The Case of the Confederate Constitution, James R. Stoner, Jr.
- Part III: Pyrrhic Victories?
- 11. Completing the Constitution: the Reconstruction Amendments, Michael Zuckert
- 12. The Politics of Reconstruction and the Problem of Self-Government, Philip B. Lyons
- 13. "A School for the Moral Education of the Nation": Frederick Douglass on the Meaning of the Civil War, Peter C. Myers
- 14. The South and American Constitutionalism after the Civil War, Johnathan O'Neill
- List of Contributors
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Alan Levine is associate professor of government and director of special programs of the Political Theory Institute of Public Affairs at American University.

Thomas W. Merrill is associate professor of government and founding director of the Political Theory Institute in the School of Public Affairs at American University.

James R. Stoner Jr. is Hermann Moyse Jr. Professor and director of the Eric Voegelin Institute in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University.