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c span american history tv: Our First Civil War H. W. Brands, 2022-09-13 A fast-paced, often riveting account of the military and political events leading up to the Declaration of Independence and those that followed during the war ... Brands does his readers a service by reminding them that division, as much as unity, is central to the founding of our nation.—The Washington Post From best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes a gripping, page-turning narrative of the American Revolution that shows it to be more than a fight against the British: it was also a violent battle among neighbors forced to choose sides, Loyalist or Patriot. What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success. Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for not having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them. After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. Our First Civil War reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends. |
c span american history tv: History, Disrupted Jason Steinhauer, 2021-12-07 The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphere with historical information and misinformation, changing what we know about our history and History as a discipline. This is the first book to chronicle how and why it matters. Why does History matter at all? What role do history and the past play in our democracy? Our economy? Our understanding of ourselves? How do questions of history intersect with today’s most pressing debates about technology; the role of the media; journalism; tribalism; education; identity politics; the future of government, civilization, and the planet? At the start of a new decade, in the midst of growing political division around the world, this information is critical to an engaged citizenry. As we collectively grapple with the effects of technology and its capacity to destabilize our societies, scholars, educators and the general public should be aware of how the Web and social media shape what we know about ourselves - and crucially, about our past. |
c span american history tv: And It Begins Like This LaTanya McQueen, 2020 LaTanya McQueen's essays offer a bold examination of the weight history, both personal and societal, places on our present moment. And it Begins Like This is a book brave enough to challenge our accepted notions of the past to put black women in their rightful place, in the forefront of the ongoing struggle for dignity and equality. It's a book that is both moving and absolutely necessary. |
c span american history tv: What It Took to Win Michael Kazin, 2023-02-28 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A most anticipated book of 2022 at Vulture and Kirkus Reviews A leading historian tells the story of the United States’ most enduring political party and its long, imperfect, and newly invigorated quest for “moral capitalism,” from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden. The Democratic Party is the world’s oldest mass political organization. But what has the party stood for through the centuries, and how has it managed to succeed in elections and govern? In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin tells the story of the party’s longtime commitment to promoting “moral capitalism,” a system that mixes entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers. Yet the party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or furthered the causes of slavery, segregation, and Native American removal. With its evolution toward a more inclusive, egalitarian vision, the party won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it has also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda. Kazin traces the party’s fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from William Jennings Bryan to Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that defines the life of the Democratic Party and outlines the core components of a political legacy that President Joe Biden and his co-partisans rely on today as they seek to revitalize the American political experiment. |
c span american history tv: The Nixon Conspiracy Geoff Shepard, 2021-11-23 Geoff Shepard’s shocking exposé of corrupt collusion between prosecutors, judges, and congressional staff to void Nixon’s 1972 landslide reelection. Their success changed the course of American history. Geoff Shepard had a ringside seat to the unfolding Watergate debacle. As the youngest lawyer on Richard Nixon’s staff, he personally transcribed the Oval Office tape in which Nixon appeared to authorize getting the CIA to interfere with the ongoing FBI investigation, and even coined the phrase “the smoking gun.” Like many others, the idealistic Shepard was deeply disappointed in the president. But as time went on, the meticulous lawyer was nagged by the persistent sense that something wasn’t right with the case against Nixon. The Nixon Conspiracy is a detailed and definitive account of the Watergate prosecutors’ internal documents uncovered after years of painstaking research in previously sealed archives. Shepard reveals the untold story of how a flawed but honorable president was needlessly brought down by a corrupt, deep state, big media alliance—a circumstance that looks all too familiar today. In this hard-hitting exposé, Shepard reveals the real smoking gun: the prosecutors’ secret, but erroneous, “Road Map” which caused grand jurors to name Nixon a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up and the House Judiciary Committee to adopt its primary Article of Impeachment. Shepard’s startling conclusion is that Nixon didn’t actually have to resign. The proof of his good faith is right there on the tapes. Instead, he should have taken his case to a Senate impeachment trial—where, if everything we know now had come out—he would easily have won. |
c span american history tv: Meade at Gettysburg Kent Masterson Brown, Esq., 2021-05-03 Although he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the first shots were fired at Gettysburg, Union general George G. Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory. Brown argues that supply deficiencies, brought about by the army's unexpected need to advance to Gettysburg, were crippling. In spite of that, Meade pursued Lee's retreating army rapidly, and his decision not to blindly attack Lee's formidable defenses near Williamsport on July 13 was entirely correct in spite of subsequent harsh criticism. Combining compelling narrative with incisive analysis, this finely rendered work of military history deepens our understanding of the Army of the Potomac as well as the machinations of the Gettysburg Campaign, restoring Meade to his rightful place in the Gettysburg narrative. |
c span american history tv: Reaganland Rick Perlstein, 2021-08-17 From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power-- |
c span american history tv: The Cause Lost William C. Davis, 1996 This work investigates the facts and fictions of the South's victories and defeats during the American Civil War. It debunks long-standing legends, offers evidence explaining Confederate actions and considers the idealism, naivete and courage of military leadership and would-be founding fathers. |
c span american history tv: 1861 Adam Goodheart, 2012-02-21 A gripping and original account of how the Civil War began and a second American revolution unfolded, setting Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom. An epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields, 1861 introduces us to a heretofore little-known cast of Civil War heroes—among them an acrobatic militia colonel, an explorer’s wife, an idealistic band of German immigrants, a regiment of New York City firemen, a community of Virginia slaves, and a young college professor who would one day become president. Their stories take us from the corridors of the White House to the slums of Manhattan, from the waters of the Chesapeake to the deserts of Nevada, from Boston Common to Alcatraz Island, vividly evoking the Union at its moment of ultimate crisis and decision. Hailed as “exhilarating….Inspiring…Irresistible…” by The New York Times Book Review, Adam Goodheart’s bestseller 1861 is an important addition to the Civil War canon. Includes black-and-white photos and illustrations. |
c span american history tv: Seven Events That Made America America Larry Schweikart, 2010-06-01 A conservative historian examines some of the pivotal, yet often ignored, moments that shaped our history All students of American history know the big events that dramatically shaped our country. The Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and 9/11 are just a few. But there are other, less famous events that had an equally profound impact. Notable conservative historian Larry Schweikart takes an in- depth look at seven of these transformative moments and provides an analysis of how each of them spurred a trend that either confirmed or departed from the vision our Founding Fathers had for America. For instance, he shows how Martin Van Buren's creation of a national political party made it possible for Obama to get elected almost two centuries later and how Dwight Eisenhower's heart attack led to a war on red meat, during which the government took control over Americans' diets. In his easy-to-read yet informative style, Schweikart will not only educate but also surprise readers into reevaluating our history. |
c span american history tv: How the South Won the Civil War Heather Cox Richardson, 2020-03-12 Named one of The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a new birth of freedom, Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion. To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern yeoman farmer who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. Movement Conservatives, led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy. Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived. |
c span american history tv: Before the Revolution Daniel K. Richter, 2013-05-03 America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation's pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparentÑthat far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present. Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoplesÑIndians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, EnglishÑas they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico. By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richter's epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history. |
c span american history tv: Ends of War Caroline E. Janney, 2021-09-13 The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom. In this dramatic new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the deliberations of government and military authorities to the ground-level experiences of common soldiers. Ultimately, what unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years that followed. |
c span american history tv: The Presidents Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, 2019-04-23 The complete rankings of our best -- and worst -- presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership. Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories -- their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between. Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader -- and what does not. As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely. |
c span american history tv: American Like Me America Ferrera, 2019-09-03 INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Academy Award–nominated actress and 2023 SeeHer award recipient America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first-person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures. America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents’ homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up. |
c span american history tv: Abraham Lincoln Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, C-SPAN, 2008-10-22 In this beautifully designed volume, America's top Lincoln historians offer a diverse array of perspectives on the life and legacy of America's sixteenth president. Spanning Lincoln's life -- from his early career as a Springfield lawyer, to his presidential reign during one of America's most troubled historical periods, to his assassination in 1865 -- these essays, developed from original C-SPAN interviews, provide a compelling, composite portrait of Lincoln, one that offers up new stories and fresh insights on a defining leader. Extras include a timeline of Lincoln's life, brief biographies of the 56 contributors, and Lincoln's most famous speeches. |
c span american history tv: Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures Tegan Kehoe, 2022-02-15 Healthcare history is more than leeches and drilling holes in skulls. It is stories of scientific failures and triumphs. Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures presents a visual and narrative history of health and medicine in the United States, tracing paradigm shifts such as the introduction of anesthesia, the adoption of germ theory, and advances in public health. In this book, museum artifacts are windows into both famous and ordinary people’s experiences with healthcare throughout American history, from patent medicines and faith healing to laboratory science. With 50 vignette-like chapters and 50 color photographs, Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures showcases little-known objects that illustrate the complexities of our relationship with health, such as a bottle from the short period when the Schlitz beer company sold lager that was supposed to be high in vitamin D during the first vitamin craze. It also highlights famous moments in medicine, such as the discovery of penicillin, as illustrated by a mold-culturing pan. Each artifact tells some piece of the story of how its creators or users approached fundamental questions in health. Some of these questions are, “What causes sickness, and what causes health?” and “How much can everyone master the principles of health, and how much do laypeople need to rely on outside authorities?” Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures describes the days when surgeons worked on patients without anesthesia and wiped their scalpels on their coats, and the day that EMTs raced to provide help when the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001. The book discusses social and cultural influences that have shaped healthcare, providing insight relevant to today’s problems and colorful anecdotes along the way. |
c span american history tv: Dean Acheson Douglas Brinkley, 1992-01-01 Acheson was President Harry Truman's secretary of state, the American father of NATO and active in US foreign policy after World War II. He was also a Democratic Party activist in Eisenhower's presidency and an advisor in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon eras. This charts his post-secretarial career. |
c span american history tv: The Majic Bus Douglas Brinkley, 2003-04-15 Professor Douglas Brinkley arranged to teach a six-week experimental class aboard a fully equipped sleeper bus. The class would visit thirty states and ten national parks. They would read twelve books by great American writers. They would see Bob Dylan in Seattle, gamble at a Vegas casino, dance to Bourbon Street jazz in New Orleans, pay homage to Elvis Presley’s Graceland and William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, ride the whitewater rapids on the Rio Grande, and experience a California earthquake. Their journey took them to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, Harry Truman’s Independence, and Theodore Roosevelt’s North Dakota badlands. And it gave them the unforgettable experience of meeting some of their cultural heroes, including William S. Burroughs and Ken Kesey, who took the gang for a spin in his own psychedelic bus. Driven by Doug Brinkley’s energetic prose, The Majic Bus is a spirited travelogue of a unique experience. |
c span american history tv: Behold, America Sarah Churchwell, 2018-10-09 A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the American dream and America First -- that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been. |
c span american history tv: Remembering the Civil War Caroline E. Janney, 2013 Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation |
c span american history tv: Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C. John Muller, 2012-10-02 “Reconstruct[s] Douglass’s life in the nation’s capital, both at home and in the halls of power, in ways that no other biographer has done” (Leigh Fought, author of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass). The remarkable journey of Frederick Douglass from fugitive slave to famed orator and author is well recorded. Yet little has been written about Douglass’s final years in Washington, DC. Journalist John Muller explores how Douglass spent the last eighteen years of his life professionally and personally in his home, Cedar Hill, in Anacostia. The ever-active Douglass was involved in local politics, from aiding in the early formation of Howard University to editing a groundbreaking newspaper to serving as marshal of the District. During this time, his wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray, passed away, and eighteen months later, he married Helen Pitts, a white woman. Unapologetic for his controversial marriage, Douglass continued his unabashed advocacy for the rights of African Americans and women and his belief in American exceptionalism. Through meticulous research, Muller has created a fresh and intimate portrait of Frederick Douglass of Anacostia. Includes photos! “Muller’s book connects Douglass to the city and neighborhood the way no other project has yet been able to . . . you’re able to re-imagine the man and re-consider the possibilities of the place he once lived.” —Martin Austermuhle, DCist |
c span american history tv: The Political Theory of the American Founding Thomas G. West, 2017-04-03 This book provides a complete overview of the Founders' natural rights theory and its policy implications. |
c span american history tv: Washington at the Plow Bruce A. Ragsdale, 2021-10-12 A fresh, original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager whose singular passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, which he saw as the means by which the American people would attain the Òrespectability & importance which we ought to hold in the world.Ó Washington at the Plow depicts the Òfirst farmer of AmericaÓ as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation. Slavery was a key part of WashingtonÕs pursuits. He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. To this end, he devised an original and exacting system of slave supervision. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed WashingtonÕs famous decision to free his slaves after his death. |
c span american history tv: Unshackling America Willard Sterne Randall, 2017-06-27 A Glow of Patriotic Fire--Salutary Neglect -- Force Prevails Now Everywhere -- For Cutting Off Our Trade -- To The Shores of Tripoli -- The Reign of Witches -- Free Trade and Sailors Rights -- War Now! War Always! -- Remember the Raisin -- Purified As by Fire -- Father, Listen to Your Children -- You Shall Now Feel the Effects of War -- Destroy and Lay Waste -- Hard War -- So Proudly We Hail -- I Must Not Be Lost |
c span american history tv: Congressional Record United States. Congress, 1968 |
c span american history tv: Through the Heart of Dixie Anne S. Rubin, 2014 Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory |
c span american history tv: A Patriot's History of the United States Larry Schweikart, Michael Patrick Allen, 2004-12-29 For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history. |
c span american history tv: The Civil War of 1812 Alan Taylor, 2011-10-04 In the early nineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution, leading to a second confrontation that redefined North America. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor’s vivid narrative tells the riveting story of the soldiers, immigrants, settlers, and Indians who fought to determine the fate of a continent. Would revolutionary republicanism sweep the British from Canada? Or would the British contain, divide, and ruin the shaky republic? In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous boundaries, the leaders of the republic and of the empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. The border divided Americans—former Loyalists and Patriots—who fought on both sides in the new war, as did native peoples defending their homelands. And dissident Americans flirted with secession while aiding the British as smugglers and spies. During the war, both sides struggled to sustain armies in a northern land of immense forests, vast lakes, and stark seasonal swings in the weather. After fighting each other to a standstill, the Americans and the British concluded that they could safely share the continent along a border that favored the United States at the expense of Canadians and Indians. Moving beyond national histories to examine the lives of common men and women, The Civil War of 1812 reveals an often brutal (sometimes comic) war and illuminates the tangled origins of the United States and Canada. Moving beyond national histories to examine the lives of common men and women, The Civil War of 1812 reveals an often brutal (sometimes comic) war and illuminates the tangled origins of the United States and Canada. |
c span american history tv: Power and Liberty Gordon S. Wood, 2021 Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era. |
c span american history tv: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Richard R. Beeman, 2013-05-07 Describes the political, diplomatic, and military challenges faced by the delegates from the 13 colonies at the Continental Congress and how they came together to agree to free themselves from British rule and forge independence for America. |
c span american history tv: The Bone and Sinew of the Land Anna-Lisa Cox, 2018-06-12 The long-hidden stories of America's black pioneers, the frontier they settled, and their fight for the heart of the nation When black settlers Keziah and Charles Grier started clearing their frontier land in 1818, they couldn't know that they were part of the nation's earliest struggle for equality; they were just looking to build a better life. But within a few years, the Griers would become early Underground Railroad conductors, joining with fellow pioneers and other allies to confront the growing tyranny of bondage and injustice. The Bone and Sinew of the Land tells the Griers' story and the stories of many others like them: the lost history of the nation's first Great Migration. In building hundreds of settlements on the frontier, these black pioneers were making a stand for equality and freedom. Their new home, the Northwest Territory -- the wild region that would become present-day Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- was the first territory to ban slavery and have equal voting rights for all men. Though forgotten today, in their own time the successes of these pioneers made them the targets of racist backlash. Political and even armed battles soon ensued, tearing apart families and communities long before the Civil War. This groundbreaking work of research reveals America's forgotten frontier, where these settlers were inspired by the belief that all men are created equal and a brighter future was possible. Named one of Smithsonian's Best History Books of 2018 |
c span american history tv: The Rise of Andrew Jackson David S Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler, 2018-10-23 The story of Andrew Jackson's improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possible Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his forties his sole claim on the public's affections derived from his victory in a thirty-minute battle at New Orleans in early 1815. Yet those in his immediate circle believed he was a great man who should be president of the United States. Jackson's election in 1828 is usually viewed as a result of the expansion of democracy. Historians David and Jeanne Heidler argue that he actually owed his victory to his closest supporters, who wrote hagiographies of him, founded newspapers to savage his enemies, and built a political network that was always on message. In transforming a difficult man into a paragon of republican virtue, the Jacksonites exploded the old order and created a mode of electioneering that has been mimicked ever since. |
c span american history tv: A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1 Brooks Blevins, 2018-06-28 Winner of the Missouri History Book Award, from the State Historical Society of Missouri Winner of the Arkansiana Award, from the Arkansas Library Association Geologic forces raised the Ozarks. Myth enshrouds these hills. Human beings shaped them and were shaped by them. The Ozarks reflect the epic tableau of the American people—the native Osage and would-be colonial conquerors, the determined settlers and on-the-make speculators, the endless labors of hardscrabble farmers and capitalism of visionary entrepreneurs. The Old Ozarks is the first volume of a monumental three-part history of the region and its inhabitants. Brooks Blevins begins in deep prehistory, charting how these highlands of granite, dolomite, and limestone came to exist. From there he turns to the political and economic motivations behind the eagerness of many peoples to possess the Ozarks. Blevins places these early proto-Ozarkers within the context of larger American history and the economic, social, and political forces that drove it forward. But he also tells the varied and colorful human stories that fill the region's storied past—and contribute to the powerful myths and misunderstandings that even today distort our views of the Ozarks' places and people. A sweeping history in the grand tradition, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks is essential reading for anyone who cares about the highland heart of America. |
c span american history tv: U. S. Grant Waugh, 2010-07-09 Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blen... |
c span american history tv: The Cause Eric Alterman, 2012-04-12 The definitive history of American postwar liberalism, told through the lens of those who brought it to life. Liberalism stands proudly at the center of American politics and culture. Driven by passion for social justice, tempered by respect for the difficulty of change, liberals have struggled to end economic inequality, racial discrimination, and political repression. Liberals have fueled their cause with the promise of American life and visions of national greatness, seeking to transform the White House; the halls of Congress, the courts, the worlds of entertainment, law, media, and the course of public opinion. Bestselling author, journalist, and historian Eric Alterman, together with historian Kevin Mattson, traces the history of liberal ideals through the lives and struggles of fascinating personalities. The Cause tells the remarkable story of politicians, intellectuals, visionaries, activists, and public personalities battling for the heart and soul of the nation. The first full-scale treatment of postwar liberalism, The Cause offers an epic saga driven by stories of grand aspirations, principled ambitions, tragic flaws, and the ironies of history of the people who fought for America to live up to the highest ideals of its history. |
c span american history tv: My American Revolution Robert Sullivan, 2012-09-04 Americans tend to think of the Revolution as a Massachusetts-based event orchestrated by Virginians, but in fact the war took place mostly in the Middle Colonies—in New York and New Jersey and the parts of Pennsylvania that on a clear day you can almost see from the Empire State Building. In My American Revolution, Robert Sullivan delves into this first Middle America, digging for a glorious, heroic part of the past in the urban, suburban, and sometimes even rural landscape of today. And there are great adventures along the way: Sullivan investigates the true history of the crossing of the Delaware, its down-home reenactment each year for the past half a century, and—toward the end of a personal odyssey that involves camping in New Jersey backyards, hiking through lost mountains, and eventually some physical therapy—he evacuates illegally from Brooklyn to Manhattan by handmade boat. He recounts a Brooklyn historian's failed attempt to memorialize a colonial Maryland regiment; a tattoo artist's more successful use of a colonial submarine, which resulted in his 2007 arrest by the New York City police and the FBI; and the life of Philip Freneau, the first (and not great) poet of American independence, who died in a swamp in the snow. Last but not least, along New York harbor, Sullivan re-creates an ancient signal beacon. Like an almanac, My American Revolution moves through the calendar of American independence, considering the weather and the tides, the harbor and the estuary and the yearly return of the stars as salient factors in the war for independence. In this fiercely individual and often hilarious journey to make our revolution his, he shows us how alive our own history is, right under our noses. |
c span american history tv: The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution James Oakes, 2021-01-12 Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the King’s cure: state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery. |
c span american history tv: The Matter of Black Lives Jelani Cobb, David Remnick, 2021-09-28 A collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more—with a foreword by Jelani Cobb This anthology from the pages of the New Yorker provides a bold and complex portrait of Black life in America, told through stories of private triumphs and national tragedies, political vision and artistic inspiration. It reaches back across a century, with Rebecca West’s classic account of a 1947 lynching trial and James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time), and yet it also explores our current moment, from the classroom to the prison cell and the upheavals of what Jelani Cobb calls “the American Spring.” Bringing together reporting, profiles, memoir, and criticism from writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Vinson Cunningham, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, Kelefa Sanneh, Doreen St. Félix, and others, the collection offers startling insights about this country’s relationship with race. The Matter of Black Lives reveals the weight of a singular history, and challenges us to envision the future anew. |
c span american history tv: A People's History of American Empire Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, Paul Buhle, 2008-04 Adapted from the critically acclaimed chronicle of U.S. history, a study of American expansionism around the world is told from a grassroots perspective and provides an analysis of important events from Wounded Knee to Iraq. |
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