Civil War America: Making a Nation, 1848-1877

by Cook, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780582381070
• ISBN10: 058238107X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The turbulent middle decades of the nineteenth century constituted the critical period in American nation building. Civil War America shows that the era's combination of civil war and economic growth laid the foundation for the United States' emergence as a Great Power in the early twentieth century. Six hundred and twenty thousand men died in the Civil War - the United States' bloodiest single conflict which transformed a troubled slaveholding republic into the world's most advanced capitalist democracy. Civil War America is a compelling history of the origins of the Civil War as well as the events which brought about the destruction of the southern Confederacy, the triumph of the Union and the emancipation of four million black slaves. It also probes the impressive material development and westward expansion of the United States - grand national achievements which came at significant cost not only to many ordinary Americans but also to the indigenous inhabitants of the land, the Plains Indians. Civil War America is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the influence which the United States exerts in the modern world, and is the most sweeping and dramatic account of the American Civil War era on the market today.Robert Cook is a Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Sheffield.

Author Biography

Robert Cook is a lecturer in History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of a number of books on American history including Sweet Land of Liberty? The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century (Longman)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	x
Abbreviations	xii
Maps	xiii
Note on the text	xx
Prologue. Independence Day, 1854	1	(4)
A Robber and a Jailer: The Antebellum Republic	5	(37)
National development and national identity	5	(9)
Slavery and the antebellum South	14	(9)
Life in the `free states'	23	(10)
The second party system	33	(9)
Bitter Fruit of an Unjust War: The Politics of Slavery Expansion, 1848--52	42	(31)
The political impact of the Mexican War	42	(8)
The presidential election of 1848	50	(4)
The Compromise of 1850	54	(10)
The Democrats ascendant, 1850--52	64	(9)
Political Crises of the 1850s	73	(41)
The Kansas-Nebraska Act	74	(5)
Politics in flux	79	(12)
The Republican threat	91	(9)
The eclipse of national Democracy and the election of Lincoln	100	(14)
The Disunited States: Secession and Civil War	114	(44)
Secession and the outbreak of war, 1860--61	115	(11)
The chimera of victory, 1861--62	126	(15)
The triumph of Union arms, 1863--65	141	(17)
Our Deliverance is Nigh: The Quest for Southern Independence	158	(33)
Born in the CSA?: The unusual case of southern nationalism	158	(3)
Confederate mobilization and state formation	161	(3)
Nova ordo servorum	164	(3)
Onward Christian soldiers	167	(11)
The death of slavery and the collapse of the Confederacy	178	(13)
Last Full Measure of Devotion: The Union in Wartime	191	(38)
Multiple agendas	192	(7)
Government initiatives	199	(7)
Dissent and democracy	206	(7)
Restoring the Union: Phase one	213	(7)
Victory!	220	(9)
War by Any Other Name: The Struggle over Reconstruction, 1865--76	229	(40)
The aftermath of war	230	(8)
Congressional Reconstruction	238	(7)
Black life in the postwar South	245	(10)
The South redeemed	255	(14)
Land of Gold: The Far West in the Mid-Nineteenth Century	269	(33)
The mining frontier	271	(7)
The subjugation of the Plains Indians	278	(10)
Toward a modern West	288	(7)
The tribulations of Henry Eno	295	(7)
Reform, Reaction and Reunion at the Dawn of the Gilded Age	302	(41)
The economy and society of postwar America	303	(7)
Organizing for reform	310	(14)
Faltering steps to reconciliation	324	(6)
The electoral crisis of 1876--77	330	(9)
Conclusion. The Proving Time: The United States in the Era of Civil War	339	(4)
Select Bibliography	343	(8)
Index	351