Böcker utgivna av UNIV PR OF KANSAS

When Abraham Lincoln was sworn into office, seven slave states had preemptively seceded rather than recognize the legitimacy of his election. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln replied to the secessionists and set forth a principled defense of majority rule as "the only true sovereign of a free people." His immediate purpose was to argue against the legitimacy of a powerful minority forcibly partitioning the United States because it was dissatisfied with the results of a free, constitutionally conducted election. His wider purpose was to make the case that a deliberate, constitutionally checked majority, though by no means infallible, was the appropriate ultimate authority not only on routine political questions but even on the kind of difficult, deeply divisive questions--like the future of slavery--that could otherwise trigger violent contests.Sovereign of a Free People examines Lincoln's defense of majority rule, his understanding of its capabilities and limitations, and his hope that slavery could be peacefully and gradually extinguished through the action of a committed national majority. James Read argues that Lincoln offered an innovative account of the interplay between majorities and minorities in the context of crosscutting issues and shifting public opinion. This story is particularly timely today as a new minority of dissatisfied voters has threatened and enacted violence in response to a valid election.Read offers the first book focused on Lincoln's understanding of majority rule. He also highlights the similarities and differences between the threats to American democracy in Lincoln's time and in our own. Sovereign of a Free People challenges common assumptions about what caused the Civil War, takes seriously the alternative path of a peaceful, democratic abolition of slavery in the United States, and offers a fresh treatment of Lincoln and race.

"Thomas S. Foley, a Democratic representative from the traditionally Republican region of eastern Washington, served in Congress for thirty years, from 1964 to 1994. In 1989 he became the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives from a district west of Texas. His experience as a Democrat from a Republican district contributed to his strong commitment to bipartisanship and institution-building. His leadership came to an end with the Newt Gingrich-led Republican "revolution" that ushered in an era of ideological polarization and partisanship. Speaker Tom Foley is a political biography of this important but often ignored and overlooked figure in modern congressional history. In addition to examining the story of Foley's service as Speaker of the House, R. Kenton Bird and John C. Pierce address key themes that emerge from placing his career in the context of both his own life story and congressional politics in the late twentieth century. What emerges is the story of a leader whose strongly held political values motivated him to sustain a vibrant and responsive House of Representatives as an institution, but left him unsuited for the polarized and strident political environment that emerged in the early 1990s, a climate fueled by talk radio and other conservative media and successfully exploited by Gingrich and his fellow partisans. Though he was a reformed in the 1970s, by the 1990s he was seen as part of an "old guard" holding back the House from further reform. His defeat marked a seismic transition in the landscape of American politics"--

"The Battle of Atlanta, also known as the Battle of July 22 [1864] (the only engagement of the Civil War widely referred to by the date of its occurrence), was the largest and most prominent engagement of the four-month-long Atlanta Campaign for control of Atlanta. The Battle of Atlanta was the second engagement of the campaign, fought just east of the city. Confederate commander John Bell Hood's forces flanked William T. Sherman's line and crushed the end of it, they could go no further. Yet the Confederates came closer to achieving a major tactical victory on July 22 than on any other day of the Atlanta campaign. One scholar commented that Hess is "taking fresh and interesting approaches and looking at aspects of the battle, the personalities that fought it, the terrain and other factors that shaped its course and outcome, and analyzing and assessing events and people in ways that make a truly unique contribution to scholarship.""--