Abraham Lincoln: the Great Emancipator, savior of the Union, and revered national hero. Jefferson Davis: defender of slavery, leader of a lost cause, and forlorn object of scorn. Both Lincoln and Davis remain locked in the American psyche as iconic symbols of victory and defeat. They presided over a terrible war that decided the fate of slavery and severely tested each man's resolve and potential for greatness. But, as Brian Dirck shows, such images tend to obscure the larger visions that compelled both men to pursue policies and actions that resulted in such a devastating national tragedy....

America's finest eighteenth-century student of political science, John Adams is also the least studied of the Revolution's key figures. By the time he became our second president, no American had written more about our government and not even Jefferson or Madison had read as widely about questions of human nature, natural right, political organization, and constitutional construction. Yet this staunch constitutionalist is perceived by many as having become reactionary in his later years and his ideas have been largely disregarded.

In the first major work on Adams's political thought in...

The Civil War is often credited with giving birth to the modern American state. The demands of warfare led to the centralization of business and industry and to an unprecedented expansion of federal power. But the Civil War did more than that: as Melinda Lawson shows, it brought about a change in American national identity, redefining the relationship between the individual and the government.

Though much has been written about the Civil War and the making of the political and economic American nation, this is the first comprehensive study of the role that the war played in the shaping of...

Forrest McDonald has long been recognized as one of our most respected and provocative intellectual historians. With this new book, he once again delivers an illuminating meditation on a major theme in American history and politics.

Elegantly and accessibly written for a broad readership, McDonald's book provides an insightful look at states' rights-an issue that continues to stir debate nationwide. From constitutional scholars to Supreme Court justices to an electorate that's grown increasingly wary of federal power, the concept of states' rights has become a touchstone for a host of...

Much of the world today views America as an imperialist nation bent on global military, economic, and cultural domination. At home few share this negative view, largely because of a widespread belief in the irreproachable purity of our goals. Bob Pepperman Taylor, however, argues that our moral self-righteousness may potentially imperil our democratic ideals and threaten democracy itself by plunging us into illiberalism.

Taylor looks closely at six key thinkers in the Progressive tradition whose work helps illuminate the essential flaws in our current thinking about democracy. Their...

Moral paragon, public servant, founding father; scoundrel, opportunist, womanizing phony: There are many Benjamin Franklins. Now, as we celebrate the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, Jerry Weinberger reveals the Franklin behind the many masks and shows that the real Franklin was far more remarkable than anyone has yet discovered.

Taking the Autobiography as the key to Franklin's thought, Weinberger argues that previous assessments have not yet probed to the bottom of Ben's famous irony and elusiveness. While others take the self-portrait as an elder statesman's relaxed and playful...

The Civil War is often credited with giving birth to the modern American state. The demands of warfare led to the centralization of business and industry and to an unprecedented expansion of federal power. But the Civil War did more than that: as Melinda Lawson shows, it brought about a change in American national identity, redefining the relationship between the individual and the government.

Though much has been written about the Civil War and the making of the political and economic American nation, this is the first comprehensive study of the role that the war played in the shaping of...

During the late nineteenth century, Republicans struggled to reinvent America in the wake of civil war-and were consumed by the question of how the South should fit within the reconstituted Union. But the unity that Republicans had shown during the war was far from evident in facing this new challenge.

Conceiving a New Republic examines the Republicans' ideological struggle, focusing on how party thought--particularly concerning the concept of republicanism--determined the contours of that effort and was in turn shaped by it. In relating how Republicans strove to fashion a new...

That New England might invade Virginia is inconceivable today. But interstate rivalries and the possibility of intersectional war loomed large in the thinking of the Framers who convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to put on paper the ideas that would bind the federal union together.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin rejoiced that the document would "astonish our enemies, who are waiting to hear with confidence . . . that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats." Usually dismissed as...

African American intellectual thought has long provided a touchstone for national politics and civil rights, but, as Kimberly Smith reveals, it also has much to say about our relationship to nature. In this first single-authored book to link African American and environmental studies, Smith uncovers a rich tradition stretching from the abolition movement through the Harlem Renaissance, demonstrating that black Americans have been far from indifferent to environmental concerns.

Beginning with environmental critiques of slave agriculture in the early nineteenth century and evolving through...