On January 29, 1774, Benjamin Franklin was called to appear before the Privy Council--a select group of the king's advisors--in an octagonal-shaped room in Whitehall Palace known as the Cockpit. Spurred by jeers and applause from the audience in the Cockpit, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn unleashed a withering tirade against Franklin. Though Franklin entered the room as a dutiful servant of the British crown, he left as a budding American revolutionary. In The Making of a Patriot, renowned Franklin historian Sheila L. Skemp presents an insightful, lively narrative that goes...

In For Ourselves and Our Posterity: The Preamble to the Federal Constitution in American History, author Peter Charles Hoffer offers a sweeping, dramatic narration of a crucial moment in Early American history. Over the course of five days in September 1787, five men serving on an ad hoc "Committee of Style and Arrangement" edited the draft of the federal Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, profoundly recasting the wording of the Preamble. In so doing, the committee changed a federation into a Union and laid out an ambitious program for national governance many years ahead...

Offering a gripping narrative of one of the most notorious anti-abolition and anti-black riots to take place in the antebellum U.S., Pennsylvania Hall: A 'Legal Lynching' in the Shadow of the Liberty Bell provides a thorough explanation of the complexities of American antislavery and describes a society that was struggling to recreate itself in the wake of emancipation. Part of the Critical Historical Encounters series, Pennsylvania Hall focuses on the differences between gradual and immediate emancipation and the complexities of "immediatism." After describing the...

Once labeled the most dangerous black man in America, A. Philip Randolph was a tireless crusader for civil rights and economic justice. In Marching Across the Color Line: A. Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era, author David Welky examines Randolph's central role in the African American struggle for equality during the World War II era. Frustrated by unequal treatment in the military and civilian life, Randolph threatened to march 100,000 African Americans to Washington, DC, unless President Franklin Roosevelt expanded employment opportunities for blacks....

This compelling micro-history explores how the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 affected fugitive slaves, free blacks, abolitionists, and northern white citizens. The Jerry Rescue: The Fugitive Slave Law, Northern Rights, and the American Sectional Crisis is a narrative of the events surrounding the arrest of William "Jerry" Henry on October 1, 1851. Jerry, who thought he was to be charged with a minor infraction committed in Syracuse, went peacefully with the officials who arrested him; but he soon realized that he was in far more trouble than they had indicated. They were...

Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794 offers a glimpse into how native peoples participated in the intercultural diplomacy of the New Nation and how they worked to protect their communities against enormous odds. The book introduces students, in detail, to the Treaty of Canandaigua, which is little known outside of Central New York. It examines how the Six Nations of the Iroquois secured from the United States a recognition of their sovereign status as separate polities with the right to the "free use and enjoyment" of their lands.

In...