The words Indian fighter recall Custer. Indian fighter politician brings to mind Andrew Jackson or William Henry Harrison. Yet politicians who rose to prominence by exploiting their participation in bloody campaigns against Native America were much more common than most Americans realize. This book will bring to light important facts and highlight controversial issues regarding well-known figures from American history and folklore, while situating the questionable actions of these politicians within their historical and political times.

While most people know that Davy Crockett went to...

This book is a narrative history of the thirty-year struggle to outlaw slavery, starting with the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1834 and extending until the abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War.

The core of the book consists of two sections: 1) the 20-year political struggle to restrict slavery through a succession of anti-extensionist parties starting in 1840 with the founding of the Liberty Party, extending through the Free Soil Party (1848-54) and ending with Abraham Lincoln being elected president as a Republican on the same basic...

Settler-native conflicts in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and South Africa serve as excellent comparative cases as three areas linked to Britain where insurgencies occurred during roughly the same period. Important factors considered are settler parties, settler mythology, the role of native fighters, settler terror, the role of liberal parties, and the conduct of the war by security forces. Settlers and natives in each area share similar attitudes, liberal parties operate in similar fashions, and there are common explanations for the formation of splinter liberation groups. However,...

In settler societies, some conflicts have roots that are both ethnic and colonial in nature. These are conflicts between an indigenous ethnic group and groups and between an ethnic group and groups of settlers who have been transplanted to a territory by a colonial power as part of a colonizing effort. This study examines the role that liberal parties have played and can play in recent conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Typically, such parties reject the conventional wisdom of the settler population regarding the nature of the conflict. They also reject the...