Quarles writes powerfully about the role of three-and-a-half million blacks in the South, who were impressed into non-combatant service building forts and entrenchments, working in factories and mines. In the North, black Americans fought with distinction on the front lines, shedding blood for an ideal-emancipation-that was cruelly betrayed during Reconstruction.
Quarles writes powerfully about the role of three-and-a-half million blacks in the South, who were impressed into non-combatant service building forts...
John Brown is an endlessly fascinating historical figure. Here are two classic studies by a pioneer in African American studies, one about the place of John Brown in African American history, the other about the reasons for the unique esteem in which he has been held by successive generations of blacks.This two-in-one edition features a new introduction by William S. McFeely, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Grant: A Biography.
John Brown is an endlessly fascinating historical figure. Here are two classic studies by a pioneer in African American studies, one about the place o...
Among the autobiographies of generals and presidents, the Personal Memoirs of U.U. Grant ranks with the greatest. It is even more impressive in light of the circumstances in which it was created: Faced with terminal cancer, virtual bankruptcy, and a family he would leave without means of support, he took the advice of his publisher, mark Twain, and went to work. He completed the manuscript in eleven months-and died a week later, on July 23, 1885. Frank and unpretentious, Grant's memoirs tell the story of his boyhood in Ohio, his graduation from West Point, and the military campaigns in...
Among the autobiographies of generals and presidents, the Personal Memoirs of U.U. Grant ranks with the greatest. It is even more impressive in...
Instructed by Congress to divide lands abandoned to the Union army into forty-acre plots and award them to freedmen, Howard began a program that might have given many families farms of their own. The effort had barely begun when it ran into President Andrew Johnson's policy of returning such lands to former white owners. Soon Howard and his agents were under pressure not to assist the free people, but to coerce them into working for landlords And yet, however tarnished the record, the Bureau was still recalled by W. E. B. DuBois for its "bright promise."Yankee Stepfather provides a revealing,...
Instructed by Congress to divide lands abandoned to the Union army into forty-acre plots and award them to freedmen, Howard began a program that might...
Former slave, orator, journalist, autobiographer; revolutionary on behalf of a just America, Frederick Douglass was a towering figure, at once consummately charismatic and flawed. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) galvanized the antislavery movement and is one of the truly seminal works of African-American literature. In this masterful and compelling biography, William S. McFeely captures the many sides of Douglass his boyhood on the Chesapeake; his self-education; his rebellion and rising expectations; his marriage, affairs, and intense friendships; his bitter defeat and...
Former slave, orator, journalist, autobiographer; revolutionary on behalf of a just America, Frederick Douglass was a towering figure, at once consumm...
In this moving and original work, William S. McFeely, one of this country's most distinguished historians, retells the history--and enters into the current-day lives--of the people who inhabit Sapelo's Island off the coast of Georgia, descendants of slaves who once worked its huge cotton plantations. It is at once a richly detailed work of historical reconstruction, a sensitive portrait of the lives of black Americans in this particular place and in our own time, and a moving meditation on race by a writer who has made its painful dilemmas his life's work as a historian.
In this moving and original work, William S. McFeely, one of this country's most distinguished historians, retells the history--and enters into the cu...
On a misty September morning in rural Georgia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian found himself cast in a role that he had never imagined for himself: an expert witness in the sentencing trial of a convicted kidnapper, rapist, and murderer. His brief testimony that day would ultimately lead him on a personal journey into the criminal justice system, to confront the actions and decisions of lawyers battling for and against the death penalty, convicts whose lives are at stake, and jurors forced to decide who shall live and who shall die.
On a misty September morning in rural Georgia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian found himself cast in a role that he had never imagined for himself:...
The seminal biography of one of America's towering, enigmatic figures. From his boyhood in Ohio to the battlefields of the Civil War and his presidency during the crucial years of Reconstruction, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography traces the entire arc of Grant's life (1822-1885). "A moving and convincing portrait....profound understanding of the man as well as his period and his country." C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books "Clearsightedness, along with McFeely's unfailing intelligence and his existential sympathy...informs his entire biography." Justin Kaplan, The New Republic"
The seminal biography of one of America's towering, enigmatic figures. From his boyhood in Ohio to the battlefields of the Civil War and his presidenc...
On the Boston Common stands one of the great Civil War memorials, a magnificent bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. It depicts the black soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry marching alongside their young white commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. When the philosopher William James dedicated the memorial in May 1897, he stirred the assembled crowd with these words: "There they march, warm-blooded champions of a better day for man. There on horseback among them, in the very habit as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune."
In this book Shaw speaks for...
On the Boston Common stands one of the great Civil War memorials, a magnificent bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. It depicts the black so...
A former slave, orator, journalist, autobiographer, and revolutionary on behalf of a just America, Douglass was a towering figure, at once consumately charismatic and flawed. In this biography, fresh and incisive in its research and interpretation, Freeley captures the many sides of this great and complex American, and recreates the high drama of a turbulent era.
A former slave, orator, journalist, autobiographer, and revolutionary on behalf of a just America, Douglass was a towering figure, at once consumately...
