Author: James Knox PolkPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Presidents
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Correspondence of James K. Polk: August 1847-March 1848
Author: James Knox PolkPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Presidents
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Lady First
Author: Amy S. GreenbergPublisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804173443
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
The little-known story of remarkable First Lady Sarah Polk—a brilliant master of the art of high politics and a crucial but unrecognized figure in the history of American feminism. While the Women’s Rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk. Now, in her riveting biography, Amy S. Greenberg brings Sarah’s story into vivid focus. We see Sarah as the daughter of a frontiersman who raised her to discuss politics and business with men; we see the savvy and charm she brandished in order to help her brilliant but unlikeable husband, James K. Polk, ascend to the White House. We watch as she exercises truly extraordinary power as First Lady: quietly manipulating elected officials, shaping foreign policy, and directing a campaign in support of America’s expansionist war against Mexico. And we meet many of the enslaved men and women whose difficult labor made Sarah’s political success possible. Sarah Polk’s life spanned nearly the entirety of the nineteenth-century. But her own legacy, which profoundly transformed the South, continues to endure. Comprehensive, nuanced, and brimming with invaluable insight, Lady First is a revelation of our twelfth First Lady’s complex but essential part in American feminism.
The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845 to 1849
Author: James K 1795-1849 PolkPublisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781015512634
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Reconstructing the Campus
Author: Michael David CohenPublisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 081393317X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 463
Book Description
The Civil War transformed American life. Not only did thousands of men die on battlefields and millions of slaves become free; cultural institutions reshaped themselves in the context of the war and its aftermath. The first book to examine the Civil War's immediate and long-term impact on higher education, Reconstructing the Campus begins by tracing college communities' responses to the secession crisis and the outbreak of war. Students made supplies for the armies or left campus to fight. Professors joined the war effort or struggled to keep colleges open. The Union and Confederacy even took over some campuses for military use. Then moving beyond 1865, the book explores the war's long-term effects on colleges. Michael David Cohen argues that the Civil War and the political and social conditions the war created prompted major reforms, including the establishment of a new federal role in education. Reminded by the war of the importance of a well-trained military, Congress began providing resources to colleges that offered military courses and other practical curricula. Congress also, as part of a general expansion of the federal bureaucracy that accompanied the war, created the Department of Education to collect and publish data on education. For the first time, the U.S. government both influenced curricula and monitored institutions. The war posed special challenges to Southern colleges. Often bereft of students and sometimes physically damaged, they needed to rebuild. Some took the opportunity to redesign themselves into the first Southern universities. They also admitted new types of students, including the poor, women, and, sometimes, formerly enslaved blacks. Thus, while the Civil War did great harm, it also stimulated growth, helping, especially in the South, to create our modern system of higher education.
President without a Party
Author: Christopher J. LeahyPublisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807173541
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 537
Book Description
Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party—the first full-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades—Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.” The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president—the annexation of Texas—exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
Correspondence of James K. Polk Vol 13, August 1847-March 1848
Author: James K. PolkPublisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781621902751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 568
Book Description
In the second half of 1845 the focus of Polk s correspondence shifted from those issues relating to the formation of his administration and distribution of part patronage to those that would give shape and consequence to his presidency: the admission of Texas, preparation for its defense, restoration of diplomatic relations with Mexico, and termination of joint occupancy of the Oregon Country. For the most part the incoming letters tended to urge rather more militancy on the Texas and Oregon questions than Polk would adopt, and notions of national destiny registered a singular theme of buoyant confidence in taking on both Mexico and Great Britain if military action should be required. President Polk and Secretary of State James Buchanan succeeded in both using and controlling the surge of nationalism that heightened expectations for expansion westward. Polk and Buchanan agreed on the importance of reestablishing diplomatic relations with Mexico, but the President chose to take a personal hand in managing the selection and instruction of John Slidell, whose departure for Vera Cruz would not be made public until he had arrived in Mexico. Polk wanted to give the fledgling Mexican administration of Jose Joaquin Herrera a chance to compose Mexico s differences with Washington free of contrary pressures from Great Britain and France; and he fully understood the price that Herrara might pay for a peaceful settlement of the Texas question. If Mexico required more than $6 million for the purchase of their two most northern provinces, as provided in his instructions, Slidell might agree to any reasonable additional sum. Slidell s mission probably never had much chance of success, for without control of his military the Herrara administration could neither give up its claim to Texas nor overcome British opposition to the sale of New Mexico and Upper California. Within but a few days of Slidell s arrival in the Mexican capital, Mariano Paredes y Argilla organized a military coup, put the Herrera government to flight, and on January 2, 1846, declared himself interim of president of Mexico. Polk left on the table his predecessor s initiative to divide the Oregon Country at the 49th parallel with all of Vancouver Island going to the British. The summary rejection of that offer by the British minister to Washington, Richard Packenham, so angered Polk that on August 30th he formally withdrew all prior offers to settle the dispute. The British foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, disavowed and assured the U.S. minister to Britain, Louis McLane, that no ultimatum had been sanctioned by his government. Buchanan tried in vain to soften Polk s decision to initiate further negotiations, but he had determined to give the required one year advance notice prior to abrogating the treaty of joint occupancy. Accordingly, in his First Annual Message to Congress Polk asked for a joint resolution terminating Oregon agreements with Great Britain. Polk received high praise for his Message and its hard line on Texas and Oregon. In addition to the texts, briefs, and annotations, the editors have calendared all of the documents for the last six months of 1845. Entries for unpublished letters include documents dates, addresses, classifications, repositories, and precis. The Polk Project is sponsored by the University of Tennessee and assisted by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Nations Endowment for the Humantines, and the Tennessee Historical Commission. The Authors: Wayne Cutler is research professor of history at the University of Tennessee. He earned his bachelor s degree at Lamar University and his master s and doctor s degrees and University of Texas at Austin. Professor Cutler became director of the Polk Project in 1975, served as associate editor in the fourth volume of the correspondence, and headed the editorial team in the preparation of the series fifth and subsequent volumes. He began his professional career in 1966 as an editorial associate of the Southwestern Historic Quarterly and moved to the assistant editorship of the Henry Clay Project in 1970. James L. Rogers II, the Project s associate editor from 1995 until 2002, received both his bachelor s and master s degrees from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and his doctor s degree from the University of Tennessee. He joined the Polk staff in 1991 as graduate research assistant and became associate editor following completion of the series ninth volume. "
The Development of the American Presidency
Author: Richard J. EllisPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317552962
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 671
Book Description
A full understanding of the institution of the American presidency requires us to examine how it developed from the founding to the present. This developmental lens, analyzing how historical turns have shaped the modern institution, allows for a richer, more nuanced understanding beyond the current newspaper headlines. The Development of the American Presidency pays great attention to that historical weight but is organized by the topics and concepts relevant to political science, with the constitutional origins and political development of the presidency its central focus. Through comprehensive and in-depth coverage, this text looks at how the presidency has evolved in relation to the public, to Congress, to the Executive branch, and to the law, showing at every step how different aspects of the presidency have followed distinct trajectories of change. All the while, Ellis illustrates the institutional relationships and tensions through stories about particular individuals and specific political conflicts. Ellis's own classroom pedagogy of promoting active learning and critical thinking is well reflected in these pages. Each chapter begins with a narrative account of some illustrative puzzle that brings to life a central concept. A wealth of photos, figures, and tables allow for the visual presentations of concepts. A companion website not only acts as a further resources base—directing students to primary documents, newspapers, and data sources—but also presents interactive timelines and practice quizzes to help students master the book's lessons. The second edition a new chapter on unilateral powers that brings greater attention to domestic policymaking.
Correspondence of James K. Polk
Author: James Knox PolkPublisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780826512253
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 604
Book Description
Vol. 13 Michael David Cohen, editor ; Bradley J. Nichols, editorial assistant.
HSC Heritage Auctions Manuscripts Auction Catalog #6031
Author: Sandra PalominoPublisher: Heritage Capital Corporation
ISBN: 9781599673950
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 124
Book Description
Of Times and Race
Author: Michael B. BallardPublisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617036390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
Of Times and Race contains eight essays on African American history from the Jacksonian era through the early twentieth century. Taken together, these essays, inspired by noted scholar John F. Marszalek, demonstrate the many nuances of African Americans' struggle to grasp freedom, respect, assimilation, and basic rights of American citizens. Essays include Mark R. Cheathem's look at Andrew Jackson Donelson's struggle to keep his plantations operating within the ever-growing debate over slavery in mid-nineteenth century America. Thomas D. Cockrell examines Southern Unionism during the Civil War and wrestles with the difficulty of finding hard evidence due to sparse sources. Stephen S. Michot examines issues of race in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, and finds that blacks involved themselves in both armies, curiously clouding issues of slavery and freedom. Michael B. Ballard delves into how Mississippi slaves and Union soldiers interacted during the Vicksburg campaign. Union treatment of freedmen and of U. S. colored troops demonstrated that blacks escaping slavery were not always welcomed. Horace Nash finds that sports, especially boxing, played a fascinating role in blending black and white relations in the West during the early twentieth century. Timothy Smith explores the roles of African Americans who participated in the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the creation of the Shiloh National Military Park. James Scott Humphreys analyzes the efforts of two twentieth-century historians who wished to debunk the old, racist views of Reconstruction known as the Dunning school of interpretation. Edna Green Medford provides a concluding essay that ties together the essays in the book and addresses the larger themes running throughout the text.