Author: Nyle H. MillerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Kansas and the West
Author: Nyle H. MillerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Cherokee Civil Warrior
Author: W. Dale WeeksPublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806192569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
For the Cherokee Nation, the Civil War was more than a contest between the Union and the Confederacy. It was yet another battle in the larger struggle against multiple white governments for land and tribal sovereignty. Cherokee Civil Warrior tells the story of Chief John Ross as he led the tribe in this struggle. The son of a Scottish father and mixed-blood Indian mother, John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross’s efforts to protect the tribe’s interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century, from the forced removal policies of the 1830s to the exigencies of the Civil War era. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees, slaveholding and nonslaveholding, to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the United States withdrew its forces from Indian Territory. The vacated forts were quickly occupied by Confederate troops, who pressured the Cherokees to align with the South. Viewed from the Cherokee perspective, as Weeks does in this book, these events can be seen in their proper context, as part of the history of U.S. “Indian policy,” failed foreign relations, and the Anglo-American conquest of the American West. This approach also clarifies President Abraham Lincoln’s acknowledgment of the federal government’s abrogation of its treaty obligation and his commitment to restoring political relations with the Cherokees—a commitment abruptly ended when his successor Andrew Johnson instead sought to punish the Cherokees for their perceived disloyalty. Centering a Native point of view, this book recasts and expands what we know about John Ross, the Cherokee Nation, its commitment to maintaining its sovereignty, and the Civil War era in Indian Territory. Weeks also provides historical context for later developments, from the events of Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee to the struggle over tribal citizenship between the Cherokees and the descendants of their former slaves.
Kansas's War
Author: Pearl T. PoncePublisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821419366
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Kansas was in a unique position. It had been a state for mere weeks, and already its residents were intimately acquainted with civil strife. Kansas's War illuminates the new state's main preoccupations: the internal struggle for control of policy and patronage; border security; and issues of race--especially efforts to come to terms with the burgeoning African American population and Native Americans' coninuing claims to nearly one-fifth of the state's land. These documents demonstrate how politicians, soldiers, and ordinary Kansans were transformed by the war.
The Good Country
Author: Jon K. LauckPublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806191414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
At the center of American history is a hole—a gap where some scholars’ indifference or disdain has too long stood in for the true story of the American Midwest. A first-ever chronicle of the Midwest’s formative century, The Good Country restores this American heartland to its central place in the nation’s history. Jon K. Lauck, the premier historian of the region, puts midwestern “squares” center stage—an unorthodox approach that leads to surprising conclusions. The American Midwest, in Lauck’s cogent account, was the most democratically advanced place in the world during the nineteenth century. The Good Country describes a rich civic culture that prized education, literature, libraries, and the arts; developed a stable social order grounded in Victorian norms, republican virtue, and Christian teachings; and generally put democratic ideals into practice to a greater extent than any nation to date. The outbreak of the Civil War and the fight against the slaveholding South only deepened the Midwest’s dedication to advancing a democratic culture and solidified its regional identity. The “good country” was, of course, not the “perfect country,” and Lauck devotes a chapter to the question of race in the Midwest, finding early examples of overt racism but also discovering a steady march toward racial progress. He also finds many instances of modest reforms enacted through the democratic process and designed to address particular social problems, as well as significant advances for women, who were active in civic affairs and took advantage of the Midwest’s openness to women in higher education. Lauck reaches his conclusions through a measured analysis that weighs historical achievements and injustices, rejects the acrimonious tones of the culture wars, and seeks a new historical discourse grounded in fair readings of the American past. In a trying time of contested politics and culture, his book locates a middle ground, fittingly, in the center of the country.
Stephen A. Douglas, Western Man
Author: Reg AnkromPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476673764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
It didn't take long for freshman Congressman Stephen A. Douglas to see the truth of Senator Thomas Hart Benton's warning: slavery attached itself to every measure that came before the U.S. Congress. Douglas wanted to expand the nation into an ocean-bound republic. Yet slavery and the violent conflicts it stirred always interfered, as it did in 1844 with his first bill to organize Nebraska. In 1848, when America acquired 550,000 square miles after the Mexican War, the fight began over whether the territory would be free or slave. Henry Clay, a slave owner who favored gradual emancipation, packaged territorial bills from Douglas's committee with four others. But Clay's "Omnibus Bill" failed. Exhausted, he left the Senate, leaving Douglas in control. Within two weeks, Douglas won passage of all eight bills, and President Millard Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850. It was Douglas's greatest legislative achievement. This book, a sequel to the author's Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship, 1833-1843, fully details Douglas's early congressional career. The text chronicles how Douglas moved the issue of slavery from Congress to the ballot box.
The State of Sequoyah
Author: Donald L. FixicoPublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806195053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Few people today know that the forty-sixth state could have been Sequoyah, not Oklahoma. The Five Tribes of Indian Territory gathered in 1905 to form their own, Indian-led state. Leaders of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles drafted a constitution, which eligible voters then ratified. In the end, Congress denied their request, but the movement that fueled their efforts transcends that single defeat. Researched and interpreted by distinguished Native historian Donald L. Fixico, this book tells the remarkable story of how the state of Sequoyah movement unfolded and the extent to which it remains alive today. Fixico tells how the Five Nations, after removal to the west, negotiated treaties with the U.S. government and lobbied Congress to allow them to retain communal control of their lands as sovereign nations. In the wake of the Civil War, while a dozen bills in Congress proposed changing the status of Indian Territory, the Five Tribes sought strength in unity. The Boomer movement and seven land dispensations—beginning with the famous run of 1889—nevertheless eroded their borders and threatened their cultural and political autonomy. President Theodore Roosevelt ultimately declared his support for the merging of Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory, paving the way for Oklahoma statehood in 1907—and shattering the state of Sequoyah dream. Yet the Five Tribes persevered. Fixico concludes his narrative by highlighting recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, most notably McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), that have reaffirmed the sovereignty of Indian nations over their lands and people—a principal inherent in the Sequoyah movement. Did the story end in 1907? Could the Five Tribes revive their plan for separate statehood? Fixico leaves the reader to ponder this intriguing possibility.
The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West
Author: Michael L. TatePublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806133867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.
Journal of the West
Author: Lorrin L. MorrisonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic journals
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Prelude to the Dust Bowl
Author: Kevin Z. SweeneyPublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806158484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Before the drought of the early twenty-first century, the dry benchmark in the American plains was the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. But in this eye-opening work, Kevin Z. Sweeney reveals that the Dust Bowl was only one cycle in a series of droughts on the U.S. southern plains. Reinterpreting our nation’s nineteenth-century history through paleoclimatological data and firsthand accounts of four dry periods in the 1800s, Prelude to the Dust Bowl demonstrates the dramatic and little-known role drought played in settlement, migration, and war on the plains. Stephen H. Long’s famed military expedition coincided with the drought of the 1820s, which prompted Long to label the southern plains a “Great American Desert”—a destination many Anglo-Americans thought ideal for removing Southeastern Indian tribes to in the 1830s. The second dry trend, from 1854 to 1865, drove bison herds northeastward, fomenting tribal warfare, and deprived Civil War armies in Indian Territory of vital commissary. In the late 1880s and mid-1890s, two more periods of drought triggered massive outmigration from the southern plains as well as appeals from farmers and congressmen for federal famine relief, pleas quickly denied by President Grover Cleveland. Sweeney’s interpretation of familiar events through the lens of drought lays the groundwork for understanding why the U.S. government’s reaction to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was such a radical departure from previous federal responses. Prelude to the Dust Bowl provides new insights into pivotal moments in the settlement of the southern plains and stands as a timely reminder that drought, as part of a natural climatic cycle, will continue to figure in the unfolding history of this region.
The Civil War and the West
Author: Carol L. HighamPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Between 1800 and the Civil War, the American West evolved from a region to territories to states. This book depicts the development of the antebellum West from the perspective of a resident of the Western frontier. What happened in the West in the lead-up to and during the American Civil War? The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed provides a clear and complete answer to this question. The work succinctly overviews the West during the antebellum period from 1800 to 1862, supplying thematic chapters that explain how key elements and characteristics of the West created conflict and division that differed from those in the East during the Civil War. It looks at how these issues influenced the military, settlement, and internal territorial conflicts about statehood in each region, and treats the Cherokee and other Indian nations as important actors in the development of a national narrative.