Daniel W. Crofts's Books

A Secession Crisis Enigma

William Henry Hurlbert and "The Diary of a Public Man"

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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A Secession Crisis Enigma

William Henry Hurlbert and "The Diary of a Public Man"

By: Daniel W. Crofts

The Diary of a Public Man," published anonymously in several installments in the North American Review in 1879, claimed to offer verbatim accounts of secret conversations with Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Stephen A. Douglas -- among others -- in the desperate weeks just before the start of the Civil War. Despite repeated attempts to decipher the Diary, historians never have been able to pinpoint its author or determine its authenticity. In A Secession Crisis Enigma, Daniel W. Crofts solves these longstanding mysteries. He identifies the author, unravels the intriguing story behind the Diary, and deftly establishes its contents as largely genuine. According to Crofts, the Diary was not a diary at all but a memoir, probably written shortly before it appeared in print. The mastermind who created it, New York journalist William Henry Hurlbert (1827--1895), successfully perpetrated one of the most difficult feats of historical license -- he pretended to have been a diarist who never existed. Crofts contends, however, that Hurlbert's work was far from fictional. Time after time, the Diary introduces material virtually impossible to fabricate along with previously concealed information that was corroborated only after its publication. The Diary bristles with precise details regarding the struggle to shape Lincoln's cabinet and the composition of his inaugural address. Crofts's careful analysis, accompanied by the full text of the Diary in an appendix, offers a bold new perspective on the frantic scramble to reverse southern secession while avoiding the abyss of war. Hurlbert, a long-forgotten eccentric genius, emerges vividly here. Part detective story, part biography, and part a detailed narrative of events in early 1861, A Secession Crisis Enigma presents a compelling answer to an enduring mystery and brings "The Diary of a Public Man" back into the historical lexicon.

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305

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LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807137391

ISBN 13

9780807137390

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery

The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery

The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union

By: Daniel W. Crofts

In this landmark book, Daniel Crofts examines a little-known episode in the most celebrated aspect of Abraham Lincoln's life: his role as the "Great Emancipator." Lincoln always hated slavery, but he also believed it to be legal where it already existed, and he never imagined fighting a war to end it. In 1861, as part of a last-ditch effort to preserve the Union and prevent war, the new president even offered to accept a constitutional amendment that barred Congress from interfering with slavery in the slave states. Lincoln made this key overture in his first inaugural address. Crofts unearths the hidden history and political maneuvering behind the stillborn attempt to enact this amendment, the polar opposite of the actual Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 that ended slavery. This compelling book sheds light on an overlooked element of Lincoln's statecraft and presents a relentlessly honest portrayal of America's most admired president. Crofts rejects the view advanced by some Lincoln scholars that the wartime momentum toward emancipation originated well before the first shots were fired. Lincoln did indeed become the "Great Emancipator," but he had no such intention when he first took office. Only amid the crucible of combat did the war to save the Union become a war for freedom.

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369

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UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469627329

ISBN 13

9781469627328

Reluctant Confederates

Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Reluctant Confederates

Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis

By: Daniel W. Crofts

Daniel Crofts examines Unionists in three pivotal southern states--Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee--and shows why the outbreak of the war enabled the Confederacy to gain the allegiance of these essential, if ambivalent, governments. "Crofts's study focuses on Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but it includes analyses of the North and Deep South as well. As a result, his volume presents the views of all parties to the sectional conflict and offers a vivid portrait of the interaction between them.--American Historical Review "Refocuses our attention on an important but surprisingly neglected group--the Unionists of the upper South during the secession crisis, who have been too readily ignored by other historians.--Journal of Southern History

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531

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UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469617013

ISBN 13

9781469617015

Old Southampton

Politics and Society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Old Southampton

Politics and Society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869

By: Daniel W. Crofts

Nat Turner's 1831 slave insurrection made Virginia's Southampton County notorious. Gradually, however, the bloody spectacle receded from national memory. Although the timeless rhythms of rural life resumed after the insurrection, Southampton could not escape the forces of change. From the Age of Jackson through to secession, wartime, and Reconstruction, it shared the fate of the Old South. Many who had witnessed the insurrection lived to see Tuner's cause triumph as war destroyed the slave system, inaugurating an intense struggle to shape the new postwar order. Old Southampton links local and national history. It explains how partian loyalties developed, how white democracy flourished in the late antebellum years, how secession sharply divded neighborhoods with few slaves from those with large plantations, and how, following emancipation, former slaves challenged the prerogatives of former slaveholders. Crofts draws on two volumnious diaries and other rich records, plus rare poll lists that show how individuals voted. He vividly re-creates the experiences of planters and plain folk, slave owners and slaves, the powerful and the obscure. This deft combination of political and social history is must reading for anyone interested in the Old South and the Civil War era.

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452

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813913853

ISBN 13

9780813913858

Cobb's Ordeal

The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872

By: Daniel W. Cobb

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Cobb's Ordeal

The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872

By: Daniel W. Cobb

Daniel W. Cobb, a farmer and small slaveholder from Virginia's rural tidewater, was unhappily married, resentful of his prosperous in-laws, and terribly lonely. His closest friend was the diary he kept for more than thirty momentous years in American history, from 1842 until his death at age sixty-one in 1872. The devout, plainspoken Cobb wrote in a conversational style, candidly recording his innermost thoughts. His diary's intimate account of a troubled marriage provides a painfully frank chronicle of incompatibility. The diary also illuminates the momentous impact of the Civil War and emancipation. Offering many insights into the oral culture from which he sprang, Cobb's Ordeal reveals the great differences that separate his world from our own.

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404

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820319244

ISBN 13

9780820319247

Rebuilding Zion

The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877

By: Daniel W. Stowell

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Rebuilding Zion

The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877

By: Daniel W. Stowell

Both the North and the South viewed the Civil War in Christian terms. Each side believed that its fight was just, that God favored its cause. Rebuilding Zion is the first study to explore simultaneously the reaction of southern white evangelicals, northern white evangelicals, and Christian freedpeople to Confederate defeat. As white southerners struggled to assure themselves that the collapse of the Confederacy was not an indication of God's stern judgment, white northerners and freedpeople were certain that it was. Author Daniel W. Stowell tells the story of the religious reconstruction of the South following the war, a bitter contest between southern and northern evangelicals, at the heart of which was the fate of the freedpeople's souls and the southern effort to maintain a sense of sectional identity. Central to the southern churches' vision of the Civil War was the idea that God had not abandoned the South; defeat was a Father's stern chastisement. Secession and slavery had not been sinful; rather, it was the radicalism of the northern denominations that threatened the purity of the Gospel. Northern evangelicals, armed with a vastly different vision of the meaning of the war and their call to Christian duty, entered the post-war South intending to save white southerner and ex-slave alike. The freedpeople, however, drew their own providential meaning from the war and its outcome. The goal for blacks in the postwar period was to establish churches for themselves separate from the control of their former masters. Stowell plots the conflicts that resulted from these competing visions of the religious reconstruction of the South. By demonstrating how the southern vision eventually came to predominate over, but not eradicate, the northern and freedpeople's visions for the religious life of the South, he shows how the southern churches became one of the principal bulwarks of the New South, a region marked by intense piety and intense racism throughout the twentieth century.

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289

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195149815

ISBN 13

9780195149814

Reluctant Confederates

Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Reluctant Confederates

Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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531

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UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469617013

ISBN 13

9781469617015

A Secession Crisis Enigma

William Henry Hurlbert and "The Diary of a Public Man"

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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A Secession Crisis Enigma

William Henry Hurlbert and "The Diary of a Public Man"

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Page Count

305

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807137391

ISBN 13

9780807137390

Old Southampton

Politics and Society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Old Southampton

Politics and Society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869

By: Daniel W. Crofts

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

452

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813913853

ISBN 13

9780813913858

Cobb's Ordeal

The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872

By: Daniel W. Cobb

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Cobb's Ordeal

The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872

By: Daniel W. Cobb

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

404

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820319244

ISBN 13

9780820319247

Book's by Daniel W. Crofts

A Secession Crisis Enigma

A Secession Crisis Enigma

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery

Reluctant Confederates

Reluctant Confederates

Old Southampton

Old Southampton

Cobb's Ordeal

Cobb's Ordeal

Rebuilding Zion

Rebuilding Zion

Reluctant Confederates

Reluctant Confederates

A Secession Crisis Enigma

A Secession Crisis Enigma

Old Southampton

Old Southampton

Cobb's Ordeal

Cobb's Ordeal

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