Michael F. Holt's Books

The Political Crisis of the 1850s

By: Michael Fitzgibbon Holt

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The Political Crisis of the 1850s

By: Michael Fitzgibbon Holt

Professor Holt's book provides a lucid and provocative interpretation of the coming of the Civil War.

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Page Count

330

Publisher

W. W. Norton

Published Date

ISBN 10

039395370X

ISBN 13

9780393953701

The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

Here, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written. He offers a panoramic account of the tumultuous antebellum period, a time when a flurry of parties and larger-than-life politicians--Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay--struggled for control as the U.S. inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, when local concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events--like the Annexation of Texas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act--rocked the country. Amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, emerging as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession.

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1298

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199830894

ISBN 13

9780199830893

Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln

By: Michael F. Holt

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Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln

By: Michael F. Holt

For more than twenty years Michael F. Holt has been considered one of the leading specialists in the political history of the United States. Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln is a collection of some of his more important shorter studies on the politics of nineteenth-century America.The collection focuses on the mass political parties that emerged in the 1820s and their role in broader political developments from that decade to 1865. Holt includes essays on the Democratic, Antimasonic, Whig, and Know Nothing parties, as well as one on Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the congressional wing of the Republican party during the Civil War. Almost all essays touch on the broad question of the role of partisan politics in explaining the outbreak of the war. Individual essays address the following questions as well: What explains the birth and death of powerful third parties? What was the relationship among economic conditions, party performance in office (especially legislative performance), and the mobilization of an unprecedented number of voters between 1836 and 1840? Why did the Whigs find it necessary to nominate military hero Zachary Taylor as their presidential candidate in 1848? What explains the death of the Whig party? What role did ethnoreligious issues and the Know Nothing party play in the realignment of the 1850s and the ultimate triumph of the Republican party? In what ways did the continuation of two-party competition after 1860 help the North win the Civil War?Most of the essays have been published previously over a twenty-year span, but there are also two new pieces. "The Mysterious Disappearance of the American Whig party," originally delivered as the Commonwealth Fund Lecture at University College London in February, 1990, seeks to explain why the Whig party died in the 1850s. This essay contrasts the fate of the Whig party with the fates of the Republican party in the 1930s and 1970s and the British Conservative party in the 1840s and 1850s - parties that survived similar, indeed graver, challenges than those to which the Whigs succumbed. In addition, Holt has written and excellent introduction in which he explains how he came to write the essays and reflects upon them in light of the current state of political history as a discipline.Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln offers provocative insights into both the history of nineteenth-century politics and the way it is studied.

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384

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807126098

ISBN 13

9780807126097

Franklin Pierce

The American Presidents Series: The 14th President, 1853-1857

By: Michael F. Holt

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Franklin Pierce

The American Presidents Series: The 14th President, 1853-1857

By: Michael F. Holt

The genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. Though he seized the White House in a landslide against the imploding Whig Party, he proved a dismal failure in office. Michael F. Holt, a leading historian of nineteenth-century partisan politics, argues that in the wake of the Whig collapse, Pierce was consumed by an obsessive drive to unify his splintering party rather than the roiling country. He soon began to overreach. Word leaked that Pierce wanted Spain to sell the slave-owning island of Cuba to the United States, rousing sectional divisions. Then he supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which limited the expansion of slavery in the west. Violence broke out, and "Bleeding Kansas" spurred the formation of the Republican Party. By the end of his term, Pierce's beloved party had ruptured, and he lost the nomination to James Buchanan. In this incisive account, Holt shows how a flawed leader, so dedicated to his party and ill-suited for the presidency, hastened the approach of the Civil War.

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174

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429922176

ISBN 13

9781429922173

Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln

By: Michael F. Holt

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Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln

By: Michael F. Holt

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384

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807126098

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9780807126097

The Fate of Their Country

Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Fate of Their Country

Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

How partisan politics lead to the Civil War What brought about the Civil War? Leading historian Michael F. Holt convincingly offers a disturbingly contemporary answer: partisan politics. In this brilliant and succinct book, Holt distills a lifetime of scholarship to demonstrate that secession and war did not arise from two irreconcilable economies any more than from moral objections to slavery. Short-sighted politicians were to blame. Rarely looking beyond the next election, the two dominant political parties used the emotionally charged and largely chimerical issue of slavery's extension westward to pursue reelection and settle political scores, all the while inexorably dragging the nation towards disunion. Despite the majority opinion (held in both the North and South) that slavery could never flourish in the areas that sparked the most contention from 1845 to 1861-the Mexican Cession, Oregon, and Kansas-politicians in Washington, especially members of Congress, realized the partisan value of the issue and acted on short-term political calculations with minimal regard for sectional comity. War was the result. Including select speeches by Lincoln and others, The Fate of Their Country openly challenges us to rethink a seminal moment in America's history.

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185

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429930276

ISBN 13

9781429930277

By One Vote

The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876

By: Michael F. Holt

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By One Vote

The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876

By: Michael F. Holt

With electoral votes disputed in three states, a Democrat winning the popular vote, and the Supreme Court stepping in to overrule Florida court decisions, the presidential election of 1876 was an eerie precursor to that of 2000. Rutherford Hayes's defeat of Samuel Tilden has been dubbed the "fraud of the century"; now one of America's preeminent political historians digs deeper to unravel its real significance. This election saw the highest voter turnout of any in U.S. history-a whopping 82 percent-and also the narrowest margin of victory, as a single electoral vote decided the outcome. Michael Holt offers a fresh interpretation of this disputed election, not merely to rehash claims of fraud but to explain why it was so close. Examining the post-Civil War political environment, he particularly focuses on its most curious feature: that Republicans were the only party in history to retain the presidency in the middle of a severe depression after decisively losing the preceding off-year congressional elections. Holt begins with the election of 1872 to demonstrate how competition for Liberal Republicans shaped the campaign strategies of both parties. He stresses the critical but little-noted importance of Colorado statehood in August-which changed the size of the electoral-vote majority needed to win-and provides a new answer to the vexing question of why a Democratic-controlled Congress had admitted Colorado in time to participate in the presidential election, when without its votes Tilden would have won. And he argues that the high voter turnout was attributable both to Republicans exploiting fears of ex-Confederates recapturing control of the government and to long-apathetic southern Democrats reacting to war memories and Reconstruction realities. By One Vote shows how this election triggered a Republican revival and established the GOP as the Democrats' major competitor. Holt's compelling analysis of the dispute over electoral votes also explains why charges of Republican fraud are questionable-and how Democrats were just as guilty of corruption. A masterly retelling of this controversial episode, Holt's study captures the mood of the country and testifies to the power that hatreds and fears aroused by the Civil War still exercised over the American people.

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314

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700617876

ISBN 13

9780700617876

The Fate of Their Country

Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Fate of Their Country

Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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185

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1429930276

ISBN 13

9781429930277

McCormick of Rutgers

Scholar, Teacher, Public Historian

By: Michael J. Birkner

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McCormick of Rutgers

Scholar, Teacher, Public Historian

By: Michael J. Birkner

Richard P. McCormick made his mark as an innovative student of American party politics, as well as the most influential interpreter of New Jersey history. A distinguished teacher, scholar, and public historian, McCormick revitalized a venerable but dormant state historical society. Later, he used notable anniversaries, such as the Bicentennial of the American Revolution and the Tercentenary of New Jersey's founding, as vehicles to bring history to schools and the general public. He also helped create a state historical agency, the New Jersey Historical Commission, to promote New Jersey's past and preserve its historic treasures. Birkner describes McCormick's life and times. He looks at McCormick's scholarly apprenticeship, the origins of his interest in a new political history, and his contributions to the study of American politics before the Civil War. McCormick's concern for elucidating political machinery was fused with a fundamental skepticism about American democracy as run by and for the people. Through use of oral history, McCormick tells his own story. Then, through their exchanges, Birkner challenges some of McCormick's scholarly arguments and elicits responses that help to shed light on his subject's theory of politics.

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248

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0313000808

ISBN 13

9780313000805

Ancient Worlds

A Global History of Antiquity

By: Michael Scott

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Ancient Worlds

A Global History of Antiquity

By: Michael Scott

As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalized world." -- Tom Holland, author of Dynasty and Rubicon Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India-the stories of Constantine and Confucius, Qin Shi Huangdi and Hannibal-are here revealed to be interconnected incidents in the midst of a greater drama. In Ancient Worlds, historian Michael Scott presents a gripping narrative of this unique age in human civilization, showing how diverse societies responded to similar pressures and how they influenced one another: through conquest and conversion, through trade in people, goods, and ideas. An ambitious reinvention of our grandest histories, Ancient Worlds reveals new truths about our common human heritage. "A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity." UPeter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

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388

Publisher

Basic Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0465094732

ISBN 13

9780465094738

The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

By: Michael F. Holt

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1298

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199830894

ISBN 13

9780199830893

Politics and America in Crisis

The Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael Green

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Politics and America in Crisis

The Coming of the Civil War

By: Michael Green

This book unravels the political developments that made the Civil War unavoidable. Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War examines the developments between 1846 and 1861 that pushed the nation to war to see what they reveal about the North, the South, the people leading them, and the issues separating them. As shown here, in the decade and a half before the actual outbreak of the war, the mostly southern Democratic Party's fortunes veered from a presidential election victory in 1852 to the shocking loss of Abraham Lincoln in 1860—an event that marked the coming of age of the young antislavery Republican Party. In examining that sharp reversal, Politics and America in Crisis covers a wide range of key events, including efforts to ban slavery in territories won in the Mexican-American War, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raids.

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214

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0313081743

ISBN 13

9780313081743

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

costs, benefits and business impacts

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

costs, benefits and business impacts

By: Michael F. Holt

The Sarbannes-Oxley Act (SOX) is a mandatory requirement for all listed corporations in the US, whether foreign or not. Compliance is not an option. Other countries are developing similar legislation so the books value is international in scope. SOX is a hot topic and the effects are just beginning to be felt world-wide. This new book goes beyond the implementation phase of SOX and looks at the reaction to the Act in terms of costs, benefits and business impacts. This book is for Senior Managers in the Business and Financial/Accounting Communities who want/need to know what the reaction of business and government is to the SOX legislation, what it is costing and how the effects are penetrating through the business environment.Mike Holt presents a comprehensive review of the impact that Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has had on business, the financial community, governments and the public since its inception in 2002. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been somewhat successful, but not completely and the cost (well over a trillion dollars) might be considered too high a price to pay for the gains. This book takes a hard look at the costs, benefits and other impacts as well as at what influential and prominent financial, government and business leaders think about it now.* International in scope and content and including interviews with prominent business leaders, CEOs and CFOs of large and small corporations.* Compliance with The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is now mandatory for every listed US corporation and overseas corporations listed on US stock markets.* Covers the reaction of business and government to this legislation, what it is costing and how the effects are penetrating through the business environment.

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219

Publisher

Butterworth-Heinemann

Published Date

ISBN 10

0080554601

ISBN 13

9780080554600

The Election of 1860

“A Campaign Fraught with Consequences”

By: Michael F. Holt

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The Election of 1860

“A Campaign Fraught with Consequences”

By: Michael F. Holt

Because of its extraordinary consequences and because of Abraham Lincoln's place in the American pantheon, the presidential election of 1860 is probably the most studied in our history. But perhaps for the same reasons, historians have focused on the contest of Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas in the northern free states and John Bell versus John C. Breckinridge in the slaveholding South. In The Election of 1860 a preeminent scholar of American history disrupts this familiar narrative with a clearer and more comprehensive account of how the election unfolded and what it was actually about. Most critically, the book counters the common interpretation of the election as a referendum on slavery and the Republican Party's purported threat to it. However significantly slavery figured in the election, The Election of 1860 reveals the key importance of widespread opposition to the Republican Party because of its overtly anti-southern rhetoric and seemingly unstoppable rise to power in the North after its emergence in 1854. Also of critical importance was the corruption of the incumbent administration of Democrat James Buchanan—and a nationwide revulsion against party. Grounding his history in a nuanced retelling of the pre-1860 story, Michael F. Holt explores the sectional politics that permeated the election and foreshadowed the coming Civil War. He brings to light how the campaigns of the Republican Party and the National (Northern) Democrats and the Constitutional (Southern) Democrats and the newly formed Constitutional Union Party were not exclusively regional. His attention to the little-studied role of the Buchanan Administration, and of perceived threats to the preservation of the Union, clarifies the true dynamic of the 1860 presidential election, particularly in its early stages.

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272

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700624872

ISBN 13

9780700624874

Arguing until Doomsday

Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy

By: Michael E. Woods

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Arguing until Doomsday

Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy

By: Michael E. Woods

As the sectional crisis gripped the United States, the rancor increasingly spread to the halls of Congress. Preston Brooks's frenzied assault on Charles Sumner was perhaps the most notorious evidence of the dangerous divide between proslavery Democrats and the new antislavery Republican Party. But as disunion loomed, rifts within the majority Democratic Party were every bit as consequential. And nowhere was the fracture more apparent than in the raging debates between Illinois's Stephen Douglas and Mississippi's Jefferson Davis. As leaders of the Democrats' northern and southern factions before the Civil War, their passionate conflict of words and ideas has been overshadowed by their opposition to Abraham Lincoln. But here, weaving together biography and political history, Michael E. Woods restores Davis and Douglas's fatefully entwined lives and careers to the center of the Civil War era. Operating on personal, partisan, and national levels, Woods traces the deep roots of Democrats' internal strife, with fault lines drawn around fundamental questions of property rights and majority rule. Neither belief in white supremacy nor expansionist zeal could reconcile Douglas and Davis's factions as their constituents formed their own lines in the proverbial soil of westward expansion. The first major reinterpretation of the Democratic Party's internal schism in more than a generation, Arguing until Doomsday shows how two leading antebellum politicians ultimately shattered their party and hastened the coming of the Civil War.

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349

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

146965640X

ISBN 13

9781469656403

Computational Methods for Representations of Groups and Algebras

Euroconference in Essen (Germany), April 1-5, 1997

By: P. Dräxler,Gerhard Michler,Claus Michael Ringel

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Computational Methods for Representations of Groups and Algebras

Euroconference in Essen (Germany), April 1-5, 1997

By: P. Dräxler,Gerhard Michler,Claus Michael Ringel

I Introductory Articles.- 1 Classification Problems in the Representation Theory of Finite-Dimensional Algebras.- 2 Noncommutative Gröbner Bases, and Projective Resolutions.- 3 Construction of Finite Matrix Groups.- II Keynote Articles.- 4 Derived Tubularity: a Computational Approach.- 5 Problems in the Calculation of Group Cohomology.- 6 On a Tensor Category for the Exceptional Lie Groups.- 7 Non-Commutative Gröbner Bases and Anick's Resolution.- 8 A new Existence Proof of Janko's Simple Group J4.- 9 The Normalization: a new Algorithm, Implementation and Comparisons.- 10 A Computer Algebra Approach to sheaves over Weighted Projective Lines.- 11 Open Problems in the Theory of Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials.- 12 Relative Trace Ideals and Cohen Macaulay Quotients.- 13 On Sims' Presentation for Lyons' Simple Group.- 14 A Presentation for the Lyons Simple Group.- 15 Reduction of Weakly Definite Unit Forms.- 16 Decision Problems in Finitely Presented Groups.- 17 Some Algorithms in Invariant Theory of Finite Groups.- 18 Coxeter Transformations associated with Finite Dimensional Algebras.- 19 The 2-Modular Decomposition Numbers of Co2.- 20 Bimodule and Matrix Problems.

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Page Count

378

Publisher

Springer Science & Business Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

3764360631

ISBN 13

9783764360634

Clinical Anesthesia Fundamentals: Print + Ebook with Multimedia

By: Paul G. Barash,Bruce F. Cullen,Robert K. Stoelting,Michael Cahalan,M. Christine Stock,Rafael Ortega,Sam R. Sharar

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Clinical Anesthesia Fundamentals: Print + Ebook with Multimedia

By: Paul G. Barash,Bruce F. Cullen,Robert K. Stoelting,Michael Cahalan,M. Christine Stock,Rafael Ortega,Sam R. Sharar

From the popular and highly respected Clinical Anesthesia family of titles comes a new resource that clearly and simply explains the core concepts of anesthesiology that you need to know. From physiology and pharmacology to anatomy and system-based anesthesia, it uses full-color graphics, easy-to-read tables, and clear, concise text to convey the essential principles of the field.

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1261

Publisher

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496310845

ISBN 13

9781496310842

Slavery and the American West

The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny

By: Michael A. Morrison

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Slavery and the American West

The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny

By: Michael A. Morrison

Tracing the sectionalization of American politics in the 1840s and 1850s, Michael Morrison offers a comprehensive study of how slavery and territorial expansion intersected as causes of the Civil War. Specifically, he argues that the common heritage of the American Revolution bound Americans together until disputes over the extension of slavery into the territories led northerners and southerners to increasingly divergent understandings of the Revolution's legacy. Manifest Destiny promised the literal enlargement of freedom through the extension of American institutions all the way to the Pacific. At each step--from John Tyler's attempt to annex Texas in 1844, to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to the opening shots of the Civil War--the issue of slavery had to be confronted. Morrison shows that the Revolution was the common prism through which northerners and southerners viewed these events and that the factor that ultimately made consensus impossible was slavery itself. By 1861, no nationally accepted solution to the dilemma of slavery in the territories had emerged, no political party existed as a national entity, and politicians from both North and South had come to believe that those on the other side had subverted the American political tradition.

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Page Count

411

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807864323

ISBN 13

9780807864326

American Brutus

John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies

By: Michael W. Kauffman

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American Brutus

John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies

By: Michael W. Kauffman

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremost Lincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to a deeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account of the Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array of archival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on the background and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of his plot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates of the conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects common misperceptions and analyzes the political motivation behind Booth’s plan to unseat Lincoln, in whom the assassin saw a treacherous autocrat, “an American Caesar.” In preparing his study, Kauffman spared no effort getting at the truth: He even lived in Booth’s house, and re-created key parts of Booth’s escape. Thanks to Kauffman’s discoveries, readers will have a new understanding of this defining event in our nation’s history, and they will come to see how public sentiment about Booth at the time of the assassination and ever since has made an accurate account of his actions and motives next to impossible–until now. In nearly 140 years there has been an overwhelming body of literature on the Lincoln assassination, much of it incomplete and oftentimes contradictory. In American Brutus, Kauffman finally makes sense of an incident whose causes and effects reverberate to this day. Provocative, absorbing, utterly cogent, at times controversial, this will become the definitive text on a watershed event in American history.

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Page Count

546

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307430618

ISBN 13

9780307430618

Book's by Michael F. Holt

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