At the precipice : Americans north and south during the secession crisis Cover Image

Book

At the precipice : Americans north and south during the secession crisis / Shearer Davis Bowman.

Summary:

Bowman explores the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the secession period. He examines the lives and thoughts of key figures and provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions during this time. Both sides glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted "American" values.

Record details

ISBN: 9780807833926 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0807833924 (cloth : alk. paper)
Physical Description: 379 p. : ill., maps ; 26 cm.
Publisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c2010.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-356) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction and overview -- Slaveholders and slaves, state's rights and revolution -- Honor and degradation : section, race, and gender -- The second party system and its legacy : the careers of John Bell, John C. Breckinridge, Howell Cobb, Stephen A. Douglas, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren -- Jefferson Davis, Horace L. Kent, and the old south -- Abraham Lincoln, Henry Waller, and the free-labor north -- Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard and Sojourner Truth : faith, race, and gender -- President Buchanan, the Crittenden Compromise, President Lincoln, and Fort Sumter.