James A. Rawley

The words of Abraham Lincoln have been immortalized in speeches and enshrined in policies and practices, and none of those words, spoken or written, has gone unnoticed or wanted for a response. It is this broader context—the wider conversation about Lincoln's words—that this book discusses. The final project of James A. Rawley, a preeminent historian of the Civil War era, A Lincoln Dialogue cross-examines Lincoln's major statements, papers, and initiatives in light of the comments and criticism of his supporters and detractors. Drawn from letters and newspapers, pamphlets and reports, these statements and responses constitute a unique documentary examination of Abraham Lincoln's presidency. Rawley's careful selection and his judicious interweaving of historical analysis and background invite us into the dialogue and allow us to hear the voices of American history in the making.

The transatlantic slave trade played a major role in the development of the modern world. It both gave birth to and resulted from the shift from feudalism into the European Commercial Revolution. James A. Rawley fills a scholarly gap in the historical discussion of the slave trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century by providing one volume covering the economics, demography, epidemiology, and politics of the trade. This revised edition of Rawley's classic, produced with the assistance of Stephen D. Behrendt, includes emended text to reflect the major changes in historiography; current slave trade data tables and accompanying text; updated notes; and the addition of a select bibliography.

The transatlantic slave trade played a major role in the development of the modern world. It both gave birth to and resulted from the shift from feudalism into the European Commercial Revolution. James A. Rawley fills a scholarly gap in the historical discussion of the slave trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century by providing one volume covering the economics, demography, epidemiology, and politics of the trade. This revised edition of Rawley's classic, produced with the assistance of Stephen D. Behrendt, includes emended text to reflect the major changes in historiography; current slave trade data tables and accompanying text; updated notes; and the addition of a select bibliography.

In London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade, James A. Rawley, a pioneer in the modern study of the slave trade, collects some of his best works from the past three decades. Also included in this volume are three new pieces: an essay on a South Carolina slave trader, Henry Laurens; an analysis of the slave trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and a portrait of John Newton, a slave trader who became a priest in the Church of England and composer of the hymn ""Amazing Grace,"" as well as an outspoken opponent of the trade. These essays include a great deal of material that has not been covered in such detail elsewhere. Rawley brings together new information on individuals involved in and opposed to the slave trade and shows how scholars have long misrepresented the extent of London's participation in the trade. Throughout this work several important figures in the slave industry are depicted. They include: Humphry Morice, a London merchant and governor of the Bank of England, who owned more slave vessels than anyone in his time. Richard Harris, Morice's contemporary, the liaison between London slave merchants and the English government, and, Rawley shows, an extensive trader himself. Archibald Dalzel, known for his writings on the trade, here shown as a slave ship owner, captain, and trader. Nathaniel Gordon, the only American executed for violating laws prohibiting participation in the trade. Rawley draws on material from the year 1700 to the American Civil War as he explores the role of London in the trade. He covers its activity as a port of departure for ships bound for Africa; its continuing large volume after the trade extended to Bristol and Liverpool; and the controversy between London's parliamentary representatives, who defended the trade, and the abolitionist movement that was quartered there. Sweeping in scope and thorough in its analysis, this collection of essays from a seasoned scholar will be welcomed by historians concerned with slavery and the slave trade, as well as by students just beginning their exploration of this subject.

The many sides of Abraham Lincoln—war leader, humorist, commander in chief, politician, and emancipator—are vividly depicted in this concise and fresh look at his presidential years. Pivotal events, decisions, and issues in Lincoln's private and public life are scrutinized and explained clearly by noted historian James A. Rawley. During an innovative yet bloody era marked by mass communication, unheard-of national recognition and media attention, and the increasingly destructive uses of technology to wage war, Lincoln did all that he could to preserve the nation as a whole. Principles underpinning Lincoln's actions and motivations as administrator and war leader included an abiding spirit of nationalism, which contrasted with the forces driving his immediate predecessors, and the encompassing power conferred upon him as commander in chief in wartime. Accessible and informative, Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For is an engaging and valuable introduction to the career of one of our most memorable presidents.

"The best general account of politics in the North," as David Herbert Donald calls this book, is also the first one-volume history of its subject. Abraham Lincoln's single goal of saving the Union required not simply subduing the South but contending as well with divisiveness in the North—with refractory state officials, draft resisters, peace advocates, secret organizations, with Northern Democrats (too often seen only as Copperheads or as traitors to the Union), and with powerful Republicans who often vocally disagreed with Lincoln's policies. In this account, Radical Republicans represent consensus with Lincoln more than conflict, sectional more than economic interests, and party over faction. Largely, dissent was heard and accommodated; and, if the federal legislation of the time did amount to a Second American Revolution, it emerged from the conflicts, within the North as well as against the South, of a nation at war. The outcome was a nation not only saved but strengthened and slavery ended.

Race and Politics offers an analysis of the controversies that followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The question of whether the still unsettled Kansas Territory should be slave or free divided the nation into hostile and ultimately irreconcilable camps, creating conditions that only civil war could resolve. The author demonstrates, however, that the fundamental issue was not slavery as such but race: whether the country, its egalitarian slogans notwithstanding, could tolerate the expansion of African Americans, slave or free. "Rawley in his introduction, a semi-apologia, questions the need for another book on the Civil War. He answers his own question, giving two reasons: first, to reveal how the Kansas upheaval became a main political preoccupation of the country before the war; second, to emphasize how deeply prejudice pervaded the entire populace, both Northern and Southern. In filling in the structure of these two justifications, Rawley achieves his goal in an admirable way."—Gene M. Gressley, Library Journal."Based to a considerable degree upon an examination of voluminous manuscript sources. New data relating to inner-political maneuvers, on the part of the Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans are brought forward."—Annals of the American Academy.