The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America

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Political commentator Kevin Phillips (author of the 1991 bestseller The Politics of Rich and Poor) takes a break from analyzing the latest election returns with this sweeping history of Anglo-American exceptionalism. How did the political culture of Anglo-America rise "from a small Tudor kingdom to a global community and world hegemony"? asks Phillips. His answer comes in the course of studying three wars--the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the U.S. Civil War. Phillips does not examine the military history of these conflicts, looking instead at the political, religious, economic, and sectional interests that shaped them. He makes several eye-opening observations, comparing, for instance, a "state-by-state portrait of which counties, towns, districts, or regions were loyal" during the American Revolution to "ethnoreligious maps of the modern-day Balkans." This is a hefty book (over 600 pages, not including appendices and footnotes), and while Phillips's preface is a bit self-absorbed, admirers of David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel will find much to like between its covers. --John J. Miller

Book Description

A strikingly fresh and revisionist explanation for the rise of Anglo-America as the dominant cultural and political force in the world today by the bestselling author of The Politics of Rich and Poor.

The question at the heart of The Cousins' Wars is this: How did Anglo-America evolve over a mere three hundred years from a small Tudor kingdom into a global community with such a hegemonic grip on the world today, while no other European power-Spain, France, Germany, or Russia-did? The answer to this, according to Phillips, lies in a close examination of three internecine English-speaking civil wars-the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. These wars between cousins functioned as crucial anvils on which various religious, ethnic, and political alliances were hammered out between the English-speaking cousin-nations, setting them on a unique two-track path toward world leadership-one aristocratic and aloof to dominate the imperial nineteenth century and the other more egalitarian and democratic to take over in the twentieth century. They also functioned as unfortunate and deadly cultural crucibles for African Americans, Native Americans, and the Irish.

Phillips's analysis shows exactly how these conflicts are inextricably linked and how they seeded each other. He offers often surprising interpretations that cut across the political spectrum-for instance, that the Constitution of the United States, while brilliant in many respects, was also a fatally flawed political compromise that contributed mightily in setting the stage for the final-and the bloodiest-cousins' war: the American Civil War.

With the new millennium upon us and triggering widespread assessment of our nation's place in world history, The Cousins' Wars provides just the kind of magisterial sweep and revisionist spark to ignite widespread interest and debate. This grand religious, military, and political epic is the multi-dimensional story of the triumph of Anglo-America.

Customer Reviews:

The hidden reality in the story.......2006-06-13

While this book weaves a dramatic tapestry from 1640 t0 1900 and puts Puritan religion at the center of the development of democratic republican government, its hidden lesson is the existence, since well before the Founders, of a virulent anti Catholic sentiment throughout America.In Phillips' narrative the Catholics appear on the wrong side of every issue. Clearly standing with Charles and the Cavaliers against Parliament. Partaking of a massacre in Ireland of Protestants colonists, leading to Cromwell's terrorist response. A response which Phillips seems to , at least, understand.

In the Revolution the few Catholics in the colonies stand aside with Quakers and others while the Congregational Puritans and the Presbyterian Scots Irish win the new nation. The Civil war sees Irish and German Catholics standing against the Republicans, both in America, and for the Irish, in Ireland itself. Little effort is made to explain these stands as a response to the dramatic persecutions imposed on the Irish Catholics in their homeland and America. No mention of the Church burnings of the 1850s, save for the undeniable role the Know Nothings played in the formation of the Republican Party, is made.

In his latest work, American Theocracy" the Catholic Church plays the heavy in Phillips' America. Always seeking to impose its archaic view of reality on a progressive world. So his failure to fully appreciate the hatred of Catholics present in Cromwellian England and Know Nothing America is expected.

One area of interest in Phillips' investigations into the changing Puritan experience is that from the strict, unbending, believers in being God's Chosen people in Engalnd, God's Chosen nation, the Puritans have never lost their belief in the rightness of their cause; Parliament and the cleansing of the Faith, the resistance to sceptre and crown that became the revolution, both in 1688 and 1776, the fight against slavery. But Phillips does not present the New Puritans, not the right wing followers of Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson, but the rising tide of the Progressive Left, from the same stock as their forebears, from the same places, New England, with the same intolerance for those who do not share their view, but now with an overriding belief in Man and not God.

Obstacles Of Phillips.......2006-01-13

Mr. Phillips presents a plethora of writing that gives intelligence to any reader.

However, Mr. Phillips presents his data in scatter-brained fashion. This guy needs to learn HOW to write, for he certainly knows WHAT to write.

Perhaps, if he read the Aristotle's Poetics, or better yet a dichpering of the work (Artistotle's Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets from the Greatest Mind in Western Civilization), Mr. Phillips would learn the power of TELLING a STORY.

Instead, this book is a labor of reading. It requires the reader both to take reading notes and to organize thoroughly any reading notes. This is the only way one can pull together a concept of an argument with support.

Wealth and Democracy is another Phillips example of the same. Great data, poor presentation.

Phillips usual garbage.......2004-06-13

If you have read evene a few pages of any book by thix Nixonite, then you hve tapped into the best that he has to offer (not much!)

Pass on this one.

A comprehensive account of the growth of two empires...........2002-12-31

This book details the amazing parallels between British and American history as no other history book I have ever read has done. With a broad net that includes ethnic politics and religion, Kevin Phillips writes a great account of over 200 years of history on both sides of the Atlantic, detailing how the successive uprisings, the three "Cousins' Wars", were caused in large part by uprisings of Puritanism. A convincing and amazing book.

Wonderful Thesis.......2001-11-05

Phillips make a compelling argument that the three wars, English Civil War of 1640, American Revolution of 1776, and American Civil War of 1861, all carry the same dynamics between combatants. Those dynamics, Catholic vs. Protestant, Reformer vs. Conservative, Land Holder vs. Artisan, tumble down from one war to the next, and Phillips does a thorough job of explaining them. However, my only complaint with the book is that he was too thorough. I am an avid reader of history as a hobby, so I am a stranger neither to details in demographics nor dealing with person and place names unfamiliar to me. But I read history because it is fascinating stuff with outrageous personalities and remarkable coincidences, things that fiction simply cannot create and call "plausible". This book was more of a thesis--dry and heavy going.

I recommend the book to those who want to look at these wars, and the relationship between the USA and the UK, in a new light. The conclusions are eye-opening and thought provoking. But the path to getting to those conclusions is a tough one, so I do not recommend this book to those who read history as a happy diversion from daily routine.

Average customer rating:

Pulitzer material for sure

Everything you want to know on the subject.

Crucial book on civil liberties during wartime

Excellent study of a misunderstood aspect of the Civil War

The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
Mark E. Neely
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era (The North's Civil War Series , No 2)

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ASIN: 0195080327

Book Description

If Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate, from charges that Democrats were singled out for harrassment to Gore Vidal's depiction of Lincoln as an "absolute dictator." Now, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Fate of Liberty, one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln wades straight into this controversy, showing just who was jailed and why, even as he explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional policies. Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with this legendary statesmanship intact--mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently. In addition, Neely explores the abuses of power under the regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread antisemitism among Union generals and officials, the common practice of seizing civilian hostages. He finds that though the system of military justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal, or political partisanship, than from inefficiency and the friction and complexities of modern war. Informed by a deep understanding of a unique period in American history, this incisive book takes a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time. Written with keen insight and an intimate grasp of the original sources, The Fate of Liberty offers a vivid picture of the crises and chaos of a nation at war with itself, changing our understanding of this president and his most controversial policies.

Customer Reviews:

Pulitzer material for sure.......2007-06-12

I gobbled up this book, but then, it falls right into my current research topic. Others who found it dull have a point if they are not into this era or the topic, but I loved reading it. I might have given it 4 1/2 stars because occasionally Neely's liberal side sneaks through, as when he deemed the military draft of 1862 an odious event. That's a personal value judgment, not a fact. That it was PERCEIVED by many Northerners as odious, is a fact. But that is a tiny, tiny flaw, and the book is definitely deserving of the Pulitzer it received. (And I suspect those occasional liberal slips were vital to winning the Pulitzer.) Neely's marvelous academic study contradicts with extensively researched facts (the man read 137 rolls of microfilm searching for arrest records) the rantings of the Lincoln-was-a-despot Libertarians such as Thomas DiLorenzo. Not light reading but highly recommended for scholars.

Everything you want to know on the subject........2007-06-08

This is a very worthy and scholarly work with more detail than you could ask for on the subject. My problem with it is that is is a difficult read that is best taken in small doses. No doubt Neely is the award winning expert, it shows.

Crucial book on civil liberties during wartime.......2001-12-30

Neely gives an excellent and detailed review of how civil liberties suffered during the War Between the States. The right of habeas corpus is Neely's main concern, but trials by military commissons and international law are covered among other topics.

If you're not a Civil War buff, this book may seem pretty dry. For example, a lot of space is devoted to evaluating the various claims of how many military prisoners there were. While this is important historical data, it made my eyes glaze over and prompted me to skim several sections of the book.

Given the post-9/11 discussions of military tribunals and other curtailments of the Bill of Rights, this book is more relevant than ever.

Excellent study of a misunderstood aspect of the Civil War.......1998-08-07

This book gives an excellent look into the policies of the Lincoln administration and the effects of these policies on civil liberties in the United States. A common misconception regarding this subject is that the majority of those arrested as a result of the suspension of habeas corpus were political enemies of Lincoln. This book, however, demonstrates how many of the arrests were not based upon politics, but upon how the crimes committed affected the war effort. Most attention in the past has focused on a few famous cases such as Clement Vallandingham, but this book shows that this case was an exception to the rule.

Book Description

Winner of the Scribes Award Given by The American Society Of Writers On Legal Subjects

Finalist, Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association

Washington Post Book World Notable Book in Religion and Philosophy

While millions of Americans were defending liberty against the Nazis, liberty was under vicious attack at home. One of the worst outbreaks of religious persecution in U.S. history occurred during World War II when Jehovah's Witnesses were intimidated, beaten, and even imprisoned for refusing to salute the flag or serve in the armed forces.

Determined to claim their First Amendment rights, Jehovah's Witnesses waged a tenacious legal campaign that led to twenty-three Supreme Court rulings between 1938 and 1946. Now Shawn Peters has written the first complete account of the personalities, events, and institutions behind those cases, showing that they were more than vindication for unpopular beliefs--they were also a turning point in the nation's constitutional commitment to individual rights.

Peters begins with the story of Walter Gobitas, a Jehovah's Witness whose children refused to salute the flag at school. He follows this famous case to the Supreme Court where he captures the intellectual sparring between Justices Frankfurter and Stone over individual liberties; then he describes the aftermath of the Court's ruling against Gobitas when angry mobs savagely assaulted Jehovah's Witnesses in hundreds of communities across America.

Judging Jehovah's Witnesses tells how persecution--much of it directed by members of patriotic organizations like the American Legion--touched the lives of Witnesses of all ages; why the Justice Department and state officials ignored the Witnesses' pleas for relief; and how the ACLU and liberal clergymen finally stepped forward to help them. Drawing on interviews with Witnesses and extensive research in ACLU archives, Peters examines the strategies that beleaguered Witnesses used to combat discrimination and goes beyond the familiar Supreme Court rulings by analyzing more obscure lower court decisions as well.

By vigorously pursuing their cause, the Witnesses helped to inaugurate an era in which individual and minority rights emerged as matters of concern for the Supreme Court and foreshadowed events in the civil rights movement. Like the classics Gideon's Trumpet and Simple Justice, Judging Jehovah's Witnesses vividly narrates a moving human drama while reminding us of the true meaning of our Constitution and the rights it protects.

Customer Reviews:

Jehovah's Witnesses and the US Supreme Court.......2007-05-13

Very accurate chronology of the Supreme Court cases that not only spotlighted a religious group, that could have destroyed them; however, the court's visible determination to protect the Constitution turned the situation around to protect freedom of speech and religion for everyone.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Champions Of Freedom? .......2006-03-08

Religious Persecution In the United States Of America.......2006-02-07

Many people believe that religous persecution has rarely or not occured in twentieth century U.S. This book makes it clear that there has been alot of religous persecution in the United States during the twentieth century. I found it very interesting that the Ku Klux Clan not only persecuted certain ethnic groups, but Jehovah's Witnesses as well, regardless of thier racial background. However the Author does not have an accurate view of certain Jehovah's Witnesses pracitices such as disfellowshipping. He should have researched furthur.

Fascinating, Readable, and Worthwhile!.......2005-11-16

As a former Jehovah's Witness, I remain interested in the history and doings of the Watchtower sect. Well, here is a book that is pro-Witness and, as a refreshing change, shows the Witnesses in their more positive role as defenders of American religious freedom. Few Americans are cognizant of the debt they owe to Jehovah's Witnesses for helping define and secure our religious liberty by undergoing horrendous persecution and incarceration in mainstream America and Canada.

I am a firm believer in seeing both sides of everything, so I also highly recommend JEHOVAH UNMASKED as the other side of the coin. It's a five-star fascinating Gnostic look at the real identity of the god Jehovah. Is Jehovah the real Almighty God or just a pretender? Is God an insane murdering lunatic as the Old Testament says, or is that just a pretender god? Did the first Christians believe in God the Mother? What and where is the Kingdom of God? Who told the First Lie in the Garden of Eden, Jehovah or the Serpent? Are you SURE? Who or what was it that gave us the list of New Testament books as we have them now? The answers to these questions will shock you.

great history book.......2003-10-02

As a history major and a Jehovah Witness I ound this book to be absolutely amazing. The book discusses in detail the facts leading up to the presecution of JWs in America, and also the persecution itself. I was amazed to lean how lil "freedom" there was in America at that time, as will all readers. If it was not for the JWs who knows what the US would have been able to do to people if the people themselves did not rise up, as this book shows the JWs did.

Book Description

A member of the United Society of Believers, better known as the Shakers, Isaac Newton Youngs spent most of his life in New Lebanon, New York, home of the society's central Ministry. As both a private diarist and the official village scribe, he kept meticulous records throughout those years of both his own experience and that of the community. All told, more than four thousand pages of Brother Isaac's journals have survived, documenting the history of the Shakers during the period of their greatest success and providing a revealing view of the daily life of a rank-and-file Believer.

In this deeply researched biography, Glendyne R. Wergland draws on Youngs's writings to tell his story and to explore "the tension between desire and discipline" at the center of his life. She follows Youngs from childhood and adolescence to maturity, through years of demanding responsibility into his fatal decline. In each of these stages, he remained a talented and committed yet independent Shaker, one who chose to stay with the community but often struggled to abide by its stringent rules, including the vow of celibacy. Perhaps above all, he was a man who spent most of his waking hours working diligently at a succession of tasks, making clocks, sewing clothes, fixing roofs, writing poetry, chronicling his daily acts and thoughts.

In his journals, Brother Isaac writes at length of his efforts to control his lust as a young man, and he complains repeatedly about overwork as he grows older. He defines the rules of his community and identifies transgressors, while enciphering his critical entries (and those chronicling his own sexual desires) to avoid detection and uphold the demand for conformity. At times he admits doubt, but without ever relinquishing the belief that he is on the straight and narrow path to salvation. What emerges in the end is the complex portrait of an ordinary man striving to live up to the imperatives of his faith.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Scholarship.......2006-08-05

ONE SHAKER LIFE by Glendyne Wergland is one of the finest pieces of scholarship ever done on the Shakers. There is so much of merit, it is difficult to choose a few aspects to highlight. When the entirety of the book is considered, however, perhaps the most intriguing chapters are numbers three and seven.
Number Three, "Youth and Lust" provides a totally new and detailed account of the struggle a young Shaker man faced trying to live a celibate life. Wergland uses vivid passages from his diaries and speaks of his guilt and efforts to confess. At the same time she uses nineteenth century literature on related sexual topics to contextualize these temptations.
Chaper Seven, "Intimacy between Men in Shaker Society" continues this frank discussion. No previous author has so skillfully discussed issues raised by the use of flowery and sexual language between Shaker men in their correspondence, nor has possible Shaker homosexuality ever been so clearly and rationally explained. As a result, her treatment of Isaac's friendships shows a balanced and fairly accurate account of the relationships formed between Shaker men in the early nineteenth century.
Other chapters of note include the one dealing with Isaac's involvement in the Era of Manifestations. We glimpse him as both an instrument as well as one who is given the task of testing the validity of these visionists. Another chapter deals with his contributions as a master clockmaker, the final craftsman in a three generations old family tradition. The book also has clear and well explained illustrations.
In summary, Wergland has used previously unanalyzed primary resources to create a work of insight that informs. This effort helps give a correct and complete view of one particular Shaker during the earlier years of Shaker history.

A Really Good Read!.......2006-05-25

For those of us who gravitate toward the written record of one person's life as a lens through which to understand broader historical trends -- and those of us who are particularly interested in 19th century American, religious, New England, and of course Shaker history -- this book is a gem. It brings the American Shaker religious sect to life in the person of Isaac Newton Youngs, a member of the New Lebanon, NY Society of Believers. For this we have not only the author to thank, but also her subject, who left 4,000 diary pages for her study. Through these pages we see more than a glimpse of Isaac's daily life. We get a comprehensive view of his spiritual, emotional, and vocational development from the age of 13, when he joins the New Lebanon Shakers, through adolescence (including a surprisingly frank account of his decades-long struggle to live in a celibate society), adulthood, and his shocking end. The author's sympathetic yet insightful analysis of this material puts Isaac's travails in religious, social, and psychological context, so that we understand Isaac and the world he lived in, and how it was perceived by outsiders. We are left with the sense of having known someone intimately, despite the spatial, chronological, and cultural remove.

So often, history affords us just a glimpse of any one life. We are left to wonder just what that time and place was really like. This is not one of those books.

Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1956-1961

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Very informative but dry

Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1956-1961
Mark V. Tushnet
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195104684

Book Description

From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could march on Selma to register voters, the Supreme Court had to find unconstitutional the Southern Democratic Party's exclusion of African-Americans; and before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court had to strike down the laws allowing for the segregation of public graduate schools, colleges, high schools, and grade schools. Making Civil Rights Law provides a chronological narrative history of the legal struggle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that preceded the political battles for civil rights. Drawing on interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty and justice for all African-Americans. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Making Civil Rights Law provides an overall picture of the forces involved in civil rights litigation, bringing clarity to the legal reasoning that animated this "Constitutional revolution", and showing how the slow development of doctrine and precedent reflected the overall legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.

Customer Reviews:

Very informative but dry.......1999-11-20

This book is a decisive history of Thurgood Marshall's actions and the effects that he had on the civil rights of African-Americans while he worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His successes, failures, and discussions of his effects make it a very informative book. It is quite obvious that the author spent a great amount of time researching his topic of choice. The book is absolutely full of quotes from people of the time and very detailed factual accounts of events. Unfortunately, the content is not written in an extremely appealing matter. It tends to drone on and on about various cases and actions which have no major significance in history nor in the life of Marshall. If you can read through the dry spots, though, its a great book. You can really get a felling for the social climate of the era as well as the thoughts and feelings of Marshall himself. As a research tool, this was definitely the most valuable book I came across. If I was rating this book based on its information it would be an easy five. Ultimately, it is a good book for pleasure reading but not the best. I would have to say that Juan Williams' Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary is the best. If you are interested in Marshall's career, though, you want to look at Tushnet's other book Making Constitutional Law : Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961-1991.

A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures)

Average customer rating:

Superb, as usual.
Excellent source about the southern viewpoint of slavery

A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures)
Eugene D. Genovese
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0820320463

Customer Reviews:

Superb, as usual........2002-06-17

Eugene Genovese is the outstanding historian of the past 30 years. His books on American slavery touched off the enormous flowering of slavery studies during that time, and his recent work on southern whites has been equally exemplary. This brief volume, a collection of three papers, has redefined the Confederacy.

What Genovese shows here is that their experience in the Civil War led many southerners to decide that God was punishing them for not reforming their slave system. Genovese's subjects remained convinced that slavery was an institution that had been ordained by God; however, they decided that their prohibitions on slave marriage (which forced slaves to reproduce illicitly) and slave literacy (which kept slaves from becoming proper Protestants) were offensive to God, and many of them insisted on changes to remove these objections. By the war's end, many concluded God had chastised them for their sins.

Excellent source about the southern viewpoint of slavery.......1999-11-19

There are innumerable controversies between the vast schools of thought in American history. Perhaps one of the largest is that of slavery in the United States. Throughout their years of public education, students are taught that slavery is immoral and wrong. Eugene Genovese, on the other hand, shows the side that students are not often taught. He tells of the reasons why slavery was so strongly supported and gives his interpretations and support of slavery in his book, A Consuming Fire.

According to Genovese, the slave owners of the South didn't believe that slavery was inhumane. In fact, they believed that it was God's will that slaves be owned. Southern pastors found many Biblical passages which convinced Southerners not only to own slaves, but how to treat them and what rights to give them, or not give them. Genovese says that many slave holders were torn between politics and Christianity by saying, "The efforts to recognize slave marriage, to keep slave families intact, and to repeal the literacy laws confronted slave holders with an uncomfortable choice between their religion and their political and socioeconomic interests," (pg. 23). One of the arguments Genovese makes is that since God wants people to own slaves, He would allow them to win the war. The first few battles of the Civil War supported this side, since the Confederacy seemed to be winning against such impressive odds. Later, when the South lost the war and slavery was non-existant, the Christian South claimed that it was because they did not live according to God's commandments of being good slave owners. Genovese's work, A Consuming Fire, is an excellent portrayal of the system of slavery in Southern eyes. This book is filled with interesting facts, and the reader learns that the laws created by the Southern government were often opposed by slave owners themselves. Stated on the cover is, "The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South." Nothing better summarizes Genovese's theory than this statement.

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Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era
Paul Harvey
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | 19th Century | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
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A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

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ASIN: 0807858145

Book Description

This sweeping portrait of religion in the South puts race and culture at the center of more than a century of spiritual and political strife. Harvey deploys cultural history in fresh and innovative ways and fills a decades-old need for a comprehensive history of religion and its relationship to the central question of race in the South for the postbellum and twentieth-century period.

Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815@-1895

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Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815@-1895
Lester D. Stephens
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0807825182
Release Date: 2000-01-05

Book Description

In the decades before the Civil War, Charleston, South Carolina, enjoyed recognition as the center of scientific activity in the South. By 1850, only three other cities in the United States—Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—exceeded Charleston in natural history studies, and the city boasted an excellent museum of natural history. Examining the scientific activities and contributions of John Bachman, Edmund Ravenel, John Edwards Holbrook, Lewis R. Gibbes, Francis S. Holmes, and John McCrady, Lester Stephens uncovers the important achievements of Charleston's circle of naturalists in a region that has conventionally been dismissed as largely devoid of scientific interests.

Stephens devotes particular attention to the special problems faced by the Charleston naturalists and to the ways in which their religious and racial beliefs interacted with and shaped their scientific pursuits. In the end, he shows, cultural commitments proved stronger than scientific principles. When the South seceded from the Union in 1861, the members of the Charleston circle placed regional patriotism above science and union and supported the Confederate cause. The ensuing war had a devastating impact on the Charleston naturalists—and on science in the South. The Charleston circle never fully recovered from the blow, and a century would elapse before the South took an equal role in the pursuit of mainstream scientific research.

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