Edited by Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon
“These articles succeed admirably in emphasizing the irony of slavery’s centrality in what Finkelman terms ‘the seat of power of the world’s most prominent democratic republic.‘”
Journal of American History
“This essay collection does a nice job of keeping its focus, and all of the essays work well together. It offers a comprehensive understanding of just why it matters that the capital of the United States was a slave city. It also includes a diversity of perspectives—from the political to the social—and clearly shows exactly how slavery cast a shadow over all regions of the nation and all Americans.”
H-CivWar
Few images of early America were more striking, and jarring, than that of slaves in the capital city of the world’s most important free republic. Black slaves served and sustained the legislators, bureaucrats, jurists, cabinet officials, military leaders, and even the presidents who lived and worked there. While slaves quietly kept the nation’s capital running smoothly, lawmakers debated the place of slavery in the nation, the status of slavery in the territories newly acquired from Mexico, and even the legality of the slave trade in itself.
This volume, with essays by some of the most distinguished historians in the nation, explores the twin issues of how slavery made life possible in the District of Columbia and how lawmakers in the district regulated slavery in the nation.
Contributors: David Brion Davis, Mary Beth Corrigan, A. Glenn Crothers, Jonathan Earle, Stanley Harrold, Mitch Kachun, Mary K. Ricks, James B. Stewart, Susan Zaeske, David Zarefsky
Paul Finkelman is an expert on constitutional history, the law of slavery, and the American Civil War. He coedits the Ohio University Press series New Approaches to Midwestern Studies and is the president of Gratz College. More info →
Donald R. Kennon is the former chief historian and vice president of the United States Capitol Historical Society. He is editor of the Ohio University Press series Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1789–1801. More info →
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Hardcover
978-0-8214-1934-2
Retail price: $35.00,
S.
Release date: June 2011
272 pages
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6 × 9 in.
Rights: World
Electronic
978-0-8214-4349-1
Release date: June 2011
272 pages
Rights: World
Montgomery C. Meigs and the Building of the Nation’s Capital
Edited by William C. Dickinson, Donald R. Kennon, and Dean A. Herrin
At the age of thirty-six, in 1852, Lt. Montgomery Cunningham Meigs of the Army Corps of Engineers reported to Washington, D.C., for duty as a special assistant to the chief army engineer, Gen. Joseph G. Totten. It was a fateful assignment, both for the nation’s capital and for the bright, ambitious, and politically connected West Point graduate. Meigs's forty-year tenure in the nation's capital was by any account spectacularly successful.
Biography, Artists and Architects · Architecture History · Art History · American History
A Place of Recourse
A History of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, 1803–2003
By Roberta Sue Alexander
The first history of a federal district court in a midwestern state, A Place of Recourse explains a district court’s function and how its mission has evolved. The court has grown from an obscure institution adjudicating minor debt and land disputes to one that plays a central role in the political, economic, and social lives of southern Ohioans.
Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic
Edited by Derek R. Peterson
The abolition of the slave trade is normally understood to be the singular achievement of eighteenth-century British liberalism. Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic expands both the temporal and the geographic framework in which the history of abolitionism is conceived.
Slavery and Slave Trade · World and Comparative History · 19th century · African Studies · Atlantic Studies
The Jury in Lincoln’s America
By Stacy Pratt McDermott
In the antebellum Midwest, Americans looked to the law, and specifically to the jury, to navigate the uncertain terrain of a rapidly changing society. During this formative era of American law, the jury served as the most visible connector between law and society. Through an analysis of the composition of grand and trial juries and an examination of their courtroom experiences, Stacy Pratt McDermott demonstrates how central the law was for people who lived in Abraham Lincoln’s America.
American History · History · American Studies · Legal and Constitutional History · Law · Illinois
