"A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Abraham Lincoln was president when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions inextricably bound up with money, power, race, identity, and faith. He was hated and hailed, excoriated and revered. In Lincoln we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar...

"Slavery did not end without an organized and impassioned struggle. Many Americans, both black and white, thought it was inhumane and morally wrong to enslave another human being, no matter the color of his or her skin, and fought for the freedom of enslaved Africans in the United States. Learn about these abolitionists and freedom fighters from colonial days through emancipation, and discover how their work brought the country as far as it has come."...

The 1848 discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada -- California statehood -- Slave or free state -- Railroads -- One or two states -- Battles in Washington, DC.

"The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman--a prophet, a printer, and a 'Contessa'--and how its breakup led to the success of America's most important social movement. In the crucial early years of the abolition movement, the Boston branch of the cause seized upon the star power of the eloquent ex-slave Frederick Douglass to make its case for slaves' freedom. Journalist...

"Jonathan White illuminates why Lincoln's then-unprecedented welcome of African Americans to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how the Great Emancipator used the White House as the stage to empower Black voices in our country's most divisive era"-- Jonathan White illuminates why Lincolns unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women...

"The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. When the grandiosity of Southerners' national ambitions met the harsh realities of wartime crises, unintended consequences ensued. Although Southern...

"Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism...

In Northern Men with Southern Loyalties, Michael Todd Landis forcefully contends that a full understanding of the Civil War and its causes is impossible without a careful examination of Northern Democrats and their proslavery sentiments and activities. He focuses on a variety of key Democratic politicians, such as Stephen Douglas, William Marcy, and Jesse Bright, to unravel the puzzle of Northern Democratic politcal allegiance to the South. As congressmen,...

This sweeping narrative presents an original and compelling explanation for the triumph of the antislavery movement in the United States prior to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln's election as the first antislavery president was hardly preordained. From the country's inception, Americans had struggled to define slavery's relationship to freedom. Most Northerners supported abolition in the North but condoned slavery in the South, while most Southerners...

The Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black First Family, the Obamas. Clarence Lusane juxtaposes significant events in White House history with the ongoing struggle for democratic, civil, and human rights by black Americans...