Secret Societies and Clubs in American History
Secret Societies and Clubs in American History

Author: David Luhrssen

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-09-09

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1598849042

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Grounded in extensive historical research, this eye-opening survey reveals the long-undervalued role secret societies have played in American history. Americans are fascinated by secret societies and have devoured exaggerated claims for their influence. At the same time, scholarly assessments of covert groups that have shaped American social, cultural, and political history have often undervalued their role or even questioned their existence. This survey challenges both the exaggerators and the deniers. Freemasons? They may not be the hidden rulers of the world, but a significant number of America's founders were Masons. The Know Nothings? Two American presidents joined the movement. The Bohemian Grove? Republican politicians and corporate leaders really did engage in strange behavior under the redwood trees through the 20th century. Revealing fascinating facts about some of the most talked-about covert societies, including the Mafia, the Skull and Bones and the Ku Klux Klan, Secret Societies and Clubs in American History exposes the truth about the subcultures that made their mark on some of the most important events in the nation's history and contributed to the shaping of the country itself.

The Enemy Never Came
The Enemy Never Came

Author: Scott McArthur

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0870045709

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Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Although the Pacific Northwest was the area furthest removed from the actual battles of the Civil War, it was nonetheless profoundly affected by the war. The Enemy Never Came examines the everyday lives of the volunteer soldiers who battled Native American renegades of the region and of the settlers who were deeply affected by the war yet unable to do much about it. Pacific Northwest pioneers soon chose sides, most allying with the North, others supporting the southern states’ right to withdraw from the union. Still others attempted to ignore the entire issue of the War between the States, leaving “that problem” to the folks back east. Because communication with the rest of the nation was slow and tenuous during the early years of the war, the early settlers of what are now Oregon, Washington, and Idaho concentrated on controlling the restive Native Americans whose land and society had been overwhelmed by white settlers. These same settlers, however, nonetheless vigorously argued politics and worried about invaders from the south, from the British colonies to the north, and from the sea—none of whom ever materialized.

Break It Up
Break It Up

Author: Richard Kreitner

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2020-08-18

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 0316510599

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From journalist and historian Richard Kreitner, a "powerful revisionist account"of the most persistent idea in American history: these supposedly United States should be broken up (Eric Foner). The novel and fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: The United States has never lived up to its name—and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn’t limited to the South or the nineteenth century. It was there at our founding and has never gone away. With a scholar’s command and a journalist’s curiosity, Richard Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region. Each New England town after Plymouth was a secession from another; the thirteen colonies viewed their Union as a means to the end of securing independence, not an end in itself; George Washington feared separatism west of the Alleghenies; Aaron Burr schemed to set up a new empire; John Quincy Adams brought a Massachusetts town’s petition for dissolving the United States to the floor of Congress; and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison denounced the Constitution as a pro-slavery pact with the devil. From the “cold civil war” that pits partisans against one another to the modern secession movements in California and Texas, the divisions that threaten to tear America apart today have centuries-old roots in the earliest days of our Republic. Richly researched and persuasively argued, Break It Up will help readers make fresh sense of our fractured age.

Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War
Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War

Author: Stephen E. Towne

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 082144493X

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Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War represents pathbreaking research on the rise of U.S. Army intelligence operations in the Midwest during the American Civil War and counters long-standing assumptions about Northern politics and society. At the beginning of the rebellion, state governors in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois cooperated with federal law enforcement officials in various attempts—all failed—to investigate reports of secret groups and individuals who opposed the Union war effort. Starting in 1862, army commanders took it upon themselves to initiate investigations of antiwar sentiment in those states. By 1863, several of them had established intelligence operations staffed by hired civilian detectives and by soldiers detailed from their units to chase down deserters and draft dodgers, to maintain surveillance on suspected persons and groups, and to investigate organized resistance to the draft. By 1864, these spies had infiltrated secret organizations that, sometimes in collaboration with Confederate rebels, aimed to subvert the war effort. Stephen E. Towne is the first to thoroughly explore the role and impact of Union spies against Confederate plots in the North. This new analysis invites historians to delve more deeply into the fabric of the Northern wartime experience and reinterpret the period based on broader archival evidence.

Across the Divide
Across the Divide

Author: Steven J. Ramold

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0814729193

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"Ramold disputes the old argument that citizen-soldiers in the Union Army differed little from civilians. He shows how a chasm of mutual distrust grew between soldiers and civilians during four years of fighting that led many Democratic soldiers to…build the groundwork for the postwar Republican Party. Filled with gripping anecdotes, this book makes for fascinating reading." —Scott Reynolds Nelson, College of William & Mary Union soldiers left home in 1861 with expectations that the conflict would be short, the purpose of the war was clear, and public support back home was universal. As the war continued, however, Union soldiers noticed growing disparities between their own expectations and those of their families at home with growing concern and alarm. Instead of support for the war, an extensive and oft-violent anti-war movement emerged. In this first study of the gulf between Union soldiers and northern civilians, Steven J. Ramold reveals the wide array of factors that prevented the Union Army and the civilians on whose behalf they were fighting from becoming a united front during the Civil War. In Across the Divide, Ramold illustrates how the divided spheres of Civil War experience created social and political conflict far removed from the better-known battlefields of the war. Steven J. Ramold, Associate Professor of American History at Eastern Michigan University, is the author of two previous books, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy and Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army. He and his wife reside in Ypsilanti, Michigan.