Amiable Scoundrel
Amiable Scoundrel

Author: Paul Kahan

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1612348491

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From abject poverty to undisputed political boss of Pennsylvania, Lincoln’s secretary of war, senator, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a founder of the Republican Party, Simon Cameron (1799–1889) was one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent political figures. In his wake, however, he left a series of questionable political and business dealings and, at the age of eighty, even a sex scandal. Far more than a biography of Cameron, Amiable Scoundrel is also a portrait of an era that allowed—indeed, encouraged—a man such as Cameron to seize political control. The political changes of the early nineteenth century enabled him not only to improve his status but also to exert real political authority. The changes caused by the Civil War, in turn, allowed Cameron to consolidate his political authority into a successful, well-oiled political machine. A key figure in designing and implementing the Union’s military strategy during the Civil War’s crucial first year, Cameron played an essential role in pushing Abraham Lincoln to permit the enlistment of African Americans into the U.S. Army, a stance that eventually led to his forced resignation. Yet his legacy has languished, nearly forgotten save for the fact that his name has become shorthand for corruption, even though no evidence has ever been presented to prove that Cameron was corrupt. Amiable Scoundrel puts Cameron’s actions into a larger historical context by demonstrating that many politicians of the time, including Abraham Lincoln, used similar tactics to win elections and advance their careers. This study is the fascinating story of Cameron’s life and an illuminating portrait of his times.

States at War, Volume 6
States at War, Volume 6

Author: Richard F. Miller

Publisher: University Press of New England

Published: 2018-01-02

Total Pages: 858

ISBN-13: 151260108X

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Although many Civil War reference books exist, Civil War researchers have until now had no single compendium to consult on important details about the combatant states (and territories). This crucial reference work, the sixth in the States at War series, provides vital information on the organization, activities, economies, demographics, and laws of Civil War South Carolina. This volume also includes the Confederate States Chronology. Miller enlists multiple sources, including the statutes, Journals of Congress, departmental reports, general orders from Richmond and state legislatures, and others, to illustrate the rise and fall of the Confederacy. In chronological order, he presents the national laws intended to harness its manpower and resources for war, the harsh realities of foreign diplomacy, the blockade, and the costs of states’ rights governance, along with mounting dissent; the effects of massive debt financing, inflation, and loss of credit; and a growing raggedness within the ranks of its army. The chronology provides a factual framework for one of history’s greatest ironies: in the end, the war to preserve slavery could not be won while 35 percent of the population was enslaved.

Understanding Presidential Doctrines
Understanding Presidential Doctrines

Author: Aiden Warren

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-02-14

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1538155273

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American foreign policy has long been caught between conflicting desires to influence world affairs yet at the same time to avoid becoming entangled in the burdensome conflicts and damaging rivalries of other states. Clearly, in the post-1945 context, the United States has failed in the attaining the latter. As this new, expanded edition illustrates, the term “doctrine” seemingly (re)attained a charged prominence in the early twenty-first century and, more recently, regarding the many contested debates surrounding the controversial transition to the Biden administration. Notwithstanding such marked variations in the discourse, presidential doctrines have crafted responses and directions conducive to an international order that best advances American interests: an almost hubristic composition encompassing “democratic” states (in the confidence that democracies do not go to war with one another), open free markets (on the basis that they elevate living standards, engender collaboration, and create prosperity), self-determining states (on the supposition that empires were not only adversative to freedom but more likely to reject American influence), and a secure global environment in which US goals can be pursued (ideally) unimpeded. Of course, with the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, the doctrinal “commonalties” between Republican and Democratic administrations of previous times were significantly challenged if not completely jettisoned. In seeking to provide a much-needed reassessment of the intersections between US foreign policy, national security, and doctrine, Aiden Warren and Joseph M. Siracusa undertake a comprehensive analysis of the defining presidential doctrines from George Washington through to the epochal post-Trump, Joe Biden era.

Presidential Doctrines
Presidential Doctrines

Author: Joseph M. Siracusa, Deputy Dean of Global Studies, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-07-18

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1442267496

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Presidential doctrines since Washington are evaluated to show that, despite differences between administrations, these doctrines have articulated both the responses and directions conducive to an international order that best advances U.S. interests, including “democracy,” open free markets, self-determining states, and a secure global environment.

Mason-Dixon
Mason-Dixon

Author: Edward G. Gray

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0674987616

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"A grand narrative history of the boundary that began as a simple demarcation between the feuding Pennsylvania and Maryland colonies but became a byword for the fundamental national division between the slavery-preserving South and abolitionist North"--