John Brown

Today's historical lens makes John Brown a terrorist.  He did plenty of violent things.  Here is the Wikileaks entry for him.  As an abolitionist, John Brown may be forgiven today in a way that he was not in 1859.

Tony Horwitz is the author of a new book about John Brown, a man who was committed to violence as necessary to end the sin of slavery.  We are familiar with people who feel that way about sin.

Here is the link to the Times Book Review for this book:

MIDNIGHT RISING

John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

By Tony Horwitz.Illustrated. 365 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $29

This is a recurring theme and topic that relates to today as much as America's past.  In 2009, I noted the book JOHN BROWN'S WAR AGAINST SLAVERY, by Robert E. McGlone.

Economics and the Civil War

The book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War, by Marc Egnal, who teaches in Toronto. His web site for this book is here.  My friends who appear to be economic determinists argue to me that economics cause wars, but I am skeptical.  I just don't think young men volunteer to go off for adventures based on patriotic feeling because it makes somebody rich.   The idea that most of the young men (now young women, too) sign up for the military based on national economic results does not correspond to what I have seen.  On the other hand, economics makes wars possible.  Economics may even induce governments to make belligerent decisions.  Governments obvious manipulate the circumstances.  However, I don't see the immediate link between economics and mass volunteering for war.  I guess I need to read this book.

The Antebellum Slave Question persists

In his 2009 book called Deliver Us from Evil, Lacy K. Ford describes in details the tensions arising out of the relationships of slaves and slave-owners in the upper South and in the lower South.  The book is referred to here at the Publisher's site.

John Brown

The book is JOHN BROWN'S WAR AGAINST SLAVERY, by Robert E. McGlone.

http://www.amazon.com/John-Browns-War-against-Slavery/dp/0521514436

http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521514436

Here's a link to the author, who has published repeatedly on John Brown:
http://www.hawaii.edu/history/faculty/Mcglone.html

Colfax Massacre

The book is THE DAY FREEDOM DIED: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. Author is Charles Lane. Publisher is Henry Holt and Co.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for the Colfax massacre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Massacre

The book is available for Kindle at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Freedom-Died-Massacre-Reconstruction/dp/0805083421

The book is now out in paperback:
http://us.macmillan.com/thedayfreedomdied

Here's a link to a review in the New York Times last year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Boyle-t.html?pagewanted=print

Here's a review from New Orleans
http://blog.nola.com/susanlarson/2008/03/colfax_massacre.html

Copperheads - Civil War Peace Democrats

Copperheads, by Jennifer L. Weber , Oxford

Well reviewed in both New Yorker and New York Law Journal (on June 29, 2007).

Timely discussion of dissent and opposition.