Conventional wisdom holds that freedmen's education was largely the work of privileged, single white northern women motivated by evangelical beliefs and abolitionism. Backed by pathbreaking research, Ronald E. Butchart's Schooling the Freed People shatters this notion. The most comprehensive quantitative study of the origins of black education in freedom ever undertaken, this definitive book on freedmen's teachers in the South is an outstanding contribution to social history and our understanding of African American education.

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." ― Frederick Douglass - An American Classic! - Includes Images of Frederick Douglass and His Life

When the Civil War halted steamboat travel on the Mississippi River in 1861, an unemployed riverboat pilot named Samuel Clemens enlisted in the Missouri militia. After two weeks of service, Clemens abandoned his post and fled westward to begin a writing career—a turn of events that precipitated the rise to fame of the man who would become known as Mark Twain. The circumstances surrounding his departure are unclear; some view Twain as a deserter, while others call into question the nature of his commitment from the beginning. Twain defended himself in speeches and in print, offering varying accounts—with varying degrees of truth—of his confusion upon enrollment, his ignorance of the moral and political forces behind the war, and his claim to have killed a man while hiding in a corncrib. Regardless of the reason for his desertion, his personal experiences and the Civil War in general are recurring topics in Twain's speeches, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition to broaching the issue in longer works, such as Life on the Mississippi and The Gilded Age, Twain directly addresses it in shorter pieces such as "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" and "A Curious Experience." Editor David Rachels unites these selections in Mark Twain's Civil War, offering Twain fans and Civil War scholars the unprecedented opportunity to read the entire array of Twain's Civil War-influenced literature in one volume. In addition to Twain's own pieces, Rachels includes an account of Twain's war career by his official biographer as well as a story by Absalom C. Grimes, a Confederate mail runner who claims to have served with Twain early in the war. An introduction by Rachels completes the text, which analyzes Twain's military stint and assesses the war's profound influence on one of America's most celebrated authors.

Following the Civil War, the United States was fully engaged in a bloody conflict with ex-Confederates, conservative Democrats, and members of organized terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, for control of the southern states. Texas became one of the earliest battleground states in the War of Reconstruction. Was the Reconstruction era in the Lone Star State simply a continuation of the Civil War? Evidence presented by sixteen contributors in this new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, argues that this indeed was the case. Topics include the role of the Freedmen's Bureau and the occ.

Iuri Samarin and Baroness Rahden were intelligent and cultured people who moved easily in nineteenth-century Russian and European society and whose comments on leading personalities, religious, political, and social questions still have relevance for today. The Correspondence of Iu Samarin and Baroness Rahden introduces the reader to a side of Russian intellectual life that deserves more attention than it has generally received, if only because it opens the door to a broader view of Russian society. Iuri Samarin was one of the most prominent and effective Slavophils, exerting a powerful influence on the development of Russian society in his lifetime as a political reformer and publicist. His work deserves attention, and this correspondence reveals much about the quality of his learning, his personality and character, and his philosophy of politics and religion.

When historian W. Allen Salisbury first wrote this book in 1978, he was seeking to teach Americans that the battle between the American System of economics and the British System of free trade which resulted in the Civil War, was at the center of the political battles of the 20th century. Today, this is even more true. The heirs of Adam Smith and the British Empire are pressing for worldwide adoption of free trade, a system which led to slavery in the 19th century, and would do so again today. And certain U.S. political circles are even openly demanding a return to the principles and Constitution of the Confederacy. Utilizing a rich selection of primary-source documents, Salisbury reintroduces the forgotten men of the Civil War-era battle for the American System: Mathew Carey, his son and successor Henry Carey, William Kelley, William Elder, and Stephen Colwell. Together with Abraham Lincoln, they demanded industrial-technological progress, against the ideological subversion of British "free trade" economists and the British-dominated Confederacy. Salisbury hightlights the career of Henry C. Carey, who, as Lincoln's leading economic adviser, acted to prevent a complete City of London banker's takeover of the United States political-economic system.

Chronicle of events in text and picture, through President Kennedy's inauguration.