The Right of Instruction and Representation in American Legislatures, 1778 to 1900 provides a comprehensive analysis of the role constituent instructions played in American politics for more than a hundred years after its founding. Constituent instructions were more widely issued than previously thought, and members of state legislatures and Congress were more likely to obey them than political scientists and historians have assumed. Peverill Squire expands our understanding of constituent instructions beyond a handful of high-profile cases, through analyses of two unique data sets: one examining more than 5,000 actionable communications (instructions and requests) sent to state legislators by constituents through town meetings, mass meetings, and local representative bodies; the other examines more than 6,600 actionable communications directed by state legislatures to their state’s congressional delegations. He draws the data, examples, and quotes almost entirely from original sources, including government documents such as legislative journals, session laws, town and county records, and newspaper stories, as well as diaries, memoirs, and other contemporary sources. Squire also includes instructions to and from Confederate state legislatures in both data sets. In every respect, the Confederate state legislatures mirrored the legislatures that preceded and followed them.

Originally published in 1965. The Right to Vote covers the immediate background, passage, and ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Gillette contends that the Fifteenth Amendment was intended to give voting rights to African Americans in the north, sidelining those in the south. African American suffrage, in other words, had the pragmatic effect of bringing power to the Republicans of the north. In short, the Fifteenth Amendment was not a radical document but rather was pushed by Republican moderates in an effort to consolidate their power.

Wars are fought on the home front as well as the battlefront. Spouses, family, friends, and communities are called upon to sacrifice and persevere in the face of a changed reality. Hoosiers on the Home Front explores the lives and experiences of ordinary Hoosiers from around Indiana who were left to fight at home during wartimes. Drawn from the rich holdings of the Indiana Magazine of History, a journal of state and midwestern history published since 1905, this collection includes original diaries, letters and memoirs, and research essays—all focused on Hoosiers on the home front of the Civil War through the Vietnam War. Readers will meet, among others, Joshua Jones of the 19th Indiana Volunteer Regiment and his wife, Celia; Attia Porter, a young resident of Corydon, Indiana, writing to her cousin about Morgan's Raid; Civil War and World War I veterans who came into conflict over the Indianapolis 500 and Memorial Day observances; Virginia Mayberry, a wife and mother on the World War II home front; and university students and professors—including antiwar activist Howard Zinn and conservative writer R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.—clashing over the Vietnam War. Hoosiers on the Home Front offers a compelling glimpse of how war impacts everyone, even those who never saw the front line.

Focusing on the Thirteenth Amendment, this book examines emancipation after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

As July 7, 1861, dawned, war was in the air in Lexington, Indiana. The county seat of Scott County was abuzz with the latest news of the southern rebellion. The Madison Daily and Evening Courier told of skirmishes between Federal troops and “secesh” forces at Harpers Ferry and Falling Waters, Virginia. Closer to home, word had come that William A. Sanderson had organized a new outfit, the Twenty-Third Indiana, and was recruiting throughout the Second Congressional District for men to join the regiment. Although Scott County had been rife with sympathy and support for the South, answering the call to serve the Union cause from the county were Jacob T. Kimberlin, a twenty-one-year-old farmhand; his older brother, John J.; and his cousins, William H. H. Kimberlin, Benjamin F. Kimberlin, and James Stark. These five young men could not have known at the time that none of them would ever again see their homes. They only knew that the Kimberlins were going to war. This is the story of the Kimberlin family that sent thirty-three fathers and sons, brothers and cousins, to fight for the Union during the Civil War. Ten family members were killed, wounded, or died of battlefield disease, a 30 percent casualty rate that is unmatched in recorded Scott County history. Of the 134 known deaths of Scott County soldiers, ten were members of the Kimberlin clan. Their feelings about the war come from forty letters to and from the battlefield that have survived to this day. The book examines such questions as: Were they fighting to save the Union or to free the slaves? How did they express grief over the loss of a brother? Did they keep up with their business and the women at home? And what did they think about “secesh” neighbors in southern Indiana who tried to undermine the Union?

Traces the life of the controversial American socialist and social reformer and assesses his role in American history.