This book chronicles the political and intellectual development of the two major antebellum peace movements. The American Peace Society, a moderate peace group, aimed to work through the institutions of church and state to achieve peace. The New England Nonresistant Society constituted a radical group which advocated the individual's complete separation from all institutions and strict adherence to the example of Christ's life and teachings.

We know of the blood and tears provoked by the projects of transformation of the world through war or revolution. Starting from the essay published in 1921 by Walter Benjamin, twentieth century philosophy has been committed to the criticism of violence, even when it has claimed to follow noble ends. But what do we know of the dilemmas, of the “betrayals,” of the disappointments and tragedies which the movement of non-violence has suffered? This book tells a fascinating history: from the American Christian organizations in the first decades of the nineteenth century who wanted to eliminate slavery and war in a non-violent way, to the protagonists of movements—Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Capitini, M. L. King, the Dalai Lama—who either for idealism or for political calculation flew the flag of non-violence, up to the leaders of today’s “color revolutions.”

American National Biography is the first new comprehensive biographical dicionary focused on American history to be published in seventy years. Produced under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, the ANB contains over 17,500 profiles on historical figures written by an expert in the field and completed with a bibliography. The scope of the work is enormous--from the earlest recorded European explorations to the very recent past.

A fundamental and well-illustrated reference collection for anyone interested in the role of women in North American religious life.

Specter of Peace advances a novel historical conceptualization of peace as a process of “right ordering” that involved the careful regulation of violence, the legitimation of colonial authority, and the creation of racial and gendered hierarchies. The volume highlights the many paths of peacemaking that otherwise have hitherto gone unexplored in early American and Atlantic World scholarship and challenges historians to take peace as seriously as violence. Early American peacemaking was a productive discourse of moral ordering fundamentally concerned with regulating violence. The historicization of peace, the authors argue, can sharpen our understanding of violence, empire, and the early modern struggle for order and harmony in the colonial Americas and Atlantic World. Contributors are: Micah Alpaugh, Brendan Gillis, Mark Meuwese, Margot Minardi, Geoffrey Plank, Dylan Ruediger, Cristina Soriano and Wayne E. Lee.

"The Oxford Handbook of Peace History uniquely explores the distinctive dynamics of peacemaking across time and place, and analyzing how past and present societies have created diverse cultures of peace and applied strategies for peaceful change. The analysis draws upon the expertise of many well-respected and distinguished scholars from disciplines such as anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, peace studies, sociology, and theology. This work is divided into six parts. The first three sections address the chronological sweep of peace history from the Ancient Egyptians to the present while the last three cover biographical profiles of peace advocates, key issues in peace history, and the future of peace history. A central theme throughout is that the quest for peace is far more than the absence of war or the pursuit of social justice ideals. Students and scholars, alike, will appreciate that this work examines the field of peace history from an international perspective and expands analysis beyond traditional Eurocentric frameworks. This volume also goes far beyond previously published handbooks and anthologies in answering what are the strengths and limits of peace history as a discipline, and what can it offer for the future. It also has the unique features of a state-of-the-field introduction with a detailed treatment of peace history historiography and a chapter written by a noted archivist in the field that provides a comprehensive list of peace research resources. It is a work ably suited applicable for classrooms and scholarly bookshelves"--

Peace in the US Republic of Letters, 1840-1900 explores the early peace movement as it captured the imagination of leading writers. The book charts the rise of the peace cause from its sources in the works of William Penn and John Woolman, through the founding of the first peace societies in 1815 and the mid-century peace congresses, to the postbellum movement's consequential emphasis on arbitration. The Civil War is the central axis for the book, with three chapters organized around readings of novels by James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne spanning the period from 1840 to 1865. Cooper had personal connections to the movement and thought deeply about the issues it addressed. Literary interest in peace at times overlapped with abolitionism, as was true for Stowe. And, in the case of Hawthorne, attention to peace advocacy arose out of a mixture of skepticism regarding perfectionist impulses, a desire to explore the nature and limits of violence, and fear of civil conflict. The volume also explores fiction engaged with problems that arose in the aftermath of that war, including novels by Henry Adams and John Hay on political corruption and class conflict; works on the failures of Reconstruction by Albion Tourgée and Charles Chesnutt; and the varied treatments of Indigenous experience in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona and Simon Pokagon's Queen of the Woods. All of these writers focused on issues related to the cause of peace, expanding its thematic reach and anticipating key insights of twentieth-century peace scholars.

The Dictionary of Early American Philosophers, which contains over 400 entries by nearly 300 authors, provides an account of philosophical thought in the United States and Canada between 1600 and 1860. The label of "philosopher" has been broadly applied in this Dictionary to intellectuals who have made philosophical contributions regardless of academic career or professional title. Most figures were not academic philosophers, as few such positions existed then, but they did work on philosophical issues and explored philosophical questions involved in such fields as pedagogy, rhetoric, the arts, history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, medicine, anthropology, religion, metaphysics, and the natural sciences. Each entry begins with biographical and career information, and continues with a discussion of the subject's writings, teaching, and thought. A cross-referencing system refers the reader to other entries. The concluding bibliography lists significant publications by the subject, posthumous editions and collected works, and further reading about the subject.

This anthology of journalism history brings together essays on the early Black press, pioneer Jewish journalism, Spanish-language newspapers, Native American newspapers, woman suffrage, peace advocacy, and Chinese American and Mormon publications. It shows how marginal groups developed their own journalism to counter the prejudices and misconceptions of the white establishment press. The essays address the important questions of freedom of expression in religious matters as well as the domains of race and gender.

How have Americans sought peaceful, rather than destructive, solutions to domestic and world conflict? This two-volume set documents peace and antiwar movements in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Although national leaders often claim to be fighting to achieve peace, the real peace seekers struggle against enormous resistance to their message and have often faced persecution for their efforts. Despite a well-established pattern of being involved in wars, the United States also has a long tradition of citizens who made extensive efforts to build and maintain peaceful societies and prevent the destructive human and material costs of war. Unarmed activists have most consistently upheld American values at home. Opposition to War: An Encyclopedia of U.S. Peace and Antiwar Movements investigates this historical tradition of resistance to involvement in armed conflict—an especially important and relevant topic today as the nation has been mired in numerous military conflicts throughout most of the current century. The book examines a largely misunderstood and underappreciated minority of Americans who have committed themselves to finding peaceful resolutions to domestic and international conflicts—individuals who have proposed and conducted an array of practical and creative methods for peaceful change, from the transformation of individual behavior to the development of international governing and legal systems, for more than 250 years. Readers will learn how individuals working alone or organized into societies of various size have steadfastly campaigned to stop war, end the arms race, eliminate the underlying causes of war, and defend the civil liberties of Americans when wartime nationalism most threatens them.