John Pendleton Kennedy (1795--1870) achieved a multidimensional career as a successful novelist, historian, and politician. He published widely and represented his district in the Maryland legislature
Through a life that spanned every decade of the twentieth century, Supreme Court advocate Bessie Margolin shaped modern American labor policy while creating a place for female lawyers in the nation's
The name Daniel Boone conjures up the image of an illiterate, coonskin cap-wearing patriot who settled Kentucky and killed countless Indians. The scarcity of surviving autobiographical material has al
One of the least publicly recognized heroes of the civil rights movement in the United States, John Minor Wisdom served as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1957 until h
Although he was one of the most important African American political leaders during the last decade of the nineteenth century, George Henry White has been one of the least remembered. A North Carolina
Considering the course his life took, one might wonder how Zachary Taylor ever came to be elected the twelfth president of the United States. According to K. Jack Bauer, Taylor "was and remains an eni
Antebellum politician Henry Stuart Foote (1804 -1880) was among the most vocal, well-travelled, and controversial statesmen of the nineteenth century. Although largely forgotten today, as historian Be
Many Americans view Andrew Jackson as a frontiersman who fought duels, killed Indians, and stole another man's wife. Historians have traditionally presented Jackson as a man who struggled to overcome
Christina Vella received a PhD. in Modern European and U.S. history from Tulane University, where she is a Visiting Professor. A consultant for the U.S. State Department, she lectures widely on histor
The Conquest of Labor offers the first biography of Daniel Pratt (1799-1873), a New Hampshire native who became one of the South's most important industrialists. After moving to Alabama in 1833, Pratt
Many Americans view Andrew Jackson as a frontiersman who fought duels, killed Indians, and stole another man's wife. Historians have traditionally presented Jackson as a man who struggled to overcome
In 1967, John U. Monro, Dean of the College at Harvard, left his twenty-year administrative career at the prestigious university for a teaching position at Miles College an unaccredited historically b
One of the most eccentric and accomplished politicians in all of American history, John Randolph (1773--1833) led a life marked by controversy. The long-serving Virginia congressman and architect of S
Legendary Southern Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Moon played a pivotal role in revolutionizing southern civil society. Her involvement in the establishment of the Women's Missionary Union prov
In 1931, when the Nashville Banner conducted a survey to determine the "Greatest Tennesseans" to date, the state's Confederate "War Governor," Isham G. Harris (1818--1897), ranked tenth on the list, b
In A Southern Moderate in Radical Times, David I. Durham offers a comprehensive and critical appraisal of one of the South's famous dissenters. Against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent period
Extraordinarily wealthy and influential, Stephen Duncan (1787-1867) was a landowner, slaveholder, and financier with a remarkable array of social, economic, and political contacts in pre-Civil War Ame
Hinton Rowan Helper (1829--1909) gained notoriety in nineteenth-century America as the author of The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), an antislavery polemic that provoked national public controve
As provisional governor of Missouri during the Civil War, Hamilton Gamble (1798--1864) worked closely with the Lincoln administration to keep the state from seceding from the Union. Without Gamble and
On April 16, 1884, Kentucky Superior Court judge Richard Reid visited attorney John Jay Cornelison's office -- at Cornelison's invitation -- to discuss a legal matter. When he arrived, Cornelison accu
An esteemed planter, politician, and military leader influential in the affairs of both South Carolina and Texas, James Hamilton (1786--1857) so declined in reputation during the last twenty years of
This elegantly written biography depicts the combined effect of social structure, character, and national crisis on a woman’s life. Mary Greenhow Lee (1819–1907) was raised in a privileged Virginia ho
As Jefferson Davis paraded through the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, to take the oath of office as the first president of the Confederate States of America, two men accompanied him in his open coach
In this exceptional biography, Canter Brown, Jr., removes Ossian Bingley Hart (1821–1874)—a Unionist, the principal founder of the Republican Party in Florida, and a Reconstruction-era governor of the
WINNER OF THE JEFFERSON DAVIS AWARD Rising from humble origins in the middle Georgia cotton belt, Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) became one of the South’s leading politicians and lawyers. Thomas E.
Allen J. Ellender, born in 1890 on a sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, rose to become one of the most dominant men in the U.S Senate. This biography, based on prolonged examination of
The premier secessionist of antebellum Mississippi, John A. Quitman was one of the half-dozen or so most prominent radicals in the entire South. In this full-length biography, Robert E. May takes issu
“This book is meaty, succinct, well organized, and attractively written. It is a praiseworthy contribution to American biography and to Confederate history.” —Bell I. WileyHere is the first critical b
Elite, personable, and persuasive, Edward Douglass White, a ‘‘large and bearish man from Louisiana,’’ served on the United States Supreme Court for twenty-seven years. During his tenure, first as an a
Joseph Brown was a pivotal figure in southern history and a prototype of a new breed of southern politician in the mid-nineteenth century-the hill country newcomer who was considered to represent the
Daniel Russell is a good example of what Carl Degler has termed “the other South.” The son of an aristocratic eastern North Carolina family of staunch Whig-Unionists, he entered politics when the Repu
David Boyd's biography is the story of one man's dedicated struggle to protect and preserve Louisiana's fledgling state university from the cumulative effects of war, Reconstruction, political hostili
