Federalist 9 and 10 (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com).The Law of Nations, the Law of Revenge, and Andrew Jackson
J.M. Opal’s new book interprets the history of the southern frontier from the late colonial period through Andrew Jackson’s presidency as a tale of constant violence and brutal grasping for power. “Old Hickory,” the main character of the work, appears as a bloodthirsty, self-righteous opportunist who, after clawing his way to elite status, searches for ways to maintain that status. Taking vengeance in the name of the people became a main part of his strategy, according to Opal, an associate professor of history at McGill University. The southern part of the American frontier is, by Opal’s lights, no haven for democracy…
An Oppressive Power From the Beginning
Eliga Gould has written an intriguing new history of the diplomatic engagement of the United States in the long period spanning the Seven Years’ War to the Monroe Doctrine. It is different from most such histories of foreign policy in registering the perspective of various excluded groups—French Acadians who were expelled from their homeland in 1761 by Great Britain; loyalists consigned to exile by the American Revolution; the Native American nations and British hangers-on who contested possession of the Ohio Valley and the southern borderlands from the Peace of 1763 to Jackson’s War on the Seminoles in 1818; pirates and…
The South Was Right, the Historians Are Wrong: Taking the Antislavery Origins of the Civil War Seriously
Why did the Southern states choose to secede when Abraham Lincoln was elected President in November of 1860? At the time, Southerners attributed “secession winter” to the fear that Lincoln and the Republicans fully intended to make war on slavery, bypassing the Constitution, which left the issue of slavery to the states. Thus, they believed, their only option was to separate from the Union.
Northern Democrats agreed, contending that Republicans intended to circumvent the Constitution’s prohibition against direct federal action against slavery. Agitation by the “Black Republicans” was responsible for the crisis. The Democrats felt vindicated when Republicans refused to compromise on the extension of slavery into the territories. In addition, the Democrats charged, the Republicans intended to refuse to enforce the fugitive slave law that had been passed in 1850 as part of the Great Compromise.
