Southwestern Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton's prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and abolitionism beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of Illinois.

Southwestern Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton s prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and abolitionism beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of Illinois."

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Different Worlds -- 2. Different Paths -- 3. Limited Convergence -- 4. Lincoln Keeps his Distance -- 5. National Impact -- 6. Contentious Relationship -- 7. Drawing Closer as Criticism Continues -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Gallery -- About the Author -- Other Titles in Series -- Back Cover

Using letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take us inside the minds of Civil War soldiers—black and white, Northern and Southern—as they fought and marched across a divided country, this unprecedented account is “an essential contribution to our understanding of slavery and the Civil War" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. This is a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Civil War as it has never been rendered before.

Levine sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South.

This ambitious book provides the only systematic examination of the American abolition movement’s direct impacts on antislavery politics from colonial times to the Civil War and after. As opposed to indirect methods such as propaganda, sermons, and speeches at protest meetings, Stanley Harrold focuses on abolitionists’ political tactics—petitioning, lobbying, establishing bonds with sympathetic politicians—and on their disruptions of slavery itself. Harrold begins with the abolition movement’s relationship to politics and government in the northern American colonies and goes on to evaluate its effect in a number of crucial contexts--the U.S. Congress during the 1790s, the Missouri Compromise, the struggle over slavery in Illinois during the 1820s, and abolitionist petitioning of Congress during that same decade. He shows how the rise of "immediate" abolitionism, with its emphasis on moral suasion, did not diminish direct abolitionists’ impact on Congress during the 1830s and 1840s. The book also addresses abolitionists’ direct actions against slavery itself, aiding escaped or kidnapped slaves, which led southern politicians to demand the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, a major flashpoint of antebellum politics. Finally, Harrold investigates the relationship between abolitionists and the Republican Party through the Civil War and Reconstruction.