Summers documents the history of Saint Elizabeths Hospital, a federal mental institution in Washington, DC, in relation to that city's African American community. He sheds light on the intersections of the historical process of racialization, medical and cultural understandings of insanity, the exercise of institutional power, and individual and collective agency.

Offering a unique glimpse into American history, this is the first book to celebrate the compelling work of the United States' first federal photographer Features 160 photographs capturing Washington, DC in the midst of Civil War Despite his prolific career as the first US federal photographer, John Wood has been largely forgotten. With 160 stunning, high-resolution images, Magnificent Intentions establishes Wood as a leader among American photographers of the time and provides historical context for his overlooked work and legacy, which includes: The first inauguration photo, from James Buchanan's inauguration in 1857 Newly uncovered evidence that Wood was the photographer who documented Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861, the only surviving photograph of that historic event Hundreds of photographs of the construction of public buildings in DC, most notably the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Aqueduct Pioneering innovations in the use of photography to duplicate maps and plans during the Civil War The first panoramic photos of Washington, DC Adrienne Lundgren, senior photograph conservator at the Library of Congress, explores how Wood's life shaped his photographic eye and examines innovative techniques that made him a pioneer among his contemporaries, including his use of uncommonly large format plates and his experimentation with the dry collodion process. The book includes an enriching foreword from Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, and not only celebrates the artistic and technical merit of Wood's photos, but also chronicles the fascinating evolution of early photography and the federal government's use of the medium to shape public understanding of the American experience. Magnificent Intentions shines the spotlight on a little-known photographer with a masterful collection. From getting dispatched to the frontlines to photograph maps for General George B. McClellan to witnessing the installation of the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome, Wood captured significant moments of the mid-19th century. His photos document the construction of transformative buildings that reflected a country with its eye on the future, even as it was gripped by the Civil War.

Praise for the earlier edition-- "A fascinating, thought-provoking book.... Hietala shows that it was not destiny but design and aggression that enabled the United States to control Texas, New Mexico, and California."--Historian"Hietala has examined an impressive array of primary and secondary materials.... His handling of the relationship between the domestic and foreign policies of the decade shatters some myths about America's so-called manifest destiny and deserves the attention of all scholars and serious students of the period."--Western Historical Quarterly Since 1845, the phrase "manifest destiny" has offered a simple and appealing explanation of the dramatic expansionism of the United States. In this incisive book, Thomas R. Hietala reassesses the complex factors behind American policymaking during the late Jacksonian era. Hietala argues that the quest for territorial and commercial gains was based more on a desire for increased national stability than on any response to demands by individual pioneers or threats from abroad.

From his birth in 1807 to his death in 1864 as Sherman’s troops marched in triumph toward South Carolina, James Henry Hammond witnessed the rise and fall of the cotton kingdom of the Old South. Planter, politician, and an ardent defender of slavery and white supremacy, Hammond built a career for himself that in its breadth and ambition provides a composite portrait of the civilization in which he flourished. A long-awaited biography, Drew Gilpin Faust’s James Henry Hammond and the Old South reveals the South Carolina planter who was at once characteristic of his age and unique among men of his time. Of humble origins, Hammond set out to conquer his society, to make himself a leader and a spokesman for the Old South. Through marriage he acquired a large plantation and many slaves, and then through their coerced labor, shrewd management practices, and progressive farming techniques, he soon became one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served as governor of his state. Evidence that he sexually abused four of his teenage nieces forced him to retreat for many years to his plantation, but eventually he returned to public view, winning a seat in the United States Senate that he resigned when South Carolina seceded from the Union. James Henry Hammond’s ambition was unquenchable. It consumed his life, directed almost his every move and ultimately, in its titanic calculation and rigidity, destroyed the man confined within it. Like Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen, Faust suggests, Hammond had a “design,” a compulsion to direct every moment of his life toward self-aggrandizement and legitimation. Despite his sexual abuse of enslaved females and their children, like other plantation owners, Hammond envisioned himself as benevolent and paternal. He saw himself as the absolute master of his family and slaves, but neither his family, his slaves, nor even his own behavior was completely under his command. Hammond fervently wished to perfect and preserve what he envisioned as the southern way of life. But these goals were also beyond his control. At the time of his death it had become clear to him that his world, the world of the Old South, had ended.

This is the untold story of Dr. J. D. Harris, an African American physician whose life and career straddled enormous changes for Black professionals and the practice of medicine. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Harris served as a contract surgeon to the Union army and transitioned to a similar post under the Freedmen's Bureau, treating Black troops and freedpeople in Virginia. Margaret Humphreys not only narrates what we know about Harris but offers context to his remarkable journey, including how incredible it was that a young man born into freedom in a slave state learned to read when literacy for Black people was illegal. He was one of very few African Americans to become a doctor before Howard Medical School opened in the 1870s, a fact that both reveals the structural barriers to medical education for Black Americans and highlights how those structures weakened in the 1860s. Drawing on census records, court records, Civil War and Reconstruction documents from the National Archives, African American newspapers, and more, this book is a revealing look at the history not only of medicine in the southern United States but also of race and citizenship during one of the nation's most tumultuous eras.