Every American war has brought conflict over the extent to which national security will permit protesters to exercise their constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The most famous case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln's Civil War policies and one of the most controversial figure in the nation's history. In the great crisis of his time, he insisted that no circumstance, even war, could deprive a citizen of his right to oppose government policy freely and openly. The consequence was a furor which shook the nation's legislative halls and filled the press with vituperation. The ultimate fate for Vallandigham was arrest, imprisonment, and exile. The burning issues raised by his case remain largely unresolved today. Mr. Klement follows the tragic irony of Vallandigham's career and reassesses the man and history's judgment of him. After his death, "Valiant Val'' became a symbol of the dissenter in wartime whose case continues to have relevance in American democracy.

Every American war has brought heated debate over the extent to which national security can permit protesters to exercise their constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The most famous and controversial Civil War case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, the passionate critic of Lincoln's policies. In the great crisis of his time, he insisted that no circumstance, even war, could deprive a citizen of his right to oppose governmental policy freely and openly. The consequence was a furor that shook the nation's legislative halls and filled the press with vituperation. The ultimate fate for Vallandigham was arrest, imprisonment, and exile. However, the burning issues raised by his case remain largely unresolved today. In this book, the first full-length study of Vallandigham's Civil War career, Frank L. Klement reassesses the man and history's judgment of him.

In a time of great national division, a time of threats of resistance and counterthreats of suppression, a controversial president takes drastic measures to rein in his critics, citing national interest, national security, and his obligations as chief executive. If this seems familiar in our current moment of intense political agitation, that is all the more reason to attend to Thomas Mackey’s gripping, learned, and eminently readable account of the Civil War–era case of Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio congressman arrested for campaigning against the war and President Lincoln’s policies. In Mackey’s telling, the story of this prominent “Copperhead,” or Southern sympathizer, illuminates the problem of internal security, loyalty, and disloyalty faced by the Lincoln administration during wartime—and, more generally, the problem of determining the balance between executive power and tyranny, and between dissent and treason. Opposing Lincoln explores Vallandigham’s opposition not only to Lincoln and his administration but also to Lincoln’s use of force and his executive orders suspending habeas corpus. In addition to tracing Vallandigham’s experiences of being arrested, tried, convicted by military commission instead of civilian courts, and then banished from the United States, this historical narrative introduces readers to Lincoln’s most important statements on presidential powers in wartime, while also providing a primer on the wealth of detail involved in such legal and military controversies. Examining the long-standing issue of the limits of political dissent in wartime, the book asks the critical historical question of what reasonable lengths a legitimate government can go to in order to protect itself and its citizens from threats, whether external or internal. The case of Clement Vallandigham is, Mackey suggests, a quintessentially American story. Testing the limits of dissent in a political democracy in wartime, and of the scope and power of constitutional government, it clarifies a critical aspect of the American experience from afar.

During the agonizing days of the Civil War four secret political societies, often known as dark lantern societies, became household words throughout the North. Three of these groups--the Knights of the Golden Circle, the Order of American Knights, and the Sons of Liberty--supposedly were umbrellas for antiwar Democrats and were reportedly involved in treasonable activities. The Union League, on the other hand, was a patriotic political organization intent upon buttressing northern morale and giving support to the war program of the Lincoln administration. The accusations and counter accusations that passed between these opposing forces helped spread fantastic rumors about their power and influence. Treason trials held in Cincinnati and Indianapolis based convictions on hearsay, while the leaders of the Order of American Knights and the Knights of the Golden Circle spent much of the war in prison without benefit of trial. Today reputable reference sources still matter-of-factly credit these societies with large memberships and evil motives.In Dark Lanterns Frank L Klemment refutes past historical theories and shows quite clearly that these societies were never much more then paper-based organizations with vague goals and little ability to carry them out. Recounting the actual histories of these organizations, he shows how they were senationalized, even fictionalized, in both Republican and Democratic newspaper and magazine exposés. He also probes the trials arising from the supposed conspiracy to establish a separate confederacy in the Midwest and the so-called Camp Douglas conspiracy, which was intended to release the Confederate prisoners housed there. Despite the furor they generated, Klement concludes that these dark lantern societies were essentially engaged in nothing more than a war of words and that their alleged power was greatly exaggerated by political propaganda.Meticulously researched and lucidly argued, Dark Lanterns explores a controversial and puzzling aspect of the Civil war. It will be hard to dispute Klements' finding that generations of historians have swallowed whole a tale that was largely the product of myth and legend.

With the assistance of several scholars, including James M. McPherson and Gary Gallagher, and a long-time specialist in Civil War books, Ralph Newman, David Eicher has selected for inclusion in The Civil War in Books the 1,100 most important books on the war. These are organized into categories as wide-ranging as "Battles and Campaigns," "Biographies, Memoirs, and Letters," "Unit Histories," and "General Works." The last of these includes volumes on black Americans and the war, battlefields, fiction, pictorial works, politics, prisons, railroads, and a host of other topics. Annotations are included for all entries in the work, which is presented in an oversized 8 1/2 x 11 inch volume in two-column format. Appendixes list "prolific" Civil War publishers and other Civil War bibliographies, and the works included in Eicher's mammoth undertaking are indexed by author or editor and by title. Gary Gallagher's foreword traces the development of Civil War bibliographies and declares that Eicher's annotation exceeds that of any previous comprehensive volume. The Civil War in Books, Gallagher believes, is "precisely the type of guide" that has been needed. The first full-scale, fully-annotated bibliography on the Civil War to appear in more than thirty years, Eicher's The Civil War in Books is a remarkable compendium of the best reading available about the worst conflict ever to strike the United States. The bibliography, the most valuable reference book on the subject since The Civil War Day by Day, will be essential for college and university libraries, dealers in rare and secondhand books, and Civil War buffs.

The horrendous events of September 11, 2001, heightened awareness of terrorism unlike all but a handful of major catastrophes in American history. Like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, 9/11 is a date forever enshrined in our national memory. But 9/11 once again raised the question: What should government do to eliminate or reduce the likelihood of a future attack? How should national leadership balance its responsibility to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens with its sworn duty to protect their lives? In The Safety of the Kingdom, J. Michael Martinez takes up the question of how the United States government has responded to terrorist attacks and, in the absence of an attack, the fear of foreign and subversive elements that may harm the nation. In some cases, the government “overreaction” led to a series of abuses that amplified the severity of the original threat. Rather than selecting every instance of government reaction to threats, Martinez examines representative cases, from the alien and sedition acts in the eighteenth century to the post-9/11 “war on terror.” Edward Snowden’s disclosure of classified information related to the NSA’s surveillance program brought to the fore an important debate about government scrutiny of its citizens. As J. Michael Martinez makes clear in this book, it is a debate that has been ongoing for centuries. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory