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Originally published in 1964, The Struggle for Equality presents an incisive and vivid look at the abolitionist movement and the legal basis it provided to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson explores the role played by rights activists during and after the Civil War, and their evolution from despised fanatics into influential spokespersons for the radical wing of the Republican Party. Asserting that it was not the abolitionists who failed to instill principles of equality, but rather the American people who refused to follow their leadership, McPherson raises questions about the obstacles that have long hindered American reform movements.
List of contents
Preface to the Princeton Classics Edition ix Preface xiii Key to Abbreviations xvii Introduction 3 I The Election of 1860 9 II Secession and the Coming of War 29 III The Emancipation Issue: 1861 52 IVEmancipation and Public Opinion: 1861-1862 75 V The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment 99 VI The Negro: Innately Inferior or Equal? 134 VII Freedmen's Education: 1861-1865 154 VIII The Creation of the Freedmen's Bureau 178 IX Men of Color, to Arms! 192 X The Quest for Equal Rights in the North 221 XI The Ballot and Land for the Freedmen: 1861-1865 238 XII The Reelection of Lincoln 260 XIII Schism in the Ranks: 1864-1865 287 XIV Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction: 1865 308 XV The Fourteenth Amendment and the Election of 1866 341 XVI Military Reconstruction and Impeachment 367 XVII Education and Confiscation 1865-1870 386 XVIII The Climax of the Crusade: the Fifteenth Amendment 417 Bibliographical Essay 433 Index 451
About the author
James M. McPherson is George Henry Davis 86 Professor of American History at Princeton University where he has taught since 1962. He received his BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1958 and his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University in 1963. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Scaver Institute Fellow at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In 1999, McPherson received the Public Humanities Award of the New Jersey Council of the Humanities.
Summary
"With a new preface by the author"--Cover.
Additional text
"In addition to discussing the complex blend of egalitarianism and paternalism in the thought of white proponents of black advancement, McPherson offers suggestions of the intricate mixture of racial consciousness, individual ambition, and racial romanticism that continues to fuel modern black separatism."
Report
"Must surely be assigned an important place in the literature of the history of ideas and of race relations in the United States."--The Times Literary Supplement
