
Undaunted Radical
The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgee
Louisiana State University Press
Published on 30. April 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-0-8071-3593-8 (ISBN)
Description
A leading proponent of racial equality in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century, Albion W. Tourgee (1838-1905) served as the most articulate spokesman of the radical wing of the Republican party, and he continued to advocate for its egalitarian ideals long after Reconstruction ended. Undaunted Radical presents Tourgee's most significant letters, speeches, and essays from the commencement of Radical Reconstruction through the bleak days of the era of Jim Crow.
An Ohioan by birth, Tourgee served in the Union army and afterwards moved to North Carolina, where he helped draft the 1868 state constitution. Within that and other documents he proposed free public education, the abolition of whipping posts, the end of property qualifications for jury duty and office holding, and the initiation of judicial reform and uniform taxation. Tourgee also served as a Republican-installed superior court judge, a position that brought him into increasing conflict with the Ku Klux Klan. In 1879, he published A Fool's Errand, a bestselling novel based on his Reconstruction experiences. Although now often overlooked, Tourgee in his lifetime offered a prominent voice of reason amid the segregation, disenfranchisement, lynching, racial propaganda, and mythologies about African Americans that haunted Reconstruction-era society and Gilded Age politics.
These thirty-four documents elaborate the reformer's opinions on the Reconstruction Amendments, his generation's racial and economic theories, the cultural politics of North-South reconciliation, the ethics of corporate capitalism, the Social Gospel movement, and the philosophical underpinnings of American democratic citizenship. Mark Elliott and John David Smith, among the foremost authorities on Tourgee, have brought these writings, including the previously unpublished oral arguments Tourgee delivered before the U.S. Supreme Court as Homer Plessy's lead attorney in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), together in one volume.
The book also includes an introductory overview of Tourgee's life and an exhaustive bibliography of Tourgee's writings and related works, providing an essential collection for anyone studying Reconstruction and the early civil rights movement.
An Ohioan by birth, Tourgee served in the Union army and afterwards moved to North Carolina, where he helped draft the 1868 state constitution. Within that and other documents he proposed free public education, the abolition of whipping posts, the end of property qualifications for jury duty and office holding, and the initiation of judicial reform and uniform taxation. Tourgee also served as a Republican-installed superior court judge, a position that brought him into increasing conflict with the Ku Klux Klan. In 1879, he published A Fool's Errand, a bestselling novel based on his Reconstruction experiences. Although now often overlooked, Tourgee in his lifetime offered a prominent voice of reason amid the segregation, disenfranchisement, lynching, racial propaganda, and mythologies about African Americans that haunted Reconstruction-era society and Gilded Age politics.
These thirty-four documents elaborate the reformer's opinions on the Reconstruction Amendments, his generation's racial and economic theories, the cultural politics of North-South reconciliation, the ethics of corporate capitalism, the Social Gospel movement, and the philosophical underpinnings of American democratic citizenship. Mark Elliott and John David Smith, among the foremost authorities on Tourgee, have brought these writings, including the previously unpublished oral arguments Tourgee delivered before the U.S. Supreme Court as Homer Plessy's lead attorney in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), together in one volume.
The book also includes an introductory overview of Tourgee's life and an exhaustive bibliography of Tourgee's writings and related works, providing an essential collection for anyone studying Reconstruction and the early civil rights movement.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Baton Rouge
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
675 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8071-3593-8 (9780807135938)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mark Elliott | John David Smith
Undaunted Radical
The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgee
E-Book
04/2010
1st Edition
LSU Press
€51.49
Available for download

Mark Elliott | John David Smith
Undaunted Radical
The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée
E-Book
04/2010
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
€19.49
Available for download
Persons
Mark Elliott, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is the author of colour-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson.
John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is the author of An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918
John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is the author of An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865-1918