Continent in Crisis
The U.S. Civil War in North America
Published on 3. January 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-5315-0129-7 (ISBN)
Description
Written by leading historians of the mid-nineteenth century United States, this book focuses on the continental dimensions of the U.S. Civil War. It joins a growing body of scholarship that seeks to understand the place of America's mid-nineteenth-century crisis in the broader sweep of world history. However, unlike other studies that have pursued the Civil War's connections with Europe and the Caribbean, this volume focuses on North America, particularly Mexico, British Canada, and sovereign indigenous states in the West.
As the United States went through its Civil War and Reconstruction, Mexico endured its own civil war and then waged a four-year campaign to expel a French-imposed monarch. Meanwhile, Britain's North American colonies were in complex and contested negotiations that culminated in confederation in 1867. In the West, indigenous nations faced an onslaught of settlers and soldiers seeking to conquer their lands for the United States. Yet despite this synchronicity, mainstream histories of the Civil War mostly ignore its connections to the political upheaval occurring elsewhere in North America.
By reading North America into the history of the Civil War, this volume shows how battles over sovereignty in neighboring states became enmeshed with the fratricidal conflict in the United States. Its contributors explore these entangled histories in studies ranging from African Americans fleeing U.S. slavery by emigrating to Mexico to Confederate privateers finding allies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This continental perspective highlights the uncertainty of the period when the fate of old nations and possibilities for new ones were truly up for grabs.
As the United States went through its Civil War and Reconstruction, Mexico endured its own civil war and then waged a four-year campaign to expel a French-imposed monarch. Meanwhile, Britain's North American colonies were in complex and contested negotiations that culminated in confederation in 1867. In the West, indigenous nations faced an onslaught of settlers and soldiers seeking to conquer their lands for the United States. Yet despite this synchronicity, mainstream histories of the Civil War mostly ignore its connections to the political upheaval occurring elsewhere in North America.
By reading North America into the history of the Civil War, this volume shows how battles over sovereignty in neighboring states became enmeshed with the fratricidal conflict in the United States. Its contributors explore these entangled histories in studies ranging from African Americans fleeing U.S. slavery by emigrating to Mexico to Confederate privateers finding allies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This continental perspective highlights the uncertainty of the period when the fate of old nations and possibilities for new ones were truly up for grabs.
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
3 b/w ullustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
381 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5315-0129-7 (9781531501297)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Brian Schoen (Edited By)
Brian Schoen is the James Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of History at Ohio University. He is author of The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) and several recent book chapters, articles, and edited anthologies on the early American Republic and Civil War Era.
Jewel L. Spangler (Edited By)
Jewel L. Spangler is an associate professor and head of the Department of History at the University of Calgary. She is the author of Virginians Reborn (University of Virginia Press, 2008) and co-editor of Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s (Fordham University Press, 2020). Her current project is a microhistory titled "The Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811 in History and Memory."
Frank Towers (Edited By)
Frank Towers is a professor of history at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2004) and the co- editor of The Old South's Modern Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2011), Confederate Cities (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and Remaking North American Sovereignty (Fordham University Press, 2020).
Brian Schoen is the James Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of History at Ohio University. He is author of The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) and several recent book chapters, articles, and edited anthologies on the early American Republic and Civil War Era.
Jewel L. Spangler (Edited By)
Jewel L. Spangler is an associate professor and head of the Department of History at the University of Calgary. She is the author of Virginians Reborn (University of Virginia Press, 2008) and co-editor of Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s (Fordham University Press, 2020). Her current project is a microhistory titled "The Richmond Theatre Fire of 1811 in History and Memory."
Frank Towers (Edited By)
Frank Towers is a professor of history at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2004) and the co- editor of The Old South's Modern Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2011), Confederate Cities (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and Remaking North American Sovereignty (Fordham University Press, 2020).
Content
Introduction: The United States Civil War Era and
Sovereignty on the North American Continent
Brian Schoen and Frank Towers 1
1 Fugitive Slaves, Free Soil, and the Contest over Sovereignty
in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1821-1867
Alice L. Baumgartner 19
2 Inveterate Imperialists: Contested Imperialisms, North American
History, and the Coming of the U.S. Civil War
John Craig Hammond 36
3 Walker to Riel: State Consolidation on the Margins of Empire
Amy S. Greenberg 65
4 Reform Wars, Royal Visits, and U.S. Views of Popular Sovereignty in 1860
Brian Schoen 85
5 "The Pirates and Their Abettors in This Province":
Sovereignty, Violence, and Confederate Operations in Britain's Atlantic Colonies, 1863-1865
Beau Cleland 119
6 "A Long-Cherished Plan": Detroit and the U.S. Annexation of Canada
during the Nineteenth Century
John W. Quist 152
7 From Memphis to Mexico: The U.S. Army's Assertion of Sovereignty during Reconstruction
Andrew L. Slap 174
8 "Hold the Fort": Securing the Soldiers' State in Nineteenth-Century America
Susan-Mary Grant 189
Conclusion: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century North America
Brian Schoen and Frank Towers 221
Acknowledgments 229
List of Contributors 231
Index 233
Sovereignty on the North American Continent
Brian Schoen and Frank Towers 1
1 Fugitive Slaves, Free Soil, and the Contest over Sovereignty
in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1821-1867
Alice L. Baumgartner 19
2 Inveterate Imperialists: Contested Imperialisms, North American
History, and the Coming of the U.S. Civil War
John Craig Hammond 36
3 Walker to Riel: State Consolidation on the Margins of Empire
Amy S. Greenberg 65
4 Reform Wars, Royal Visits, and U.S. Views of Popular Sovereignty in 1860
Brian Schoen 85
5 "The Pirates and Their Abettors in This Province":
Sovereignty, Violence, and Confederate Operations in Britain's Atlantic Colonies, 1863-1865
Beau Cleland 119
6 "A Long-Cherished Plan": Detroit and the U.S. Annexation of Canada
during the Nineteenth Century
John W. Quist 152
7 From Memphis to Mexico: The U.S. Army's Assertion of Sovereignty during Reconstruction
Andrew L. Slap 174
8 "Hold the Fort": Securing the Soldiers' State in Nineteenth-Century America
Susan-Mary Grant 189
Conclusion: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century North America
Brian Schoen and Frank Towers 221
Acknowledgments 229
List of Contributors 231
Index 233