Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. ix, 228 pages; 25 cm

Summary

1. "In the Civil War, the United States and the Confederate States of America engaged in combat to defend distinct legal regimes and the social order they embodied and protected. Depending on which side has an argument that one accepted, the Constitution either demanded the Union's continuance or allowed for its dissolution. After the war began, rival legal concepts of insurrection (a civil war within a nation) and belligerency (war between sovereign enemies) vied for adherents in federal and Confederate councils. In a "nation of laws," such martial legalism was not surprising. Moreover, many of the political leaders of both the North and the South were lawyers themselves, including Abraham Lincoln. These lawyers now found themselves at the center of this violent maelstrom. For these men, as for their countrymen in the years following the conflict, the sacrifices of the war gave legitimacy to new kinds of laws defining citizenship and civil rights. Uncivil Warriors focuses on these lawyers' civil war: the legal professionals who plotted the course of the war from seats of power, the scenes of battle, and the home front. Both sides in the Civil War had their complement of lawyers, and eminent legal historian Peter Hoffer, provides coverage of both sides' leading lawyers. In positions of leadership, they struggled to make sense of the conflict and, in the course of that struggle, they began to glimpse into a new world of law. It was a law that empowered as well as limited government, a law that conferred personal dignity and rights on those who, at the war's beginning, could claim neither in law. Comprehensive in coverage, Uncivil Warriors focus on the legal side of America's worst conflict will reshape our understanding of the Civil War itself."--

Subject

1. American Civil War (1861-1865)
2. Reconstruction (United States : 1865-1877)
3. 1800-1899
4. War and emergency powers > United States > History > 19th century
5. Secession > Southern States > History > 19th century
6. Enslaved persons > Emancipation > History > United States > 19th century
7. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
8. Postwar reconstruction > Law and legislation > History > United States > 19th century
9. HISTORY > United States > Civil War Period (1850-1877)
10. LAW > Legal History
11. HISTORY > General
12. Legislation
13. Postwar reconstruction > Law and legislation
14. Secession
15. Enslaved persons > Emancipation
16. War and emergency powers
17. United States > History > Law and legislation. > Civil War, 1861-1865
18. Southern States
19. United States

Genre/Form

1. History.

Contents

1. Introduction : A Civil War of, by, and for lawyers? -- Prologue : The inseparability of politics and law : The first Lincoln-Douglas Debate -- The contested legality of secession -- A tale of two cabinets and two Congresses -- In re Merryman and its progeny -- Was secession a crime? -- An Emancipation Proclamation -- "A New Birth of Freedom" -- Epilogue : The lawyers' Reconstruction -- Conclusion : The lawyers' Civil War in retrospect.

Call number

1. JFE 18-9190

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-219) and index.

Author

1. Hoffer, Peter Charles, 1944- author.

Title

1. Uncivil warriors : the lawyers' Civil War / Peter Hoffer.

Publisher

1. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

Type of content

1. text

Type of medium

1. unmediated

Type of carrier

1. volume

Bibliography

1. Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-219) and index.

Chronological term

1. 1800-1899

Other form:

1. Online version: Hoffer, Peter Charles, 1944- Uncivil warriors. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018 9780190851774 (DLC) 2017058845 (OCoLC)1019838013

LCCN

1. 2017057901

ISBN

1. 9780190851767 hardcover
2. 0190851767 hardcover

Research call number

1. JFE 18-9190