"American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War is a comprehensive history of mob violence related to sectional issues in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions from authorities. In the South, riots against suspected abolitionists and slave insurrectionists were widely tolerated as a means of quelling anti-slavery sentiment. In the North, both pro-slavery riots attacking abolitionists and anti-slavery riots in support of fugitive slaves provoked reluctant but often effective riot suppression. Hundreds died in riots in both regions, but in the North, most deaths were caused by authorities, while in the South more than 90 percent of deaths were caused by the mobs themselves.". "These two divergent systems of violence led to two distinct public responses. In the South, widespread rioting quelled public and private questioning of slavery; in the North, the milder, more controlled riots generally encouraged sympathy for the anti-slavery movement. Grimsted demonstrates that in these two distinct reactions to mob violence lay major sources of the social split that infiltrated politics and political rioting and that ultimately led to the Civil War."--BOOK JACKET.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreAmerican Mobbing, 1828-1861 Lead Character
"Obscured from our view of slaves and masters in America is a critical third party: the state, with its coercive power. This book completes the grim picture of slavery by showing us the origins, the nature, and the extent of slave patrols in Virginia and the Carolinas from the late seventeenth century through the end of the Civil War. Here we see how the patrols, formed by county courts and state militias, were the closest enforcers of codes of governing slaves throughout the South.". "Mining a variety of sources, Sally Hadden presents the views of both patrollers and slaves as she depicts the patrols, composed of "respectable" members of society as well as poor whites, often mounted and armed with whips and guns, exerting a brutal and archaic brand of racial control inextricably linked to post-Civil War vigilantism and the Ku Klux Klan. City councils also used patrollers before the war, and police forces afterward, to impose their version of race relations across the South, making the entire region, not just plantations, an armed camp where slave workers were controlled through terror and brutality."--BOOK JACKET.
The book examines the major issues in South Africa's history, from the colonial conquest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the establishment of racism, segregation and apartheid, to the spirit of reform, resistance and repression of the 1980s and, now, in this new edition, the first democratic elections in April 1994. With the break up of institutional apartheid, perspectives on recent South African history have undergone a significant shift. Nigel Worden examines these changes and assesses developments within the new South Africa in a wide historical context, providing a sharp, analytical overview for all those interested in modern South African history and politics.
"Historically, most black voters in the United States have aligned themselves with one of the two major parties: the Republican Party from the time of the Civil War to the New Deal and, since the New Deal - and especially since the height of the modern civil rights movement - the Democratic Party. However, as In the Balance of Power convincingly demonstrates, African Americans have long been part of independent political movements and have used third parties to advance some of the most important changes in the United States, notably the abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights, and the enforcement of civil rights." "In the Balance of Power presents a history and analysis of African American third-party movements that can help us better understand the growing diversity among black voters today."--Jacket.
New Orleans, home of the great American blowout bash - Mardi Gras - is the exotic city on the Bayou that thumbs its nose at the conservative spirit of the rest of the South. And Mardi Gras, that wild, uninhibited, frenzied festival of multiculturalism, music, sex, and the outer limits of debauchery, is the city's annual and legendary celebration of itself. But what really lies behind the masks and myths of a "pagan" festival older than baseball but less purely American than any other celebration? Despite all the glamour and popularity of Mardi Gras, few people know the real New Orleans - a city that is still socially stratified, racially divided, constrained by secrets. A city whose shocking double life was tragically exposed when national headlines publicized a proposal to desegregate the krewes, the quasi-cabalistic organizations that control the carnival and much of the town. Carol Flake returned to New Orleans, after more than a decade away, to chronicle a season of Carnival, to write about the paradox of an enduring rite in a crumbling city. Following the participants as they prepared for the parades and balls that make up the gala season, she found herself on a journey into a unique form of culture where ordinary standards of taste and behavior simply don't apply. She moved from subculture to subculture, from white uptown parlors and high society enclaves to French Quarter retreats, black jazz bars, and gay drag shows. She joined an all-women krewe for a float ride down Canal Street and dressed as a dancing girl in the satirical parade of the Krewe de Vieux. She visited the secret dens of elite traditional clubs and attended the open meetings of an embattled city council . Carnival, for all its rituals and disguises, mirrors New Orleans society, with its peculiar social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tradition, its madcap diversity, its partiality to drama and spectacle. The controversy surrounding Carnival is a war over the heart and soul of the city, over the dwindling base of power and money. New Orleans has succumbed to the same troubles that are tearing apart other American cities. In revealing the political, social, and cultural realities behind the grand illusions, Carol Flake has also discovered the common threads that just might bring the city back together. An intimate, surprising, sometimes shocking portrait of a great American city and a timely look at a unique part of the New South, New Orleans is destined to become a classic.
American Mobbing, 1828-1861 by David Grimsted | Literally Just Books
