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Spanning some fifty-four years, The Union on Trial is a fascinating look at the journals that William Barclay Napton (1808-1883), an editor, Missouri lawyer, and state supreme court judge, kept from his time as a student at Princeton to his death in Missouri. Although a northerner by birth, Napton, the owner or trustee of forty-six slaves, viewed American society through a decidedly proslavery lens. Focusing on events between the 1850s and 1870s, especially those associated with the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Union on Trial contains Napton's political reflections, offering thoughtful and important perspectives of an educated northern-cum-southern rightist on the key issues that turned Missouri toward the South during the Civil War era. Although Napton's journals offer provocative insights into the process of southernization on the border, their real value lies in their author's often penetrating analysis of the political, legal, and constitutional revolution that the Civil War generated. Yet the most obvious theme that emerges from Napton's journals is the centrality of slavery in Missourians' measure of themselves and the nation and, ultimately, in how border states constructed their southernness out of the tumultuous events of the era. Napton's impressions of the constitutional crises surrounding the Civil War and Reconstruction offer essential arguments with which to consider the magnitude of the nation's most transforming conflict. The book also provides a revealing look at the often intensely political nature of jurists in nineteenth-century America. A lengthy introduction contextualizes Napton's life and beliefs, assessing his transition from northerner to southerner largely as a product of his political transformation to a proslavery, states' rights Democrat but also as a result of his marriage into a slaveholding family. Napton's tragic Civil War experience was a watershed in his southern evolution, a process that mirrored his state's transformation and one that, by way of memory and politics, ultimately defined both. Students and scholars of American history, Missouri history, and the Civil War will find this volume indispensable reading.
Which was the last country to abolish slavery? Which is the only amendment to the U.S. Constitution ever to be repealed? How did King Henry II of England provide a procedural blueprint for criminal law? These are just a few of the thought-provoking questions addressed in this beautifully illustrated book. Join author Michael H. Roffer as he explores 250 of the most fundamental, far-reaching, and often-controversial cases, laws, and trials that have profoundly changed our world—for good or bad. Offering authoritative context to ancient documents as well as today’s hot-button issues, The Law Book presents a comprehensive look at the rules by which we live our lives. It covers such diverse topics as the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, the Trial of Socrates, the Bill of Rights, women’s suffrage, the insanity defense, and more. Roffer takes us around the globe to ancient Rome and medieval England before transporting us forward to contemporary accounts that tackle everything from civil rights, surrogacy, and assisted suicide to the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Google Books, and the fight for marriage equality. Organized chronologically, the entries each consist of a short essay and a stunning full-color image, while the “Notes and Further Reading” section provides resources for more in-depth study. Justice may be blind, but this collection brings the rich history of the law to light.
This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.
Anthony Comstock was America’s first professional censor. From 1873 to 1915, as Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Comstock led a crusade against lasciviousness, salaciousness, and obscenity that resulted in the confiscation and incineration of more than three million pictures, postcards, and books he judged to be obscene. But as Amy Werbel shows in this rich cultural and social history, Comstock’s campaign to rid America of vice in fact led to greater acceptance of the materials he deemed objectionable, offering a revealing tale about the unintended consequences of censorship. In Lust on Trial, Werbel presents a colorful journey through Comstock’s career that doubles as a new history of post–Civil War America’s risqué visual and sexual culture. Born into a puritanical New England community, Anthony Comstock moved to New York in 1868 armed with his Christian faith and a burning desire to rid the city of vice. Werbel describes how Comstock’s raids shaped New York City and American culture through his obsession with the prevention of lust by means of censorship, and how his restrictions provided an impetus for the increased circulation and explicitness of “obscene” materials. By opposing women who preached sexual liberation and empowerment, suppressing contraceptives, and restricting artistic expression, Comstock drew the ire of civil liberties advocates, inspiring more open attitudes toward sexual and creative freedom and more sophisticated legal defenses. Drawing on material culture high and low, including numerous examples of the “obscenities” Comstock seized, Lust on Trial provides fresh insights into Comstock’s actions and motivations, the sexual habits of Americans during his era, and the complicated relationship between law and cultural change.
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