Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing & the Shattering of the Union

Couverture
Kent State University Press, 2005 - 482 pages

One of the most colorful, controversial, and misunderstood public figures of the 19th century

"The most hated man in New England,"as critics dubbed him on the eve of the Civil War, Caleb Cushing, brash and controversial, was perhaps the last of 19th-century America's renaissance figures. Poet and politician, essayist and diplomat, general and lawyer, this multidimensional scion of a Newburyport, Massachusetts, mercantile family moved in and out of positions of power and influence for more than fifty years.

First as a spokesman for the Whig and then the Democratic Parties, Cushing served in Congress, as the minister to China, as a general in the Mexican War, as U.S. attorney general, and as a legal adviser and diplomatic operative for Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant. With an unharnessed mind and probing intellect, Cushing inspired and infuriated contemporaries with his strident views on such topics as race relations and gender roles, national expansion and the legitimacy of secession. While his positions generated arguments and garnered enemies, his views often mirrored those of many Americans. His abilities and talents sustained him in public service and made him one of the most outstanding and fascinating figures of the era.

Biographer John Belohlavek delivers a work of importance and originality to specialists in the areas of mid-nineteenth-century political, legal, and diplomatic history as well as to those interested in New England history, antebellum gender relations, civil-military relations, and Mexican War studies.

À l'intérieur du livre

Table des matières

The View from High Street 18001826
1
Foreign Adventures and Congressional Ventures 18271834
25
Whig Star Rising The Politics of Antislavery 18351837
57
Battling the British Lion and the American Fox 18371840
88
Tyler and the Corporals Guard 18411843
114
The Road to China 18431844
150
The Warrior of Manifest Destiny 18451848
181
The Doughface Democrat 18481853
210
The Most Unpopular Man in New England 18571861
283
From Massachusetts Exile to Washington Insider 18611869
316
The Diplomat Reemerges 18691879
342
Conclusions
369
Notes
384
Bibliography
459
Index
473
Droits d'auteur

The Power Broker Attorney General 18531857
242

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À propos de l'auteur (2005)

John M. Belohlavek is a professor of history at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His previous publications include Divided We Fall: Essays on the Problems of Confederate Nationalism of Confederate Nationalism (1991) and Let the Eagle Soar: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson Jackson (1985).

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