Between extremes : seeking the political center in the Civil War North /

"Between 1861 and 1865, northern voters fortified Abraham Lincoln's administration as it oversaw the end of the institution of slavery and an unprecedented expansion in the size and scope of the federal government. Since the United States never considered suspending the democratic process...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Furniss, Jack (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2024]
Series:Conflicting worlds.
Subjects:
Description
Summary:"Between 1861 and 1865, northern voters fortified Abraham Lincoln's administration as it oversaw the end of the institution of slavery and an unprecedented expansion in the size and scope of the federal government. Since the United States never considered suspending the democratic process during the Civil War, these revolutionary developments--indeed the entire war effort--depended on ballots as much as bullets. Why did civilians who, at the start of the conflict, had not anticipated or desired these transformations to their society nonetheless vote to uphold them? Jack Furniss's Between Extremes proposes an answer to this question by revealing a potent strand of centrist politics that took hold across the Union and provided the conservative rationales that allowed most northerners to accept the war's radical outcomes"--
Physical Description:xiii, 321 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9780807182185
0807182184