United States

(Social and intellectual developments): Lightly documented but brilliantly insightful is Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vol. (1835; originally published in French, 1835), available in many later editions. Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (1973), challenges Tocqueville’s version of equality in Jacksonian America. Other useful treatments are William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, The Web of Progress: Private Values and Public Styles in Boston and Charleston, 1828–1843 (1985); and Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1976); Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820–1860 (1975); Martin Duberman (ed.), The Antislavery Vanguard (1965); and David Brion Davis (comp.), Ante-Bellum Reform (1967).

(Jacksonian politics): Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945, reissued 1953), is an influential study that stimulated a great array of refutations of its pro-Jackson interpretation, including Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America, new ed. (1978, reprinted 1985). A stimulating if not always convincing comparison of Jacksonian and earlier America is Robert H. Wiebe, The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (1984). Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System (1966, reissued 1973), is an influential study. Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (1975), is brilliant, original, and controversial. John M. Belohlavek, Let the Eagle Soar!: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson (1985), fills a void in the Jacksonian literature.

(Expansionism): Bernard De Voto, The Year of Decision, 1846 (1942, reissued 1989); and K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (1974), are scholarly treatments. Edward Pessen

The Civil War

Syntheses of modern scholarship are James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire (1982); and J.G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, 2nd ed. rev. (1969). Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 8 vol. (1947–71), provides a comprehensive history. Clement Eaton, A History of the Old South, 3rd ed. (1975, reissued 1988), is a general history of the region. Full, critical assessments of slavery are provided by Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956, reprinted 1978); and the study on slavery by Genovese, cited in the section covering 1816 to 1850. A perceptive account of the political conflicts of the late 1850s is Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (1948, reissued 1967); while Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (1978), offers an analysis of the constitutional issues. Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party (1983), discusses the strong partisan attachments of ordinary citizens. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), is an engrossing narrative history of the Civil War. Comprehensive coverage of the Confederate military effort in the East is Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, a Study in Command, 3 vol. (1942–44, reissued 1970–72); while Warren W. Hassler, Jr., Commanders of the Army of the Potomac (1962, reprinted 1979), does the same for the Federals. Studies of the war in the Mississippi valley include Thomas L. Connelly, Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861–1862 (1967), and Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (1971). An examination of the Gettysburg battle is Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968, reissued 1984). Virgil Carrington Jones, The Civil War at Sea, 3 vol. (1960–62), describes the naval war. David Herbert Donald Warren W. Hassler

Reconstruction