In the Civil War, the United States and the Confederate States of America engaged in combat to defend distinct legal regimes and the social order they embodied and protected. Depending on whose side's arguments one accepted, the Constitution either demanded the Union's continuance or allowed for its dissolution. After the war began, rival legal concepts of insurrection (a civil war within a nation) and belligerency (war between sovereign enemies) vied for adherents in federal and Confederate councils. In a "nation of laws," such martial legalism was not surprising. Moreover, many of the political leaders of both the North and the South were lawyers themselves, including Abraham Lincoln. These lawyers now found themselves at the center of this violent maelstrom. For these men, as for their countrymen in the years following the conflict, the sacrifices of the war gave legitimacy to new kinds of laws defining citizenship and civil rights. The eminent legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer's Uncivil Warriors focuses on these lawyers' civil war: on the legal professionals who plotted the course of the war from seats of power, the scenes of battle, and the home front. Both the North and the South had their complement of lawyers, and Hoffer provides coverage of each side's leading lawyers. In positions of leadership, they struggled to make sense of the conflict, and in the course of that struggle, began to glimpse of new world of law. It was a law that empowered as well as limited government, a law that conferred personal dignity and rights on those who, at the war's beginning, could claim neither in law. Comprehensive in coverage, Uncivil Warriors' focus on the central of lawyers and the law in America's worst conflict will transform how we think about the Civil War itself.

Uncivil Warriors: The Lawyers' Civil War

History

Hoffer, Peter

Americas

Oxford University Press

Reading and Writing American History

Houghton Mifflin College Div.

Reading and Writing American History (Vol. 2)

Making America: A History of the United States

BERKIN, Carol

Miller, Christopher L.

Cherny, Robert W.

D.C. Heath & Co.

Revolution and Regeneration: Life Cycle and the Historical Vision of the Generation of 1776

University of Georgia Press

It is a combination reader, manual, and workbook that introduces students at all levels to the skills of the historian. Following the chronological and thematic trajectory of the American history survey course, the authors explore primary and secondary sources, map skills, quantification, biography and a host of other basic historical techniques.

Reading and Writing American History, Volume 2 (4th Edition)

Stueck, William W

Hoffer, William James H

PEARSON/LEARNING SOLUTIONS

This resonant and fascinating book by a renowned historian examines how seven fires shaped the larger course of American history. The Boston fire of 1760 set the stage for the American Revolution. The Pittsburgh fire of 1845 opened the way to larger scale industrial plants. Out of the ashes of the Chicago fire of 1871 came the modern skyscraper, the Haymarket Riots, and the Pullman Strike. The Baltimore fire of 1904 showed how a city's downtown, utterly destroyed, could re-invent itself after a catastrophe. The Detroit fire of 1967 forced politicians to concede what people of Detroit already knew—that racism and racially-based deprivation were not changed by the civil rights movement. The Oakland Hills tragedy demolished a landscape of private privilege and imperiled the dream of leisure living in natural settings. Apart from their domestic and global political implications, the fires of 9/11 have prodded a complacent nation to admit to itself that twentyfirst century emergency services, and the urban lifestyles they protected, have to be thoroughly rethought. Told through gripping narrative chronicles of the catastrophic events, memorable portraits of historic figures, and incisive, thought-provoking analysis, Seven Fires reveals a nation and a people at its best and worst and illustrates how disasters teach lessons that, if we grasp them, can help us better our society.

Seven Fires: The Urban Infernos that Reshaped America

PublicAffairs

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hoffer, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hoffer, Peter