Edward Stanly: Whiggerys Tarheel Conquer

Raised under the “Ancient Standard of Federalism,” Edward Stanly was a southern nationalist during a time of popular nullification and secession doctrines. Edward Stanly: Whiggery’s Tarheel Conqueror is an unprecedented biography of Stanly’s life, and recounts his fiery and controversial emergence in the Whig Party of North Carolina in the 1930s, his role as a champion of Whiggery in the United States House of Representatives 1837-1843 and 1849-1853, his candidacy for governor of California in 1857, his appointment by President Abraham Lincoln as a military governor of North Carolina in 1862, and his support of President Anrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy. Brown’s writing effectively illuminates several important historical aspects of Stanly’s lifetime, including the debates over secession and nullification that preceded the American Civil War, the war itself, and Reconstruction.