Holman Hamilton – författare

The casual and the serious of American history -- fiddlers, yarn spinners, and riverboat gamblers, politicians, educators, and social reformers -- have all concerned Thomas D. Clark, celebrated historian of the Western frontier and the changing South. Three American Frontiers, a volume of his selected writings, draws from works produced throughout Clark's long career as a writer, teacher, and lecturer on the frontier West, social change in the South, and the cutting-edge of historical research.An avid researcher and a tenacious collector of original materials, Clark looks to the everyday items like the record book of a country store, the file of a small-town newspaper, or the diary of a young Gold Rusher for aids to the analysis of larger trends in history. Holman Hamilton conveys Clark's unique approach to his material and his enthusiasm for the common man in America's past.

The three Kentucky presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson Davis -- were profoundly shaped by their experiences in Kentucky, poised as it was on the border between the North and the South, the East and the Western Frontier. Holman Hamilton asserts that these leaders were personally and politically influenced by their connections to the state. The contrasting traits of western frontiersman and southern aristocrat illuminate Kentucky's heritage and affected Taylor, Lincoln, and Davis, presidents during one of America's most troubled eras. Frontier values influenced Lincoln's and Taylor's views on the major issues of their time: extension of slavery, which they opposed, and preservation of the Union, which they supported. Davis's career reflects Southern values, leading him to favor slavery's extension and the Confederacy.

The crisis facing the United States in 1850 was a dramatic prologue to the conflict that came a decade later. The rapid opening of western lands demanded the speedy establishment of local civil administration for these vast regions. Outraged partisans, however, cried of coercion: Southerners saw a threat to the precarious sectional balance, and Northerners feared an extension of slavery. In this definitive study, Holman Hamilton analyzes the complex events of the anxious months from December, 1849, when the Senate debates began, until September, 1850, when Congress passed the measures.