James L. Huston – författare

Perhaps best known for his debates with Abraham Lincoln and his role in introducing the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen A. Douglas was a central character in the political firestorm that culminated in the American Civil War. In this engaging new biography, James L. Huston explores the life, ideology, and historical importance of America's "Little Giant." Born in 1813, Douglas came of age during the great democratization of American life. This was a time when egalitarianism became the national creed and President Andrew Jackson stood forth as its champion. Huston sets Douglas in this social and political milieu, and examines the unfolding of the principles of democracy in and through his life. Douglas's political career as a state legislator, U.S. Congressman, and ultimately U.S. Senator from Illinois placed him at the center of the struggle over the meaning of democracy and equality at both the state and national level. The renown that his debates of 1858 with Lincoln of the Republican Party garnered is but an emblem of the status that Douglas had as a leader of the Democratic Party and as the representative of a specific interpretation of the Jacksonian legacy of democratic populism. Huston places Douglas's life within the current historiographical controversies regarding the antebellum period and updates our understanding of the role that Douglas played in the creation of the Illinois Democratic party, the development of the ideals of Manifest Destiny, the struggle over slavery's extension into the West, the meaning of popular sovereignty, and the legitimacy of peaceful secession. Extensively researched and carefully documented, the book guides readers to original archival materials via a detailed bibliography and a section on the sources of Douglas's more famous statements. Huston's impressive work is a novel and lively presentation that shows Douglas to be a figure paradigmatic of the political complexities of the United States during the antebellum era.

In the autumn of 1857, sustained runs on New York banks led to a panic atmosphere that affected the American economy for the next two years. In The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War, James L. Huston presents an exhaustive analysis of the political, social and intellectual repercussions of the Panic and shows how it exacerbated the conflict between North and South.The panic of 1857 initiated a general inquiry between free traders and protectionists into the deficiencies of American economic practices. A key aspect of this debate was the ultimate fate of the American worker, an issue that was given added emphasis by a series of labor demonstrations and strikes. In an attempt to maintain the material welfare of laborers, northerners advocated a program of high tariffs, free western lands, and education. But these proposals elicited the opposition of southerners, who believed that such policies would not serve the needs of the slaves system. Indeed, many people of the period saw the struggle between North and South as an economic one whose outcome would determine whether laborers would be free and well paid or degraded and poor. Politically, the Panic of 1857 resurrected economic issues that had characterized the Whig-Democratic party system prior to the 1850s. Southerners, observing the collapse of northern banks, believed that they could continue to govern the nation by convincing northern propertied interests that sectionalism had to be ended in order to ensure the continued profitability of intersectional trade. In short, they hoped for a marriage between the Yankee capitalist and the southern plantation owner.However, in northen states, the Panic had made the Whig program of high tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements popular with distressed members of the community. The country's old-line Whigs and nativists were particularly affected by the state of economic affairs. When Republicans moved to adopt a portion of the old Whig program, conservatives found the attraction irresistible. By maintaining their new coalition with conservatives and by exploiting the weaknesses of the Buchanan administration, the Republicans managed to capture the presidency in 1860.No other book examines in such detail the political ramifications of the Panic of 1857. By explaining how the economic depression influenced the course of sectional debate, Huston has made an important and much-needed contribution to Civil War historiography.

In his comprehensive study of the economic ideology of the early republic, James L. Huston argues that Americans developed economic attitudes during the Revolutionary period that remained virtually unchanged until the close of the nineteenth century. Viewing Europe's aristocratic system, early Americans believed that the survival of their new republic depended on a fair distribution of wealth, brought about through political and economic equality. The concepts of wealth distribution formulated in the Revolutionary period informed works on nineteenth-century political economy and shaped the ideology of political parties. Huston reveals how these ideas influenced debates over reform, working-class agitation, political participation, territorial expansion, banking, tariffs, slavery, public land disposition, and corporate industrialism. Securing the Fruits of Labor is a masterful study of American beliefs about wealth distribution over one and a half centuries.