Shearer Davis Bowman – författare

Masters and Lords is an ambitious study that presents a comparative view of large planters in the antebellum American South (1820 - 60) and the Junkers of roughly contemporaneous Prussian East Elbia. The author claims that planters and Junkers were comparable because of structural and function analogies between plantations and Ritterguter (knights' estates) both being autocratic political communities and commercial agricultural enterprises. Starting from the structural similarity of political autocracy and economic acquisitiveness on which both the plantations and Ritterguter were based, Bowman shows just how and why his two landed elites of agrarian capitalists are comparable. He then uses the converging lines of comparison to screen out and set in relief the crucial political and cultural differences that are the keys to explaining the contrasting behaviour of these two elites during the major nineteenth century crises that confronted them - the revolutionay crisis of 1848 - 49 in Germany and the secession crisis of 1860 - 61 in the U.S.

Among the regional landed elites in the Western World of the mid-1800s, the two most formidable were the owners of slave plantations in the Southern states of the U.S. and the proprietors of manorial estates in the provinces of Prussian East Elbia. Masters and Lords surveys the economic, social, and political histories of the two classes from the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, and pays particular attention to planters during the secession crisis of 1860-61 and to Junkers during the revolutionary crisis of 1848-49. In the process, Bowman grapples with such ambiguous and contentious concepts as capitalism, conservatism, and paternalism. Despite very different labor systems, antebellum planters and contemporaneous Junkers alike presided over landed estates that functioned as both autocratic political communities and agricultural enterprises exporting valuable commodities to industrializing England. This book also highlights important geographic, demographic, and political contrasts between the South and East Elbia as regional societies. Bowman concludes that the crucial distinction between the two landed elites is to be found in the Junkers'' militarist and estatist monarchism versus the planters'' libertarian but racist republicanism.

Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860-61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion?At the Precipice seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, Shearer Davis Bowman takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. Bowman also provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted “American” values.

Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860-61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion? At the Precipice seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, Shearer Davis Bowman takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. Bowman also provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted "American" values.

Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860-61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion? At the Precipice seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, Shearer Davis Bowman takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. Bowman also provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted ""American"" values.

Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860-61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion?At the Precipice seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, Shearer Davis Bowman takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. Bowman also provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted “American” values.