Search results for ""Author John Bicknell""
Chicago Review Press Lincoln's Pathfinder: John C. Fremont and the Violent Election of 1856
The 1856 presidential race was the most violent peacetime election in American history. War between proslavery and antislavery settlers raged in Kansas; a congressman shot an Irish immigrant at a Washington hotel; and another congressman beat a US senator senseless on the floor of the Senate. But amid all the violence, the campaign of the new Republican Party, headed by famed explorer John C. FrÉmont, offered a ray of hope: a major party dedicated to limiting the spread of slavery. For the first time, women and African Americans actively engaged in a presidential contest, and the candidate’s wife, Jessie Benton FrÉmont, played a central role in both planning and executing strategy, and was a public face of the campaign. Even enslaved blacks in the South took hope from FrÉmont’s crusade.The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. FrÉmont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln’s victory four years later.
£23.95
Chicago Review Press America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed a Nation
The presidential election of 1844 was one of the two or three most momentous elections in American history. Had Henry Clay won instead of James K. Polk, we'd be living in a very different country today. It cemented the westward expansion that brought Texas, California, and Oregon into the union. It also took place amid religious turmoil that included anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic violence, and the "Great Disappointment" in which thousands of followers of an obscure preacher named William Miller believed Christ would return to Earth in October 1844. Author and journalist John Bicknell details even more compelling, interwoven events that occurred during this momentous year—the murder of Joseph Smith, the religious fermentation of the Second Great Awakening, John C. FrÉmont's exploration of the West, Charles Goodyear's patenting of vulcanized rubber, the near-death of President John Tyler in a freak naval explosion, and much more. All of these elements illustrate the competing visions of the American future—Democrats v. Whigs, Mormons v. Millerites, nativists v. Catholics, those who risked the venture westward and those who stayed safely behind—and how Polk's victory cemented the vision of a continental nation.
£14.95
