Fergus M Bordewich
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"The story of how Congress helped win the Civil War -- a new perspective that puts the House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict. This [...] new perspective on the Civil War overturns the popular conception that Abraham Lincoln single-handedly led the Union to victory and gives us a vivid account of the essential role Congress played in winning the war. Building a riveting narrative around four influential members of Congress--Thaddeus...
3) Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement
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“Well written, moving . . . stimulating,” this account of racially unified abolitionism “could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation” (New York Times).
The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and
4) America's great debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the compromise that preserved the Union
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The spellbinding story behind the longest debate in U.S. Senate history: the Compromise of 1850, which brought together Senate luminaries on the eve of the Civil War in a desperate effort to save the Union.
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The little known story of perhaps the most productive Congress in US history, the First Federal Congress of 1789-1791. The First Congress was the most important in US history, says author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed-as many at the time feared it would-its possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today. The Constitution was a broad set of principles....
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Washington, D.C., is home to the most influential power brokers in the world. But how did we come to call D.C.-a place one contemporary observer called a mere swamp "producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs (of enormous size)," a district that was strategically indefensible, captive to the politics of slavery, and a target of unbridled land speculation-our nation's capital?...
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A memoir in which the author recalls his youth and the guilt he suffered after his mother, attempting to jump off a runaway horse, fell under the galloping hooves of the horse he was riding and was killed; and tells of his attempts as an adult to come to terms with his loss and reaffirm her place in his heart.