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Upcoming Book Series Looking for Submissions
By Samuel P. Wheeler | April 2, 2009
Legal History of the Civil War Era
~From the Mexican War to Jim Crow~
A Series of Books Published by Southern Illinois University Press
Edited by Christian G. Samito
Abraham Lincoln identified a “new birth of freedom” during the Civil War era, when the government and people of the United States undertook the most comprehensive reconsideration of legal and political issues since the constitutional convention in 1787. Americans confronted the countours of governmental power and considered the boundaries of civil liberties during wartime. Legislation fueled national development, nationalized the monetary and banking system, and promoted both the coercive power of government, through taxation and conscription, and its role in taking care of citizens, though the provision of pensions for Civil War veterans. Wartime experiences, and the triumph of unionism on the battlefield, allowed for the creation of a stronger nation-state. Millions of Africans Americans marched out of bondage into inclusion in a newly defined national citizenship, called for an enduring freedom, and began to enjoy civil and political rights for the time. At the same time, a racist counter-revolution in the South sought to tamp out this new enjoyment of citizenship rights by African Americans, as well as to intimidate white Republican governments.
This exciting new series from Southern Illinois University Press is the first to focus on the rich legal history of the period from the Mexican War to Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow. The series will explore legal history from different angles, ranging from presidential leadership to legislative mandates, and from judicial interpretation to the impact society had on legal development, and how law, society, and politics mixed during this period to shape American legal development. Broad topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:
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Slavery
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Abolitionism
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The Republican Party
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Civil Liberties During Wartime
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War Powers
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Economic Development and Modernization
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The Expansion of the Federal Government
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Confederate Legal History
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The Redefinition of American Citizenship
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Changes in Legal Thought and Education
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Suffrage Movements
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Race Relations
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Native Americans
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African Americans and the Union Military
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Rights Developments During Reconstruction
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The Rise of Jim Crow
Books in the series will be written with a high scholarly caliber and will also be accessible to an interested non-academic audience. In addition to making significant contributions to historiography, these volumes will be important and relevant, often covering topics bearing on issues that continue to be debated today. The primary audience for this series consists of professional historians, political scientists, law professors, and practicing attorneys, as well as students in undergraduate, graduate, and law school classes. The wider audience fascinated by the Civil War era and its legacy—and increasingly interested in the history of American legal development—will find these books particularly appealing as well. Although the majority of the books will be overviews and monographs, themed essay compilations and selected edited collections of papers from important legal thinkers will be welcome in the series. Ideally, books in the series will be up to 95,000 words in length and may include as many as twenty graphic images.
About the Series Editor:
Christian Samito obtained his law degree from Harvard Law School and his Ph.D. in American history from Boston College. Samito is currently teaching a seminar on the legal history of the Civil War and Reconstruction at Boston University School of Law and a course on the Civil War and Reconstruction at Boston College through its history department. Samito’s book Changes in Law and Society During the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Legal History Documentary Reader is forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in July 2009, and another book, Becoming American Under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship during the Civil War Era, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press in November 2009. Samito edited two collections of Civil War letters, published by Fordham University Press in 1998 and 2004. He also practices law in Boston and can be reached at CGS1865@aol.com.
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