Among the upcoming events at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia in September are the following:
FORUM: Wednesday, September 4 11:00 a.m.
GILBERT KING, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, on his book, The Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
FORUM: Wednesday, September 11 11:00 a.m.
WILLIAM P. JONES, history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on his new book, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights
HISTORICAL PRESIDENCY LECTURE SERIES:
Wednesday, September 18 5:00 p.m.
Special Location: Nau Hall, Room 101 ( U.Va. Web Map)
GARY GALLAGHER, senior faculty associate at the Miller Center, and JAMES M. MCPHERSON, professor emeritus of history at Princeton, on Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as war presidents.
More information here.
The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century
[We have the following announcement. More here.]
The Miller Center is pleased to announce the 2013–2014 "Historical Presidency" series, “The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century.” Organized by Gary W. Gallagher, renowned U.Va. history professor and Miller Center senior faculty associate, the inaugural season will examine executive leadership during a particularly calamitous period in our nation’s history.
Featuring the most distinguished scholars in their fields, the Miller Center’s “Historical Presidency” series will reach back into the American past in order to gain perspective on the way that presidential leadership has evolved over time, from the founding of the country to the present.
“Lincoln and Davis: War Presidents”
A Conversation with James McPherson and Gary Gallagher
September 18, 5:00 p.m., Nau Hall 101
GARY W. GALLAGHER is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. JAMES M. MCPHERSON is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
“James Knox Polk and the War with Mexico”
October 16, 3:30 p.m.
DANIEL WALKER HOWE is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA.
“Andrew Jackson and the Troubled Birth of Democracy”
November 8, 3:30 p.m.
HENRY WILLIAM BRANDS is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Sink Hole: How Kansas Crises Undid the Presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan”
February 26, 3:30 p.m.
MICHAEL F. HOLT is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Virginia.
“U.S. Grant and the Crisis of Reconstruction”
March 19, 3:30 p.m.
JOAN WAUGH is professor in the UCLA History Department.
“James Madison and the Brink of National Ruin”
April 16, 3:30 p.m.
ALAN TAYLOR is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia.
The Miller Center is pleased to announce the 2013–2014 "Historical Presidency" series, “The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century.” Organized by Gary W. Gallagher, renowned U.Va. history professor and Miller Center senior faculty associate, the inaugural season will examine executive leadership during a particularly calamitous period in our nation’s history.
Featuring the most distinguished scholars in their fields, the Miller Center’s “Historical Presidency” series will reach back into the American past in order to gain perspective on the way that presidential leadership has evolved over time, from the founding of the country to the present.
“Lincoln and Davis: War Presidents”
A Conversation with James McPherson and Gary Gallagher
September 18, 5:00 p.m., Nau Hall 101
GARY W. GALLAGHER is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. JAMES M. MCPHERSON is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.
“James Knox Polk and the War with Mexico”
October 16, 3:30 p.m.
DANIEL WALKER HOWE is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA.
“Andrew Jackson and the Troubled Birth of Democracy”
November 8, 3:30 p.m.
HENRY WILLIAM BRANDS is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Sink Hole: How Kansas Crises Undid the Presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan”
February 26, 3:30 p.m.
MICHAEL F. HOLT is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Virginia.
“U.S. Grant and the Crisis of Reconstruction”
March 19, 3:30 p.m.
JOAN WAUGH is professor in the UCLA History Department.
“James Madison and the Brink of National Ruin”
April 16, 3:30 p.m.
ALAN TAYLOR is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia.
Brinkley on FDR at the Roosevelt Library
[We have the following announcement.]
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is pleased to present "Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Renewal of America," a lecture and book signing with Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University, Historian for CBS News, and author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. The program will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 2013 in the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home. Following the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will be available for a book signing and several of his books will be available for sale in the New Deal Store. Attendees can visit the Library's new permanent exhibition until 10:00 p.m. -- free of charge -- after the program. This event is free and open to the public.
During the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will discuss Franklin D. Roosevelt and New Deal conservation, with an emphasis on FDR's creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). President Roosevelt personally devised the idea for the CCC, a program to put young men aged 17-24 -- many from urban areas -- to work on conservation projects in healthy rural environments. Within three months the Corps enlisted nearly 250,000 young men. They were assigned to CCC camps around the nation.
During its 9-year existence, the CCC employed nearly 3 million men. Eleanor Roosevelt championed the CCC and, with her strong backing, a much smaller program was also created for unemployed young women. The CCC planted more than two billion trees, fought forest fires, built trails, campgrounds, and reservoirs, and aided soil conservation programs. It became one of the New Deal's most popular and successful programs. Its legacy remains today in the facilities it constructed throughout America's national forests, parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is pleased to present "Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Renewal of America," a lecture and book signing with Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University, Historian for CBS News, and author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. The program will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 2013 in the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home. Following the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will be available for a book signing and several of his books will be available for sale in the New Deal Store. Attendees can visit the Library's new permanent exhibition until 10:00 p.m. -- free of charge -- after the program. This event is free and open to the public.
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During the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will discuss Franklin D. Roosevelt and New Deal conservation, with an emphasis on FDR's creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). President Roosevelt personally devised the idea for the CCC, a program to put young men aged 17-24 -- many from urban areas -- to work on conservation projects in healthy rural environments. Within three months the Corps enlisted nearly 250,000 young men. They were assigned to CCC camps around the nation.
During its 9-year existence, the CCC employed nearly 3 million men. Eleanor Roosevelt championed the CCC and, with her strong backing, a much smaller program was also created for unemployed young women. The CCC planted more than two billion trees, fought forest fires, built trails, campgrounds, and reservoirs, and aided soil conservation programs. It became one of the New Deal's most popular and successful programs. Its legacy remains today in the facilities it constructed throughout America's national forests, parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges.
Book Chat: George Washington and the Presidency
Over at New Books in History, Marshall Poe interviews Logan Beirne, an Olin Scholar at Yale Law, on Blood of Tyrants: George Washington and the Forging of the Presidency (Encounter Books, 2013):
You sometimes see bumper stickers that say “What would Jesus do?” It’s a good question, at least for Christians. You don’t see bumper stickers that say “What would Washington do?” But that, Logan Beirne says, is a question Americans should be asking. In Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency (Encounter Books, 2013), Beirne shows that the American presidency was born as much out of the personality of one man–George Washington–as it was out of the political philosophies of the founding fathers. After all, the framers had never seen a presidency before–almost all previous states were led by monarchs, and that was not an option for the new American Republic. So they looked at Washington, what he had done during the Revolutionary War, and modeled the presidency after him. Not surprisingly since Washington was a military man, they got a presidency that was, well, rather martial. Listen in and find out why.
Lamb and Nye on the FHA's Resistance to Truman's Race Policy
Charles M. Lamb and Adam W. Nye, SUNY at Buffalo, Political Science, have posted Do Presidents Control Bureaucracy? The Federal Housing Administration During the Truman-Eisenhower Era, which appears in Political Science Quarterly 127 (2012): 445-467. Here is the abstract:
Charles M. Lamb and Adam W. Nye show how the Federal Housing Administration continued to permit racial segregation in its mortgage insurance program for years after the Truman administration indicated that it must alter that policy. They argue that this case study once again illustrates that presidential control has its limits as bureaucracy successfully defied presidential preferences and continued on a policy trajectory opposed by the president.
Lind's "Lincoln's Suspension of Habeas Corpus"
Douglas Lind, the Law Library Director and Professor of Law at the SIU School of Law,has published Lincoln's Suspension of Habeas Corpus: The Pamphlet Literature and Congressional Debate.
The public debate held via pamphlet literature as a result of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the subsequent Merryman case is often cited in analysis of the modern balance of executive powers in wartime as pertaining to civil rights. The congressional debate produced several failed attempts to authorize a continued wartime suspension of the writ and indemnify the President. This sourcebook contains the text of most of the pamphlets and other fugitive items, arranged chronologically and with an introduction discussing the author’s main points. The work also includes an annotated chronology of all procedural measures associated with the various pieces of legislation from the 37th Congress, with the complete texts of speeches and debates to allow researchers to analyze the competing arguments.The work was recently awarded the Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographic Award by the American Association of Law Libraries. The table of contents is here.
Kahn's "Mrs. Shipley's Ghost"
This week, the University of Michigan Press publishes Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists, by Jeffrey Kahn, Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. The press explains:
“Despite an avalanche of writing about post-9/11 security policies, far too little attention has been paid to the increasingly important world of watchlists and their impact on the ability to travel. Jeff Kahn has filled this gap with a definitive account that deftly blends historical, legal, and policy analysis. And he has done it with real narrative flair. Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost will be required—and thoroughly enjoyable—reading for anyone interested in the intersection of data, security, and liberties.”
—Robert M. Chesney, University of Texas School of Law
A blurb that matters:Today, when a single person can turn an airplane into a guided missile, no one objects to rigorous security before flying. But can the state simply declare some people too dangerous to travel, ever and anywhere? Does the Constitution protect a fundamental right to travel? Should the mode of travel (car, plane, or boat) or itinerary (domestic or international) make a constitutional difference? This book explores the legal and policy questions raised by government travel restrictions, from passports and rubber stamps to computerized terrorist watchlists.
In tracing the history and scope of U.S. travel regulations, Jeffrey Kahn begins with the fascinating story of Mrs. Ruth Shipley, a federal employee who almost single-handedly controlled access to passports during the Cold War. Kahn questions how far national security policies should go and whether the government should be able to declare some individuals simply too dangerous to travel. An expert on constitutional law, Kahn argues that U.S. citizens’ freedom to leave the country and return is a fundamental right, protected by the Constitution.
“Despite an avalanche of writing about post-9/11 security policies, far too little attention has been paid to the increasingly important world of watchlists and their impact on the ability to travel. Jeff Kahn has filled this gap with a definitive account that deftly blends historical, legal, and policy analysis. And he has done it with real narrative flair. Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost will be required—and thoroughly enjoyable—reading for anyone interested in the intersection of data, security, and liberties.”
—Robert M. Chesney, University of Texas School of Law
Finkelman on Lincoln and the Dakota Pardons
Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School, has posted Lincoln the Lawyer, Humanitarian Concerns, and the Dakota Pardons, which is forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review 39 (2013)
Here is the abstract:
Here is the abstract:
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| H.A. Schwabe, The Siege of New Ulm. (Credit) |
In 1862 there was a short war in Minnesota initiated by some members of the Dakota (Sioux) Nation. The Dakota fought against settlers in central Minnesota, and ultimately against the Minnesota militia and U.S. Army elements. After the War was over the Army tried nearly 400 Dakota soldiers by military commissions, and sentence 303 to death. President Lincoln, acting under the militia act of 1862, refused to sign the warrants of execution for 87 percent of those sentenced to die. In the end Lincoln reprieved 265 of the condemned men. The remain 38 were eventually hanged. This even was both the largest mass hanging in American history and also the largest mass pardon of my people sentenced to death. This article – the lead article in a symposium on the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 – explores the route Lincoln took to pardoning the vast majority of those convicted. It also explores the fairness –actually the utter unfairness – of these sham “trials” before the military commissions that often lasted no more than ten minutes.
