University Press of Kansas

The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson

Puritans Divided

Michael P. Winship

Anne Hutchinson was perhaps the most famous Englishwoman in colonial American history, viewed in later centuries as a crusader for religious liberty and a prototypical feminist. Michael Winship, author of the highly acclaimed Making Heretics, provides a startlingly new and fresh account of her oft-told tale, disentangling what really happened from the legends that have misrepresented her for so long.

During the 1630s, religious controversies drove a wedge into the puritan communities of Massachusetts. Anne Hutchinson and other members began to speak out against mainstream doctrine, while ministers like John Cotton argued for personal discovery of salvation. The puritan fathers viewed these activities as a direct and dangerous threat to the status quo and engaged in a fierce and finally successful fight against them. Refusing to disavow her beliefs, Hutchinson was put on trial twice--first for slandering the colony's ministers, then for heresy--and banished from the colony.

Combing archives for neglected manuscripts and ancient books for obscure references, Winship gives new voice to other characters in the drama whose significance has not previously been understood. Here are Thomas Shepard, a militant heresy hunter who vigorously pursued both Cotton and Hutchinson; Thomas Dudley, the most important leader in Massachusetts after Governor John Winthrop; Henry Vane, a well-connected supporter of radical theology; and John Wheelwright, a bellicose minister who was a lightning rod for the frustrations of other dissidents. Winship also analyzes the political struggle that almost destroyed the colony and places Hutchinson's trials within the context of this turmoil.

As Winship shows, although the trials of Anne Hutchinson and her allies were used ostensibly to protect Massachusetts' Christian society, they instead nearly tore it apart. His concise, fast-moving, and up-to-date account brings puritan doctrine back into focus, giving us a much closer and more informed look at a society marked by religious intolerance and immoderation, one that still echoes in our own times. As long as governments take it upon themselves to define orthodoxies of conscience, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson will be required reading for students and concerned citizens alike.

"The single most comprehensive account of the often-misinterpreted trials of one of America's first great dissenters. Winship's unparalleled understanding of seventeenth-century New England Puritanism supplies a context too frequently missing from previous accounts."-- Mary Beth Norton, author of In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

"The prosecution of Anne Hutchinson was a defining movement in early American history. Winship vividly describes dramatic courtroom scenes, powerful personalities driven to the edges of their beliefs, and the relentless hounding of a highly intelligent woman who thought she understood God's will."-- Amanda Porterfield, author of Female Piety in New England: The Emergence of Religious Humanism

MICHAEL P. WINSHIP is professor of history at the University of Georgia and author of Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 and Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment .

May 2005
184 pages, 5-½ x 8-½
Landmark Law Cases and American Society

Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1379-X, $35.00
Paper ISBN 0-7006-1380-3, $14.95
Pursuing the American Dream

Opportunity and Exclusion Over Four Centuries

Cal Jillson

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: these words have long represented the promise of America. Touted by poets, pundits, and politicians, the American Dream is the spark that animates American life, the promise held out to youngsters and immigrants that hard work will result in security and prosperity.

The reality of that Dream, however, has long depended on the circumstances of the dreamer, since many have been effectively barred from pursuing it. In this book Cal Jillson examines America's complex and evolving social land-scape to show the contexts that have shaped the Dream and the patterns of exclusion that have left some dreaming in vain.

Jillson offers the fullest exploration yet of the origins and evolution of the ideal that serves as the foundation of our national ethos and collective self-image. By placing opportunity and aspiration at the center of the American Creed, the Dream has become a force for expanding opportunity. Jillson traces this ideal to its origins and chronicles its progress to the present day. He explores the Dream's changing content and our broadening sense of who has had the right to pursue it, charting a middle course between viewing the Dream as triumphant ideal and false promise.

Marked by continuity, renewal, and expansion, the image of the Dream, Jillson contends, has been remarkably constant since well before the American Revolution--an image of a nation offering a better chance for prosperity than any other. His book reveals how that Dream has motivated our nation's leaders and common citizens to move, sometimes grudgingly, toward a more open, diverse, and genuinely competitive society.

  Pursuing the American Dream not only attests to a lasting vision, it also serves notice to those who govern that our society and economy must remain open to competition and opportunity. Indeed, Jillson reminds us all that it takes action--in the form of policy initiatives focusing on such matters as education, health care, and employment--to ensure that all Americans have a fair chance to compete with their fellow citizens for the good things in life, and to secure the American Dream for future generations.

  "A sweeping, sobering narrative that should have broad appeal."-- Andrew Burstein, author of Sentimental Democracy

CAL JILLSON is professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, where he served as Director of the John G. Tower Center for Political Studies from 1995 to 2001. His previous books include Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination and Choice in the First American Congress, 1774-1789 and   Constitution-Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787.

September 2004
352 pages, 29 photographs, 6-1?8 x 9-1?4
American Political Thought
 Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1342-0, $34.95 (t)

Crucible of American Democracy
The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania

Andrew Shankman

Arguments over what democracy actually meant in practice and how it should be implemented raged throughout the early American republic. As Andrew Shankman shows, nowhere were those ideas more intensely contested or more representative of the national debate than in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Jeffersonians dominated the day.

Pennsylvania Jeffersonians were the first American citizens to attempt to translate idealized speculations about democracy into a workable system of politics and governance. In doing so, they revealed key assumptions that united other national citizens regarding democracy and the conditions necessary for its survival. In particular, they assumed that democracy required economic autonomy and a strong measure of economic as well as political equality among citizens. This strong egalitarian theme was, however, challenged by Pennsylvania’s precociously capitalistic economy and the nation’s dynamic economic development in general, forcing the Jeffersonians to confront the reality that economic and social equality would have to take a back seat to free market forces.

Seeking democracy became a debate about the desirability of capitalism and the precise relations between majority rule and the pursuit and protection of individual rights and interests. From this struggle to fuse egalitarianism and free enterprise in Pennsylvania emerged most subsequent mainstream beliefs concerning the respective roles of democracy and capitalism in American society. In fact, it did much to shape the boundaries of permissible thought in the Jacksonian era concerning political economy and the extent of popular democratic power.

Shankman’s illuminating exploration of the Pennsylvania experience reveals how democracy arose in America, how it came to accommodate capitalism, and at the same time forced egalitarian assumptions and dreams to the margins of society. A resonant work of intellectual and political history, his study also mirrors the aspirations, fears, hatreds, dreams, generous impulses, noble strivings, selfish cant, and enormous capacity to imagine of those who first tried to translate the blueprint for democracy into a tested foundation for the nation’s future.

“A valuable contribution to the literature on the early republic and a timely intervention in our larger, ongoing discussion of the limits and possibilities of American democracy.”--Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
“Shankman has brought the rambunctious politics of Pennsylvania under close examination, revealing the inherent tension in the commingled affirmations of democracy and capitalism in the Early Republic.”--Joyce Appleby, author of Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
“A superb book that sheds fresh and provocative light on a subject of central concern to historians of the early national United States.”--Drew R. McCoy, author of The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America

ANDREW SHANKMAN is assistant professor of history at Northeastern Illinois University of Chicago.

March 2004
312 pages, 6 x 9
American Political Thought
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1304-8, $34.95
Civilian in Peace, Soldier in War
The Army National Guard, 1636–2000

Michael D. Doubler

They were there at Concord Bridge. They shaped the vast volunteer armies of the Civil War. They have fought in America’s major wars around the world. And they made the first military response on 9/11 after the World Trade Center towers crashed in Manhattan.

The National Guard has had a singular place in American history as citizen-soldiers responding both to homeland crises and to the need for fighting power overseas. Michael Doubler now offers the first comprehensive history of the Guard to appear in over thirty years, tracing its role from the days of colonial militias to the dawn of a new millennium. Spanning more than four centuries, he records the Army National Guard’s outstanding accomplishments in peace and war on behalf of both state and federal authorities. Originally published as I Am the Guard by the Government Printing Office and with only limited public distribution, this sweeping history is now available in a paperback edition that (in a new preface) updates the National Guard story up to the events of 9/11.

Beginning with the first regiments formed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Doubler chronicles how American militiamen have transformed themselves from a loose collection of local defense forces into a modern efficient reserve force. After action in the Spanish-American War, the militia era ended in 1903 with the creation of the modern National Guard as the federal reserve of the U.S. Army. In covering the last century, Doubler takes readers from Guard service in both world wars to Cold War duties, the Gulf War, and assignments in the Balkans. He tells of its not always friendly relations with the Regular Army, as well as of those times when Regulars and Guardsmen effectively reinforced each other to get the job done.

The militia and National Guard have always concerned themselves with homeland defense, and as the current administration reviews national security, this book provides an opportunity to reconsider the role of the Army National Guard in America’s latest war. With 2003 marking the modern National Guard’s centennial, Civilian in Peace, Soldier in War offers a virtual primer on the military policy of the United States, showing us that citizen-soldiers have played a vital role in struggles against imperialism, fascism, and communism—and assuring us that they will be ready for the war on terrorism as well.“A solid, balanced, and readable history [that] will be the standard work on the Army National Guard for a generation.”--Journal of Military History

“Provides a broad, comprehensive view of the accomplishments of these citizen-soldiers. An informative, entertaining, and educational account of the Army National Guard’s history. May it inspire all of us to exceed the high standards of our proud heritage and to face with confidence the clear and present dangers that now confront America and the certain challenges that lie ahead in the twenty-first century.”--Lieutenant General Roger C. Schultz, Director, Army National Guard

MICHAEL D. DOUBLER served for twenty-three years as a Regular Army and full-time Army National Guard officer and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Guard Education Foundation. He is the author of Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944–1945 and is a frequent commentator on The History Channel.

February 2003
488 pages, 70 photographs, 6 x 9-1/4
Modern War Studies
Paper ISBN 0-7006-1249-1, $17.95

The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741
Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law

Peter Charles Hoffer

SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB

Three and a half decades before the city of New York witnessed the first great battle waged by the new United States of America for its independence, rumors of a massive conspiracy among the city’s slaves spread panic throughout the colony. On the testimony of frightened bondsmen and a handful of whites, over seventy slaves were convicted and a third of these were executed.

The suspected conspiracy in New York prompted one of the most extensive slave trials in colonial history and some of the most grisly punishments ever meted out to individuals. Peter Hoffer now retells the dramatic story of those landmark trials, setting the events in their legal and historical contexts and offering a revealing glimpse of slavery in colonial cities and of the way that the law defined and policed the institution.

Among other things, Hoffer reveals how conspiracy became a central feature of the law of slavery at the same time as it reflected the white belief that slaves were always conspiring against their masters. He draws on uniquely revealing firsthand accounts of the trials to both retell a gripping story and open a window on colonial American justice. He leads readers through a chain of events involving robbery and arson that culminated in the trials of a group of white men suspected of inciting the slaves to revolt.

The episode, so vital to our understanding of a time when slavery was an entrenched institution and the law made even the angry muttering of slaves into a criminal act, has much to tell us about current affairs as well. African slaves in colonial times were viewed by authorities and citizens much as some foreigners are today: inherently dangerous, easily identifiable, and constantly conspiring.

“Did slaves and poor whites conspire to destroy New York in the summer of 1741? If you thought the case is closed, think again. Hoffer’s meticulous reconsideration of the record builds convincingly toward a conclusion that is both sensible and original. A landmark study by one of our top legal historians.”--Edwin G. Burrows, coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

“With sensitivity to deadly conspiracy heightened by 9/11, Hoffer deftly wraps the events of 1741 in a context packed with the tension of producing swift and sensible justice in a society bedeviled by racial and religious bigotry and by unreliable rules of evidence and procedure. . . . Provides teachers, students, and general readers quick entry to still troubling issues in American history.”--Thomas J. Davis, author of A Rumor of Revolt: The “Great Negro Plot” in Colonial New York

PETER CHARLES HOFFER is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia and coeditor of the series Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Among his other books are The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History, The Law’s Conscience: Constitutionalism in America, and Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History, coauthored with N. E. H. Hull.

June 2003
200 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2
Landmark Law Cases and American Society
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1245-9, $29.95
Paper ISBN 0-7006-1246-7, $14.95
©2000 University Press of Kansas
Peace Pact
The Lost World of the American Founding

David C. Hendrickson

SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB

That New England might invade Virginia is inconceivable today. But interstate rivalries and the possibility of intersectional war loomed large in the thinking of the Framers who convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to put on paper the ideas that would bind the federal union together.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin rejoiced that the document would “astonish our enemies, who are waiting to hear with confidence . . . that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.”

Usually dismissed as hyperbole, this and similar remarks by other Founders help us to understand the core concerns that shaped their conception of the Union. By reexamining the creation of the federal system of the United States from a perspective that yokes diplomacy with constitutionalism, Hendrickson’s study introduces a new way to think about what is familiar to us.

This groundbreaking book tells the story of how thirteen colonies became independent states and found themselves grappling with the classic problems of international cooperation. The founding generation, Hendrickson argues, developed a sophisticated science of international politics relevant both to the construction of their own union and to the foreign relations of “the several states in the union of the empire.” The centrality of this discourse, he contends, must severely qualify conventional depictions of early American political thought as simply “liberal” or “republican.”

Hendrickson also takes issue with conventional accounts of early American foreign policy as “unilateralist” or “isolationist” and insists that the founding generation belonged to and made distinguished contributions to the constitutional tradition in diplomacy, the antecedent of twentieth-century internationalism. He describes an American system of states riven by deep sectional animosities and powerful loyalties and explains why in such a milieu the creation of a durable union often appeared to be a quixotic enterprise. The book culminates in a consideration of the making of the federal Constitution, here styled as a peace pact or experiment in international cooperation.

Peace Pact is an important book that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the era of revolution and constitution-making. Written in a lucid and accessible style, the book is an excellent introduction to the American founding and its larger significance in American and world history.

“An extraordinary achievement, a wonderful book that should change the way readers understand the origins of the federal republic. Few scholars have grasped as well as Hendrickson the importance of federalism for the founding and explained its centrality so persuasively. This will, I am convinced, initiate an important paradigm shift in the field.”--Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

“Hendrickson’s magnificent study convincingly demonstrates why the origins of the United States should be viewed from a diplomatic as well as a constitutional angle and therefore seen as a ‘peace pact’ that is comparable to the great peace settlements of European history. This is a very important contribution to both international studies and American history.”--Robert Jackson, author of The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States

DAVID C. HENDRICKSON is professor of political science at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He is the coauthor of Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson and The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the War of American Independence.

April 2003
376 pages, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
American Political Thought
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1237-8, $29.95
The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777–1778

Stephen R. Taaffe

SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB

American fortunes were at a low point in the winter of 1777–78. The British had beaten the Continental Army at Brandywine and Germantown, seized the colonial capital of Philadelphia, and driven Washington’s soldiers into barren Valley Forge. But, as Stephen Taaffe reveals, the Philadelphia Campaign marked a turning point in the American Revolution despite these setbacks.

Occurring in the middle of the war in the heart of the colonies, this key but overlooked campaign dwarfed all others in the war in terms of numbers of combatants involved, battles fought, and casualties sustained. For the first time, British and American armies engaged out in the open on relatively equal terms. Although the British won all the major battles, they were unable to crush the rebellion.

Taaffe presents a new narrative history of this campaign that took place not only in the hills and woods surrounding Philadelphia, but also in east central New Jersey and along the Delaware River. He uses the campaign to analyze British and American strategies, evaluate Washington’s leadership, and assess the role of subordinate officers such as Nathanael Greene and Anthony Wayne. He also offers new insights into eighteenth-century warfare and shows how Washington transcended traditional military thinking to fashion a strategy that accommodated American social, political, and economic realities.

During this campaign Washington came into his own as a commander of colonial forces and an astute military strategist, and Taaffe demonstrates that Washington used the fighting around Philadelphia as a proving ground for strategies that he applied later in the war. Taaffe also scrutinizes Washington’s relationship with the militia, whose failure to carry out its missions contributed to the general’s problems.

Still, by enduring their losses and continuing to fight, the Americans exacted a heavy toll on Britain’s resources, helped to convince France to enter the war, and put the redcoats on the defensive. As Taaffe shows, far from being inconclusive, the Philadelphia Campaign contributed more to American victory than the colonists recognized at the time.

“An impressively researched, well organized, concise, and judicious study of an important campaign of the Revolutionary War.”--Charles Royster, author of A Revolutionary People at War
“A fine work of historical synthesis that should appeal to the general reader.
Taaffe provides a clear, well-informed, and balanced treatment of both sides in the conflict.”--John Shy, author of A People Numerous and Armed
“Taaffe’s engaging new book is a valuable and welcome addition to studies about Revolutionary America, and a pleasure to read.”--James Kirby Martin, author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered

STEPHEN R. TAAFFE is assistant professor of history at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and author of MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign, a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

November 2003
344 pages, 5 maps, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Modern War Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1267-X, $35.00
States' Rights and the Union
Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876

Forrest McDonald

SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB

Forrest McDonald has long been recognized as one of our most respected and provocative intellectual historians. With this new book, he once again delivers an illuminating meditation on a major theme in American history and politics.
Elegantly and accessibly written for a broad readership, McDonald's book provides an insightful look at states' rights--an issue that continues to stir debate nationwide. From constitutional scholars to Supreme Court justices to an electorate that's grown increasingly wary of federal power, the concept of states' rights has become a touchstone for a host of political and legal controversies. But, as McDonald shows, that concept has deep roots that need to be examined if we're to understand its implications for current and future debates.

McDonald's study revolves around the concept of imperium in imperio--literally "sovereignty within sovereignty" or the division of power within a single jurisdiction. With this broad principle in hand, he traces the states' rights idea from the Declaration of Independence to the end of Reconstruction and illuminates the constitutional, political, and economic contexts in which it evolved.

Although the Constitution, McDonald shows, gave the central government expansive powers, it also legitimated the doctrine of states' rights. The result was an uneasy tension and uncertainty about the nature of the central government's relationship to the states. At times the issue bubbled silently and unseen beneath the surface of public awareness, but at other times it exploded.

McDonald follows this episodic rise and fall of federal-state relations from the Hamilton-Jefferson rivalry to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, New England's resistance to Jefferson's foreign policy and the War of 1812, the Nullification Controversy, Andrew Jackson's war against the Bank of the United States, and finally the vitriolic public debates that led to secession and civil war. Other scholars have touched upon these events individually, but McDonald is the first to integrate all of them from the perspective of states' rights into one synthetic and magisterial vision.

The result is another brilliant study from a masterful historian writing on a subject of great import for Americans.FORREST McDONALD is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Alabama and author of sixteen books, including Pulitzer Prize finalist Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution; The American Presidency; The Presidency of George Washington; and The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson. He was named by the NEH as the sixteenth Jefferson Lecturer, the nation's highest honor in the humanities.

New in Paperback: November 2002
viii, 296 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2
American Political Thought
Paper ISBN 0-7006-1227-0, $16.95 (t)
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1040-5, $29.95

March 24, 2005