Victory of law : the Fourteenth amendment, the Civil War, and American literature, 1852-1867 / Deak Nabers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nabers, Deak.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--Political aspects.

American literature.

Antislavery movements in literature.

Antislavery movements--United States--History.

Antislavery movements.

Rhetoric--Political aspects--United States--History--19th century.

Rhetoric.

United States. Constitution--14th Amendment.

United States.

Rhetoric--Political aspects.

History.

United States--Politics and government--19th century.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xii, 239 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Summary:

Deak Nabers examines developing ideas about the nature of law as reflected in literary and political writing before, during, and after the American Civil War. Nabers traces the evolution of antislavery thought from its pre-war opposition to the constitutional order of the young nation to its ultimate elevation of the U.S. Constitution as an expression of the ideal of justice -- an ideal embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Contents:

1 Victory of Law: Melville and Reconstruction 19

2 Shadows of Law: Somerset and the Literature of Abolition 47

3 Constitutional Disobedience: Thoreau, Sumner, and the Transcendental Law of the 1850s 91

4 Legal Sentences: Hawthorne's Sovereign Performatives and Hermeneutics of Freedom 132

5 John Bingham's Poetic Constitution 173.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [199]-234) and index.

ISBN:

0801883504

OCLC:

62282043

Publisher Number:

9780801883507

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description