Blueprints for Leviathan: American Style
New York, N.Y. H. Wolff, 1963. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. xiv, [2], 333, [1] pages. Some DJ wear. Includes Foreword, Acknowledgments, Notes, Appendix: The Documentary Structure of Leviathan, Bibliography, and Index. Chapters on The Need for Leviathan; Drawing Leviathan's English Pattern; Drafting American Specifications; Operation Adjustments; Increasing Friction; Approach of Terror; Disintegration; Constructing the Confederate Leviathan; The Reason for Two Leviathans; Operation under Disadvantages; The Confederate Leviathan Collapses; A New Leviathan; and Perfecting Leviathan's New Design. An historical account of how & why the machinery of American Democracy, despite its expert design and specifications, broke down a century ago and made necessary some new blueprints [from the front of the dust jacket]. This new interpretation of American democracy by fills a real gap. Historians, Mr. Nichols points out, have a way of writing about events and personalities without concerning themselves with the underlying and the significant, the less obvious operations which are the reason for things. In American history, there has been the steady evolution, over a thousand years of English and American experience, of the American knack for maintaining self-government and liberty, the invention of the American mechanism, operated by the people themselves, for securing social order and attaining greatness. For the purpose of adjusting and eliminating the inevitable conflicts of will and interest, they have negotiated and recorded agreement, they have substituted legislation for bloodshed, and they have reached for the pen rather than for the sword. Roy Franklin Nichols (March 3, 1896 – January 12, 1973) was an American historian, who won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Disruption of American Democracy. His wife was the historian Jeannette Paddock Nichols (1890–1982). He graduated from Rutgers University in 1918. He completed a Master of Arts degree from Rutgers in 1919. He completed a Ph.D. degree from Columbia in 1923. In 1925 he was appointed assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1930 to 1966, he was professor of history at Pennsylvania. He also was Dean of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1952–66), and Vice Provost at Pennsylvania (1953–66). He was President of Middle States Association of History Teachers (1932–33); President of the Pennsylvania Historical Association (1936-1939); President of Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies (1940–42); Member of Pennsylvania Historical Commission (1940–43); Member of Council, American Historical Association (1943–47); Chairman of Social Science Research Council (1949–53); President of Association of Graduate Schools of the American Association of Universities (1963–64); Vice President of American Historical Association (1964–65); President of American Historical Association (1965–66); and, Chairman of Council of Graduate Schools in the United States. Derived from a Kirkus review: The "Leviathan" of this monumental study of American political development by an authority on the subject, the 1948 Pulitzer Prize winner in History, is a political monster invented by the 17th-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Believing that in order to live together in relative amity men "introduce restraint upon themselves" by forming a commonwealth, Hobbes defines this commonwealth as a "great Leviathan ...an Artificiall Man of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defense it was intended." This volume deals in carefully documented detail with the evolution of the American Leviathan from a succession of "blueprints", beginning with Colonial times and ending in 1870 with the adoption of the 15th Amendment, which added the concept of "national citizenship" to the "Artificiall Man". Originally forming itself on British blueprints, during the Revolution the American Leviathan drew up blueprints of its own, changing and modifying them to meet changing political conditions. In the Civil War the Southern states used Northern blueprints for their own Leviathan, which collapsed with the defeat of the Confederacy; today the American Leviathan, influenced by political frictions, emergencies and compromises, is still making new blueprints for itself. This scholarly and well-written volume will appeal to political philosophers and students of the changing American scene. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Democracy, Thomas Hobbes, Abolition, Federalism, Confederacy, John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Hamilton Fish, Fifteenth Amendment, Constitution, Negro, Stephen A. Douglas, Andrew Johnson
[Book #82367]
Price: $75.00