''The History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America'' is an early history of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...

Henry Wilson Henry Wilson (born Jeremiah Jones Colbath; February 16, 1812 – November 22, 1875) was an American politician who was the 18th vice president of the United States from 1873 until his death in 1875 and a senator from Massachusetts from 1855 to ...

, who had been a

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

from

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

during the war. The book was published in three volumes by J.R. Osgood and Company of Boston, Massachusetts. The first two volumes appeared in 1872, the year Wilson ran for vice president on the winning Republican ticket headed by

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

. The last volume appeared in 1877, two years after the author's death in office. Wilson's history went through several more Osgood editions, and was also published by

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

in the 1870s and afterward. A three-volume reprint was published in 1969 by Negro Universities Press. The work has also appeared in

microform Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

. The book's title contains a relatively late usage of the term " Slave Power" for the politically powerful slaveholding class in the American South before the Civil War.

References

*Myers, John L. "The Writing of ''History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America,''" ''Civil War History,'' June 1985, Vol. 31 Issue 2, pp 144-162 *Wilson, Henry. ''The History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America'', 3 vols. Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1872–1877. (v. 1)

External links

Text of the book, from Internet Archive
History books about the American Civil War 1872 non-fiction books 1877 non-fiction books {{AmericanCivilWar-book-stub