Many new states entered the United States around 200 years ago, but only Missouri almost killed the nation it was trying to join. When the House of Representatives passed the Tallmadge Amendment banning slavery from the prospective new state in February 1819, it set off a two-year political crisis in which growing northern antislavery sentiment confronted the aggressive westward expansion of the peculiar institution by southerners. The Missouri Crisis divided the U.S. into slave and free states for the first time and crystallized many of the arguments and conflicts that would later be settled violently during the Civil War. The episode was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “a fire bell in the night” that terrified him as the possible “knell of the Union.”

Drawn from the participants in two landmark conferences held at the University of Missouri and the City University of New York, those who contributed original essays to this second of two volumes—a group that includes young scholars and foremost authorities in the field—answer the Missouri “Question,” in bold fashion, challenging assumptions both old and new in the long historiography by approaching the event on its own terms, rather than as the inevitable sequel of the flawed founding of the republic or a prequel to its near destruction.

This second volume of A Fire Bell in the Past features a foreword by Daive Dunkley. Contributors include Dianne Mutti Burke, Christopher Childers, Edward P. Green, Zachary Dowdle, David J. Gary, Peter Kastor, Miriam Liebman, Matthew Mason, Kate Masur, Mike McManus, Richard Newman, and Nicholas Wood.

“Like its companion volume, this collection brings new methods and historical questions together with the field of political history. In so doing, the authors situate the Missouri Crisis era firmly within early American history, while also explaining how the story fits within new histories of slavery and the movement to reexamine the founders’ connections to the institution of slavery.”

—Kelly M. Kennington, Auburn University, author of In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America

“A solid collection of historical writing that offers the reader a broad array of perspectives by which to reconsider some aspects of the Missouri Crisis and consider others for the first time. I look forward to suggesting it to students and professionals seeking a deep, but accessible, understanding of this important event in American history.”

—John Reda, Illinois State University, author of From Furs to Farms: The Transformation of the Mississippi Valley, 1762-1825

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, December 2021

Editors:
Jeffrey L. Pasley is Professor of History and the Associate Director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. His most recent book is The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy, a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.

John Craig Hammond is Associate Professor of History and Assistant Director of Academic Affairs at Penn State University–New Kensington and author of numerous books and articles on slavery and politics in the early American republic. He lives in suburban Pittsburgh.

The admission of Missouri to the Union quickly became a constitutional crisis of the first order, inciting an intensive reexamination of the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Congress. The heart of the question in need of resolution was whether that body possessed the authority to place conditions on a territory—in this instance Missouri—regarding restrictions on slavery before its admittance to the Union. The larger question with which the legislators grappled was the limits of the Constitution’s provisions granting Congress the authority to affect the institution of slavery both where it already existed and where it could expand. The issue—what would come to be known as the Missouri Crisis—severely tested the still young republic and, some four decades later, would all but rend it asunder. This timely collection of original essays thoughtfully engages the intersections of history and constitutional law, and is certain to find eager readers among historians, legal scholars, political scientists, as well as many who call Missouri home.

“Editor William Belko and a talented group of historians link the debates over clauses and intent in the Constitution of 1787 with the heated sectional controversy over federal prerogatives regarding the admission of new states between 1819 and 1821. Their exploration of subjects, among others, the powers of Congress concerning the territories, the value of compromise, the definition of migration and immigration, and the nature of republican government are important and enlightening. The restriction on slavery, ‘the firebell in the night,’ of course, looms large in the Tallmadge Amendment and beyond. Clearly written and exhaustively researched, this volume is a must-read for both academics and those generally interested in the bond between the Constitution and politics in the early republic.”—John M. Belohlavek, University of South Florida, author of Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union

“William S. Belko’s worthy collection of timely and poignant essays dissects how various Constitutional clauses created the debates over slavery, westward expansion, and Missouri’s admission into the Union and ultimately paved the path toward Civil War. Antebellum slavery cannot be understood without articulating how the Missouri question defined it!”—Gene Allen Smith, Texas Christian University, author of In Harm’s Way: A History of the American Military Experience

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, May 2021

Editors:
William S. Belko is the Executive Director of the Missouri Humanities Council and author of several books including, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court and The Invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West (also published by the University of Missouri Press). He lives in the St. Louis area.

Many of the original essays in this volume began as papers presented at an international conference sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, A Fire-Bell in the Past: Re-assessing the Missouri Crisis at 200, held at the University of Missouri at Columbia on February 15-16, 2019. In an attempt not only to reassess but add to historians’ understanding of the full scope of the causes and consequences of what came to be known as the Missouri Crisis, on a regional and national basis, the editors extended their invitation for scholarly works beyond the conference, ending up with too many first-rate and important new additions to the historiography than could be presented in this first volume. With the second volume slated for Fall 2021 publication, this unique work is perfectly timed to mark Missouri’s Bicentennial.

“The essays in A Fire Bell in the Past are brilliant commentaries on one of the most pivotal events in American history. These fresh perspectives on the Missouri Crisis breathe new life into this much-written about subject, and could not be more timely given our current-day grappling with the question of race and citizenship.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University, author of On Juneteenth

“This book will reset the standard by which historians understand the Missouri Crisis, the politics of slavery, and the Early National era more broadly. The editors did an outstanding job of bringing together scholars who approach the topic from a variety of perspectives, and in doing so, not only re-center the Missouri Crisis historiographically, but offer compelling new lenses through which all historians will need to consider the political history of slavery and anti-slavery in the early United States.” —Ryan A. Quintana, Wellesley College, author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina

“Because the achievement of statehood by Missouri was tied to the expansion of slavery, its two hundredth anniversary is a problem for those who want their commemorations to be celebrations. But what makes Missouri’s admission a bad bicentennial for the state’s boosters makes for really good scholarship in A Fire Bell in the Past. These bold essays ring loud, awakening readers to how much this crisis mattered—and still matters.” —Stephen Aron, UCLA and Autry Museum of the American West, author of American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State

“Two centuries ago, the federal union barely survived the ramifying crises surrounding Missouri’s admission to the union. The fine essays in Pasley and Hammond’s splendid new collection constitute the best kind of bicentennial commemoration, offering a broad array of provocative, timely, and deeply sobering reflections on this defining moment in American history.”—Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, co-author of “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, June 2021

Editors:
Jeffrey L. Pasley is Professor of History and Associate Director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. He is the author of The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy and lives in Columbia, Missouri.

John Craig Hammond is Associate Professor of History and Assistant Director of Academic Affairs at Penn State University–New Kensington and author of numerous books and articles on slavery and politics in the early American republic. He lives in suburban Pittsburgh.

The Federalist Frontier traces the development of Federalist policies and the Federalist Party in the first three states of the Northwest Territory—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—from the nation’s first years until the rise of the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. Relying on government records, private correspondence, and newspapers, Kristopher Maulden argues that Federalists originated many of the policies and institutions that helped the young United States government take a leading role in the American people’s expansion and settlement westward across the Appalachians. It was primarily they who placed the U.S. Army at the fore of the white westward movement, created and executed the institutions to survey and sell public lands, and advocated for transportation projects to aid commerce and further migration into the region. Ultimately, the relationship between government and settlers evolved as citizens raised their expectations of what the federal government should provide, and the region embraced transportation infrastructure and innovation in public education. Historians of early American politics will have a chance to read about Federalists in the Northwest, and they will see the early American state in action in fighting Indians, shaping settler understandings of space and social advancement, and influencing political ideals among the citizens. For historians of the early American West, Maulden’s work demonstrates that the origins of state-led expansion reach much further back in time than generally understood.

“Kristopher Maulden has written a path-breaking book that will change the way historians think about and teach the early national era, especially in their understanding of the importance and longevity of the Federalist Party. This well-written, carefully-researched study brings to light the crucial role of Federalist ideology in building cultural, political, and economic institutions that helped create the American state and facilitated expansion into the west. Maulden also presents a sensitive discussion of the federal government’s relationship with Indians who lived in the region. Maulden argues persuasively that the Federalist Party, in structuring an orderly society governed by well-educated men of property, developed a long-lasting legacy that reached into the 1840s. This important book will be of great value to scholars and students of the political and economic development of America’s emerging Republic.” —Silvana R. Siddali, Saint Louis University, author of Frontier Democracy: Constitutional Conventions in the Old Northwest

“Thomas Jefferson is too often considered the sole architect of the United States’ ‘Empire of Liberty,’ but Kris Maulden’s new book recovers the critical role that Jefferson’s Federalist foes played in colonizing a continent. The Federalist Frontier is an important corrective that explains the ways in which Federalist ideology continued to shape American Empire long after the party’s demise.” —Lawrence B. A. Hatter, Washington State University, author of Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, January 2020

Author:
Kristopher Maulden received his Ph.D. in History from University of Missouri

On May 10, 1776, the Second Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia adopted a Resolution which set in motion a round of constitution making in the colonies, several of which soon declared themselves sovereign states and severed all remaining ties to the British Crown. In forming these written constitutions, the delegates to the state conventions were forced to address the issue of church-state relations. Each colony had unique and differing traditions of church-state relations rooted in the colony’s peoples, their country of origin, and religion. This definitive volume, comprising twenty-one original essays by eminent historians and political scientists, is a comprehensive state-by-state account of disestablishment in the original thirteen states, as well as a look at similar events in the soon-to-be-admitted states of Vermont, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Also considered are disestablishment in Ohio (the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory), Louisiana and Missouri (the first states admitted from the Louisiana Purchase), and Florida (wrestled from Spain under U.S. pressure). The volume makes a unique scholarly contribution by recounting in detail the process of disestablishment in each of the colonies, as well as religion’s constitutional and legal place in the new states of the federal republic.

“This is a magisterial work that will serve as a key reference for our understanding of disestablishment in the United States, which as the authors note is a singular American contribution to ideas and practices of modern governance. It is impossible to see the American constitutional heritage in the same way after reading this book; it shifts the paradigm. Moreover, by setting the record straight this work has immediate relevance for legal debates and court judgments about the meaning of the no establishment principle in American jurisprudence. It demolishes myths about our founding that continue to shape, or warp, constitutional thinking and legal judgments.” —Allen D. Hertzke, University of Oklahoma, editor of Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges

“Myths, half-truths, and downright errors surround popular perceptions of the American separation of church and state. This outstanding book, with its first-rate roster of historians and legal scholars, demonstrates that American church disestablishment proceeded state by state, in many different ways and over a lengthy period of time. It will be of great interest to historians of the early United States and may be even more important for those who wrestle with challenging church-state questions in our own day.” —Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, author of America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

“This invaluable collection does not focus just on the much studied cases of Virginia and Massachusetts, but gives equal time to all the other early states—the original thirteen plus the next five, as well as the Catholic territories acquired from France and Spain, and finally Maine, which split off from Massachusetts. Experts and lay people alike will benefit from this inclusive survey of the American church-state settlement.” —Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia and University of Texas Law Schools, author of Religious Liberty

“This remarkable collection sets a new standard for understanding the complex and contested history of disestablishment in America. I do not know of another book that delivers such a comprehensive treatment of Americans’ experiences in separating church and state, from Maine to Florida, and from Virginia to Missouri.” —Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University, author of America’s Religious History: Faith, Politics, and the Shaping of a Nation

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, November 2019

Authors:
Carl H. Esbeck is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law

Jonathan J. Den Hartog is Chair of the History Department and Professor of History at Samford University. He is the author of Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation (University of Virginia Press, 2015).

The Panic of 1819 tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an economic wave that rolled through the United States, forming before the War of 1812, cresting with the land and cotton boom of 1818, and crashing just as the nation confronted the crisis over slavery in Missouri. The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country’s attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, yet we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.

“This is an excellent book on a neglected episode of American economic and financial history—the Panic of 1819—and also on American political and social history in general during, roughly, the first three decades of the nineteenth century.” —Richard Sylla, New York University, author of The American Capital Market, 1846–1914: A Study of the Effects of Public Policy on Economic Management

“The title of Mr. Browning’s fine and formidable history only hints at its scope. ‘The Panic of 1819’ is, in fact, a political, social, and financial history of the U.S., before, during and after America’s first great depression.” —Wall Street Journal

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Published: 
University of Missouri Press, April 2019

Author:
Andrew H. Browning was educated at Princeton and the University of Virginia. He has taught history in Washington, D.C., Honolulu, and Portland, Oregon.

Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Prof. Carli N. Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

For Blackstone, the pursuit of happiness was a science of jurisprudence, by which his students could know, and then rightly apply, the first principles of the Common Law. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was the individual right to pursue a life lived in harmony with the law of nature and a public duty to govern in accordance with that law. Both applications suggest we consider anew how the phrase, and its underlying legal philosophies, were understood in the founding era. With this work, Conklin makes important contributions to the fields of early American intellectual and legal history.

“Few phrases resonate more deeply in US history than ‘the pursuit of happiness.’ When Thomas Jefferson included those words in the Declaration of Independence, in his litany of cherished birthrights, he launched a still-unresolved debate over the precise meaning of the phrase. With this insightful study, Conklin assumes a prominent role in [and] makes an important contribution to an evolving cross-disciplinary conversation. It deserves a broad audience.” —M.R. Scherer, University of Nebraska-Omaha, author of Rights in the Balance: Free Press, Fair Trial & Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart

“Professor Conklin is one of those exceedingly rare and invaluable scholars who unites in a single analysis of the founders’ thought the four traditions that most influenced them—the classical heritage, Christianity, the English legal tradition, and the Scottish Enlightenment—rather than advocate for the primacy of a single heritage. She presents a cogent argument that the glue that held these diverse influences together was their shared conception of ‘the pursuit of happiness.’” —Carl Richard, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, author of The Battle for the American Mind: A Brief History of a Nation’s Thought

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, March 2019

Author:

Carli N. Conklin is an Associate Professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and Associate Professor of Constitutional Democracy and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Kinder Institute.

The idea that the three branches of the U.S. government are equal in power is taught in classrooms, proclaimed by politicians, and referenced in the media. But, as David Siemers shows, that idea is a myth, neither intended by the Founders nor true in practice. Siemers explains how adherence to this myth normalizes a politics of gridlock, in which the action of any branch can be checked by the reaction of any other. The Founders, however, envisioned a separation of functions rather than a separation of powers. Siemers argues that this view needs to replace our current view, so that the goals set out in the Constitution’s Preamble may be better achieved.

“This book takes on a ubiquitous topic in original and useful ways. It ought to have a substantial impact on how we think about the separation of powers in the United States and lead us to better appreciate how our constitutional scheme does and should work.”—Keith Whittington, author of Constitutional Construction

“The functional notion of the separation of powers has never been developed fully and clearly in one book. The fact that Siemers mixes this with an outstanding assessment of the contemporary consequences of our misguided notions of the separation of powers makes this book even more exciting.”—Benjamin Kleinerman, author of The Discretionary President

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, December 2018

Author:
David J. Siemers is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and the author of four books, including Presidents and Political Thought. He lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

In Jacksonian America, as Grund exposes, the wealthy inhabitants of northern cities and the plantation South may have been willing to accept their poorer neighbors as political and legal peers, but rarely as social equals. In this important work, he thus sheds light on the nature of the struggle between “aristocracy” and “democracy” that loomed so large in early republican Americans’ minds.

Francis J. Grund, a German immigrant, was one of the most influential journalists in America in the three decades preceding the Civil War. He also wrote several books, including this fictional, satiric travel memoir in response to Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous Democracy in America. Armin Mattes provides a thorough account of Grund’s dynamic engagement in American political and social life and brings to light many of Grund’s reflections previously published only in German. Mattes shows how Grund’s work can expand our understanding of the emerging democratic political culture and society in the antebellum United States.

“Mattes has done historians a real service by contextualizing and annotating a primary source that, among its many discernments, finds inequality in America, not in the political and economic spheres, but in a pseudo-aristocratic social elitism.”

—Kevin Butterfield, Director of the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at University of Oklahoma and author of The Making of Tocqueville’s America

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, June 2018

Author:
Armin Mattes is an editor at the James Madison Papers (University of Virginia Press) and former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute. He is author of Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: the Transatlantic Context of the Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood, 1775-1840.

On December 4, 1865, members of the 39th United States Congress walked into the Capitol Building to begin their first session after the end of the Civil War. They understood their responsibility to put the nation back on the path established by the American Founding Fathers. The moment when the Republicans in the Reconstruction Congress remade the nation and renewed the law is in a class of rare events. The Civil War should be seen in this light.

In From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, University of Alaska-Anchorage Professor Forrest A. Nabors shows that the ultimate goal of the Republican Party, the war, and Reconstruction was the same. This goal was to preserve and advance republicanism as the American founders understood it, against its natural, existential enemy: oligarchy. The principle of natural equality justified American republicanism and required abolition and equal citizenship. Likewise, slavery and discrimination on the basis of color stand on the competing moral foundation of oligarchy, the principle of natural inequality, which requires ranks.

This book presents a shared analysis of the slave South, synthesized from the writings and speeches of the Republicans who served in the 38th, 39th or 40th Congress, from 1863-1869, to show how the Republican majority, charged with the responsibility of reconstructing the South, understood the South. In particular, Nabors focuses on how these writings and speeches reflected a deep understanding of the degree to which slavery’s existence transformed the character of political society not only in the nation but also the region, and thus how the insurrectionary states’ government had to be reconstructed at their very foundations for full political liberty to be restored.

“This path-breaking passionately argued study frames Reconstruction rightly for the first time since Reconstruction itself. Returning to what politicians North and South actually said and did, Forrest Nabors shows how the Confederacy masked a regime of oligarchy with such slogans as “States’ Rights” and the “positive good” of slavery. He further shows how Reconstruction aimed to settle the Civil War by restoring the rebel states to the genuine republicanism they had espoused during the American Revolution and had pledged to honor in the Constitution’s republican Guarantee Clause.” —Will Morrisey, author of Self-Government, the American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War

“Forrest Nabors has performed a tremendous service. Aided by Aristotelian regime analysis, he uncovers—or recovers—an understanding of ‘the supreme cause’ of the American Civil War. Delving deeply into original source material (especially the speeches and writings of the Republicans who served in the Reconstruction Congresses), Nabors establishes that the ‘irrepressible conflict’ should be understood, and was understood at the time, as a conflict between oligarchy and republicanism. This landmark contribution ought to reshape our understanding of the Civil War, the difficulties and failures of Reconstruction, and the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution. Nabors listens, philosophically, to historical actors, and thereby achieves a fuller understanding of the motive force behind the perversities of racism and white supremacy.” —Diana J. Schaub, Professor of Political Science, Loyola University Maryland

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Publication:
University of Missouri Press, December 2017

Author:
Forrest A. Nabors isn Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Alaska-Anchorage.

The U.S. Constitution requires laws to be made by elected representatives. Today, most policies are made by administrative agencies whose officials are not elected. Not coincidentally, many Americans increasingly question whether the political system works for the good of the people. In this trenchant intellectual history, Postell demonstrates how modern administrative law has attempted to restore the principles of American constitutionalism but has failed to be as effective as earlier approaches to regulation.

“Federal bureaucracy often seems to roam far beyond what Congress has clearly authorized and often does so without meaningful check from the courts. Postell’s book demonstrates that Americans have worried about over-reaching officials since colonial times. Bureaucracy in America shows what we can learn from past efforts to secure the people’s rights, even from government officials.” —Jeremy A. Rabkin, George Mason University, author of Law without Nations?

“The labyrinthine edifice of administrative law can be neither wholly reconciled with the nation’s deepest principles nor wholly efface them, and Postell’s clear explication of what is at stake in this complex subject will make this book a landmark in the field.” —Johnathan O’Neill, Georgia Southern University, author of Originalism in American Law and Politics: A Constitutional History

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Publication: 
University of Missouri Press, June 2017

Author:
Joseph Postell is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. He is the editor of two books: Rediscovering Political Economy (Lexington Books, 2011), with St. Vincent College’s Bradley C.S. Watson, and Toward an American Conservatism (Pallgrave Macmillan, 2013), with Georgia Southern University’s Johnathan O’Neill.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was reeling from the effects of rapid urbanization and industrialization. Time-honored verities proved obsolete, and intellectuals in all fields sought ways to make sense of an increasingly unfamiliar reality. The legal system, in particular, began to buckle under the weight of its anachronism. In the midst of this crisis, John Henry Wigmore, dean of the Northwestern University School of Law, single-handedly modernized the jury trial with his 1904-1905 Treatise on evidence, an encyclopedic work that dominated the conduct of trials. In doing so, he inspired generations of progressive jurists—among them Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Benjamin Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter—to reshape American law to meet the demands of a new era. Yet Wigmore’s role as a prophet of modernity has slipped into obscurity. This book provides a radical reappraisal of his place in the birth of modern legal thought.

“[This book] will become the standard work on the subject, and more than that will contribute to emerging clarity in the field of early twentieth-century legal ideas more broadly” —Noah Feldman, Professor of Law, Harvard University Law School, author of Cool War: The Future of Global Competition

 

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Published:
University of Missouri Press, May 2016

Author:

Andrew Porwancher is an Assistant Professor of Classics & Letters at Oklahoma University and a core faculty member of OU’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. He is the author of The Devil Himself: A Tale of Honor, Insanity, and the Birth of Modern America, published by Oxford University Press in 2016.

 

In 1935, Lloyd Gaines’ application to the University of Missouri Law School was denied, based solely on the grounds that the state’s constitution called for “separate education of the races.” Along with the NAACP, Gaines challenged the university’s admissions policies in the nation’s high court, and Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938) became the first in a long line of Supreme Court cases regarding race, higher education, and equal opportunity, and in many respects paved the way for 1954’s Brown v. Board. The case drew national headlines, and the NAACP moved Gaines to Chicago after he received death threats. Before he could attend law school, however, Gaines vanished, never to be seen or heard from again.

This is the first book to focus entirely on the Gaines case and the vital role played by the NAACP and its lawyers—especially Charles Houston, known as “the man who killed Jim Crow”—as they advanced a concerted strategy to produce political change. Horner and Endersby also discuss the African American newspaper journalists and editors who mobilized popular support for the NAACP’s work in the courts. In chronicling the pioneering efforts of Gaines, who the New York Times said “might be in the pantheon of civil rights history with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and other giants,” this book sheds light on an important and too often overlooked first step in the legal fight to end segregated public education in the United States.

“This is a work of great significance to those who seek a mature, straightforward account of the life and times of Lloyd Gaines. A splendid achievement and a wonderful contribution to the history of civil rights in the era after Plessy v. Ferguson and before Brown v. Board of Education.” —Gary M. Lavergne, University of Texas at Austin, author of Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall, and the Long Road to Justice

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Publication:
University of Missouri Press. March 2016

Author:
James W. Endersby is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri. His work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Politics, Electoral Studies, Political Communication, and Social Science Quarterly, and he is a former fellow of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

William T. Horner is a Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri and serves as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is the author of two books, Showdown in the Show-Me State: The Long Fight Over Conceal and Carry in Missouri (University of Missouri Press, 2005) and Ohio’s Kingmaker: Mark Hanna, Man and Myth (Ohio University Press, 2010).