Contact Information
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Interests
The Civil War era; comparative study of bound labor, revolution, and emancipation; 19th century U.S. social, economic, cultural, and political
Research Description
Current book project: Thaddeus Stevens, Revolutionary. Under contract with Simon and Schuster.
Education
B.A., University of Michigan, 1971
M.A., University of Rochester, 1973
Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1980
Awards and Honors
J. G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History, UIUC, 2006-2016
Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19th-Century American History, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 2012-2013
Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians, 2004-2007, 2010-2013
Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, 2007
Excellence in Teaching Award, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1998-99
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor Emeritus - African American Studies
Highlighted Publications
BOOKS
La Guerra civile americana: Una nuova storia (Italian ed. of Fall of the House of Dixie). Turin Einaudi, 2015.
The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War & the Social Revolution that Transformed the South. New York: Random House, 2013.
Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Half Slave & Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (2d edition). New York: Hill & Wang, 2005.
The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture & Society. 1st ed. (co-author). New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Work and Society: A Reader (co-editor). Detroit: Wayne State University, 1977.
AUDIO OR VISUAL PUBLICATIONS
The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War & the Social Revolution that Transformed the South. Recorded Books, 2013.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
"'The Vital Element in the Republican Party': Antislavery, Nativism, and Abraham Lincoln." Journal of the Civil War Era, vol. 1, 2011, p. 481-505.
"Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know Nothing Party." Journal of American History, vol. 88, 2001, p. 455-488.
"The Migration of Ideology and the Contested Meaning of Freedom: German America in the Mid Nineteenth Century." Occasional Papers of the German Historical Institute, No. 7 1993, p. 24 pp..
"Lessons of the Second American Revolution." Jacobin: A Magazine of Culture & Polemic, no. summer, 2015, p. 35-41.
BOOK CONTRIBUTIONS
"Black Confederates and Neo-Confederates: In Search of a Usable Past." Race, Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, edited by James and Lois Horton. The New Press: New York, 2006.
"Horatio Alger in the Cotton Fields? Herbert Gutman and the Debate over Slave Consciousness." Herbert G. Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross (2d ed.), Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
"On Capitalism, Modernity, and Backwardness." The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History, London: Palgrave, 2001.
"What Did We Go to War For?’: Confederate Emancipation and Its Meaning." Themes of the American Civil War: The War between the States, Abingdon, Eng.: Routledge, 2009, p. 228-248.