The Master's Collection: Essays in American and English History

This series of essays studies a range of issues from American and English history. Starting with the reasons for Abraham Lincoln's astonishing victory at the 1860 Presidential Election, the collection then investigates why he emancipated the slaves in 1863, how the Civil War and reconstruction influenced American historical writing in the late nineteenth century and the work of the revolutionary English historian, E.P.Thompson, whose studies into the lives of ordinary working people uncovered fascinating customs like the sale of wives in 1800s England.