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Freedom's Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Freedom's Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY•  An “important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant” (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans’ freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way 

American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others.   
   
In Freedom’s Dominion, prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace. In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, freedom became a weapon. With freedom as their cry, white Americans seized Native lands, championed secession, overthrew Reconstruction, questioned the New Deal, and fought against the civil rights movement.   
   
Through a riveting account of two centuries of local clashes between white people and federal authorities, Freedom’s Dominion offers a radically new history of federal power, democracy, and American freedom. This history summons us today to embrace a vigorous model of American citizenship, backed by a federal government that is not afraid to fight the many incarnations of the freedom to dominate.  

ISBN-13: 9781541605121

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Basic Books

Publication Date: 01-02-2024

Pages: 512

Jefferson Cowie holds the James G. Stahlman Chair in History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of three other books, including Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, and his work has appeared in numerous outlets including Time, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Table of Contents

Introduction: George Wallace and American Freedom 1

Book 1 Land

1 Marshal Crawford's Orders 17

2 Land, Liberty, and Jackson 34

3 The Killing of Hardeman Owens 50

4 The Compromise of Francis Scott Key 65

5 Uprising 81

Book 2 Citizenship

6 Igniting a Wall of Fire 97

7 "Destroying Freedom and Liberty" 116

8 The Greeley Gamble and the Dueling Dual Legislatures of 1872 134

9 The White Line: Afternoon, Election Day 1874 152

10 The Fate of the Scalawag: Evening, Election Day 1874 170

Book 3 Federal Power in Repose

11 The Prison Mines 191

12 White Oligarchy as Jeffersonian Democracy 210

13 Lynching as an Act of Freedom 232

14 A New Deal for Southside? 250

15 The Bourbon from Barbour 270

Book 4 Democracy

16 The Fightin' Judge 289

17 The Albert Street Club 311

18 From Clayton to the Nation 326

19 The SCOPE of Freedom 348

20 The Vote Is Not Enough 367

21 The Northern Strategy 385

Conclusion 404

Acknowledgments 417

Photo Credits 423

Notes 425

Index 481