Nullification and Secession in the United States: A History of the..

2017. ISBN-13: 9781584771326; ISBN-10: 1584771321. Powell, Edward Payson. Nullification and Secession in the United States: A History of the Six Attempts during the First Century of the Republic. Originally published: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1897. xi, 461 pp. Reprinted 2002, 2017 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781584771326; ISBN-10: 1584771321. Hardcover. $39.95 * A study of secession and nullification movements in the United States from the nullification resolutions of 1798 to the American Civil War. Powell proposes that the secession of the southern states in 1861 was not a unique event in American history, but the culmination of a tradition as old as the nation. Indeed, he argues, it was an expression of the "intense individualism which was the most potent factor in the creation of the republic" (Preface). Sensitive to the continued animosity between the North and South, Powell hoped that the historical context provided by his study would help to promote a spirit of reconciliation. The six attempts at nullification and secession that he examines are: ? the Nullification Resolutions of 1798 ? the plot for a northern confederacy (1803-1804) ? the Burr plot (1805-1806) ? New England nullifi cation and the Hartford Convention (1812-1814) ? South Carolina's attempts at nullifi cation (1832) ? the secession of 11 states and creation of the confederacy (1861). EDWARD PAYSON POWELL (1833-1915) was an American author and journalist. He graduated from Hamilton College and Union Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1817. He embarked on his journalism career in 1886 when he joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1886 as an editorial writer; he later (1900) moved to The Independent of New York, a civil rights and anti-slavery newspaper.