Fire-Eaters

Fire-Eaters

EnglishPaperback / softbackPrint on demand
Walther Eric H.
Louisiana State University Press
EAN: 9780807117750
Print on demand
Delivery on Tuesday, 4. of February 2025
CZK 740
Common price CZK 822
Discount 10%
pc
Do you want this product today?
Oxford Bookshop Praha Korunní
not available
Librairie Francophone Praha Štěpánská
not available
Oxford Bookshop Ostrava
not available
Oxford Bookshop Olomouc
not available
Oxford Bookshop Plzeň
not available
Oxford Bookshop Brno
not available
Oxford Bookshop Hradec Králové
not available
Oxford Bookshop České Budějovice
not available
Oxford Bookshop Liberec
not available

Detailed information

In the early 1850s, northerners and southerners alike used the term fire-eater to describe anyone whose views were clearly outside the political mainstream. Eventually, though, the word came to be most closely identified with those southerners who were staunch and unyielding advocates of secession. In this broadly researched and illuminating study, Eric H. Walther examines the lives of nine of the most prominent fire-eaters: Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, William Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D.B. De Bow, Edmund Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles.

Walther paints skillful portraits of his subjects, analysing their backgrounds, personalities, and contributions to the movement for disunion. Although they shared the common goal of southern independence, Walther shows that in many respects the fire-eaters differed markedly from one another. It was their very diversity, he maintains, that enabled them to appeal to such a wide spectrum of southern opinion and thereby rally support for secession.

In his exploration of the role of the fire-eaters in the secession movement, Walther touches upon a number of perennial themes in southern history, including the appeal of proslavery thought and southern expansionism, the place of education and industrialization in antebellum southern society, the significance of oratory in southern culture, and the nature of southern nationalism. He also describes the fire-eaters' activities on behalf of the Confederacy and traces the course of their lives after the war.

The Fire-Eaters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the secession movement and the context in which it developed. There is no other study available that treats these men as a group and that delineates their manifold differences as well as their similarities. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources, spoke in many voices, and responded to a number of regional problems, needs, and aspirations.
EAN 9780807117750
ISBN 0807117757
Binding Paperback / softback
Publisher Louisiana State University Press
Publication date July 30, 1992
Pages 277
Language English
Dimensions 229 x 152
Country United States
Readership Professional & Scholarly
Authors Walther Eric H.