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"The image is terrible and familiar. A man sits, his face in profile, his torso exposed. His back is a breathtaking mass of scars, crisscrossing his body and baring the brutality of American slavery. Reproduced as a carte de visite, the image circulated widely throughout abolitionist networks and was featured in Harper's Weekly. Its undeniable power testified to the evils of slavery. But who was this man and how did this image come to be? Bruce Laurie uncovers the people and events that created this seminal image, telling the tale of three men, two Yankee soldiers from western Massachusetts who were serving the Union Army in Louisiana and a man named Peter whose scarred back horrified all who saw it. The two soldiers were so shocked by what had been done to Peter, they sought to capture the image and document slavery's cruelty, the likes of which was all too common among those fleeing bondage in Louisiana. Meticulously researched and briskly told, this short volume unearths the story behind an iconic image"--

In this book, Paul Foos seeks to rescue the Mexican-American War from its status as a forgotten war, a status it has long shared with the Korean War. His approach is in keeping with recent work on the history of war from the perspective of the ordinary soldier, the regulars and militiamen who did the fighting at the front, not from the perspective of the generals. He thus mines a rich and fruitful seam of first person accounts written by soldiers themselves in the form of letters and memoirs long overlooked by historians. He seeks to correct two standard interpretations of the war. One of these, in the triumphalist tradition, interprets the conflict as a limited war that reflected and unleashed American "nationalism;" the other sees it as a victory for moralistic political elites who rescued the nation from the reckless expansionism of Southern extremists by limiting the acquisition of Mexican land in the final settlement. Both interpretations—and the second in particular—spotlight the leading men, insisting it was a war that the "masses" did not "understand, nor did they care" (9). Readers of this lively and eye-opening book are unlikely to put much credence in the received wisdom.

RESUMEN: Combinando aportaciones metodológicas de la Nueva Historia Política y de la Nueva Historia Social, el presente artículo acomete la reconstrucción de algunos de los aspectos nucleares de lo que fue la práctica política estadounidense a lo largo del siglo pasado. Teniendo en cuenta la situación y las características de los partidos políticos y el entramado social, étnico y religioso del país, esa reconstrucción se apoya sobre todo en el análisis del voto político y de su carácter público y no secreto. Las formas de votar y su larga permanencia tuvieron consecuencias decisivas en el marco político estadounidense. El caso de Massachusetts, que aquí se estudia pormenorizadamente, es un claro ejemplo de ello. Palabras Clave: Sistema político, elecciones, partidos políticos, voto, reforma electoral. ABSTRACT: By combining the methodological contributions of New Political History and New Social History, this article undertakes the reconstruction of some of the nuclear aspects of what political practice in the United States was during the last century. Taking into account the situation and the characteristics of the political parties and the social, ethnic and religious framework of the country, this reconstruction is based, above all, on the analysis of the political vote and its public and non-secret nature. The forms of voting and their long duration had decisive consequences in the political framework of the United States. The case of Massachusetts studied here in detail is a clear example of this. Key words: Political System, Elections, Political Parties, Vote, Electoral Reform.