The Scorpion's Sting
Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War
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The Scorpion's Sting
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Narrated by:
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James Oakes
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By:
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James Oakes
About this listen
An award-winning historian illuminates the strategy for ending slavery that precipitated the crisis of civil war.
Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death. The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: They would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom. They planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish freedom: the western territories, the District of Columbia, the high seas. By constricting slavery they would induce a crisis: Slaves would escape in ever-greater numbers, the southern economy would falter, and finally the southern states would abolish the institution themselves. For their part the southern states fully understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's election.
The scorpion's sting is the centerpiece of this fresh, incisive exploration of slavery and the Civil War: Was there a peaceful route to abolition? Was Lincoln late to emancipation? What role did race play in the politics of slavery? With stunning insight James Oakes moves us ever closer to a new understanding of the most momentous events in our history.
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 466
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 466
Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in American history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's?
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1 out of 5 stars
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OpEd Disguised as History
- By John McDowell on 10-30-18
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The Nation That Never Was
- Reconstructing America's Story
- By: Kermit Roosevelt
- Narrated by: Kermit Roosevelt III
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Necessary Book.
- By Jason Baumbach on 01-30-24
By: Kermit Roosevelt
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The Constitution
- An Introduction
- By: Michael Stokes Paulsen, Luke Paulsen
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
From war powers to health care, freedom of speech to gun ownership, religious liberty to abortion, practically every aspect of American life is shaped by the Constitution. This vital document, along with its history of political and judicial interpretation, governs our individual lives and the life of our nation. Yet most of us know surprisingly little about the Constitution itself, and are woefully unprepared to think for ourselves about recent developments in its long and storied history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Constitution-A must reading for All Americans
- By Robert on 06-12-15
By: Michael Stokes Paulsen, and others
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution
- By: Kevin R.C. Gutzman
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 635
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 466
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 467
Instead of the system that the Constitution intended, judges have created a system in which bureaucrats and appointed officials make most of the important policies. While the government claims to be a representative republic, somehow hot-button topics from gay marriage to the allocation of Florida's presidential electors always seem to be decided by unelected judges. What gives them the right to decide such issues? The judges say it's the Constitution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best PIG to date
- By Matthew Groom on 05-16-08
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No Property in Man
- Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding
- By: Sean Wilentz
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation's founding. The acclaimed political historian Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers' work. Far from covering up a crime against humanity, the Constitution restricted slavery's legitimacy under the new national government.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent review of Slavery and the Constitution
- By Amazon Customer on 01-01-19
By: Sean Wilentz
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James Madison and the Making of America
- By: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4 out of 5 stars 127
In James Madison and the Making of America, historian Kevin Gutzman looks beyond the way James Madison is traditionally seen - as "The Father of the Constitution” - to find a more complex and sometimes contradictory portrait of this influential Founding Father and the ways in which he influenced the spirit of today's United States.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not a traditional biography
- By David on 12-14-12
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Black Reconstruction in America
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 37 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 358
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 300
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Story5 out of 5 stars 297
This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America has justly been called a classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The textbook you should have had in high school.
- By Saleh on 05-06-18
By: W. E. B. Du Bois, and others
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How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America
- By: Brion McClanahan
- Narrated by: Thomas Rosenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story5 out of 5 stars 56
He is the star of a hit Broadway musical, the face on the 10-dollar bill, and a central figure among the founding fathers. But do you really know Alexander Hamilton? Rather than lionize Hamilton, Americans should carefully consider his most significant and ultimately detrimental contribution to modern society: the shredding of the United States Constitution. Connecting the dots between Hamilton's invention of implied powers in 1791 to transgender bathrooms and same-sex marriage today, Brion McClanahan shows the origins of our modern federal leviathan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thank You Audible
- By No to Statism on 10-03-18
By: Brion McClanahan
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Thaddeus Stevens
- Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice
- By: Bruce Levine
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution - a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies - including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies - would prove crucial to the Union war effort.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent bio of a political hero
- By Anonymous User on 03-11-21
By: Bruce Levine
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
- By: Thomas E. Woods Jr.
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,529
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,119
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,113
Everything, well, almost everything, you know about American history is wrong because most textbooks and popular history books are written by left-wing academic historians who treat their biases as fact. But fear not; Professor Thomas Woods refutes the popular myths in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Highly recommended! Not for the faint of heart!
- By RAC on 12-12-05
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The Three Lives of James Madison
- Genius, Partisan, President
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 528
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 470
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 468
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers
- By: Brion McClanahan Ph. D.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 388
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
Here to rescue the reputations of our Founding Fathers from the plague of modern political correctness is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers. Author and Professor Brion McClanahan shows how patriots like Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton laid the foundations of American civil liberty and had a better understanding of the problems facing us today than our current Congress.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Highly Recommended
- By Colleen H. on 08-13-09
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Our Republican Constitution
- Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People
- By: Randy E. Barnett
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
The Constitution of the United States begins with the words "we the people". But from the earliest days of the American republic, there have been two competing notions of "the people", which led to two very different visions of the Constitution. Those who view "we the people" collectively think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group, which leads them to favor a democratic constitution that allows the will of the people to be expressed by majority rule
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3 out of 5 stars
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Read the book, don't listen
- By I Keep AMZN in Business on 06-23-16
By: Randy E. Barnett
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The Framers' Coup
- The Making of the United States Constitution
- By: Michael J. Klarman
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 31 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 142
Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Context Matters
- By Keith on 03-18-18
What listeners say about The Scorpion's Sting
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rob Welch
- 11-11-21
An AntiSlavery War
It is common for many concede that the north did not go to war to abolish slavery. However Oakes makes clear that at the heart of the Republican vision for the union was one in which slavery was gradually abolished forever. This is a great book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- S. Stanley
- 07-06-20
The Political Estrangement Preceding the War
A careful examination of the accelerating disintegration of the bonds between North and South. The author offers a unique perspective on the role Abolitionism played in further deteriorating those bonds. Well argued presentation.
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1 person found this helpful