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Matthew E. Mason is an American historian specializing in the politics of slavery in the early American Republic. He is a professor at Brigham Young University.
Mason holds an undergrad degree from the University of Utah and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. One of the professors he studied under as a grad student was Ira Berlin. After completing his Ph.D. in 2002 he took a tenure track position as a professor of history at Eastern Michigan University. In the fall of 2003 he took a position as a professor of history at Brigham Young University. At BYU he has taught classes in American history, US Civil War History, the history of slavery in both the US and more broadly in Africa and the Atlantic World, a course on the history of Modern Britain and the course American Heritage. As of 2018 Mason reached the rank of full professor at BYU after previously being an associate professor and an assistant professor.
Mason and his wife Stacie are the parents of three daughters. Mason is a brother of the historian and religious studies scholar Patrick Q. Mason. Mason is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has served in various callings in the church including as a stake mission president.
Mason has written two books Slavery and Politics in the Early Republic and Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (2016). Slavery and Politics in the Early Republic focuses on why the Federalists came to oppose slavery and argues it was an early manifestation of political opposition to the power of slave owners. [1] It was ground breaking in arguing that slavery had a significant role in US politics before the 1819 debate over the admission of Missouri as a state. > [2]
Mason was also an editor (along with David Waldstreicher) of the 2017 book John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary. [3] This work gives perspective on the change in thoughts on how to use political power to oppose slavery experienced by John Quincy Adams over time. [4] Mason also edited the 2008 book Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation with John Craig Hammond. In a review A. Glen Crothers argued that this was a truly high quality collection of essays on the subject. [5] He also edited Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion with Katheryn P. Viens and Conrad E. Wright which was published in 2015 and a new edition of Edward Kimber's The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson edited with Nicholas Mason.
Mason has also been involved with the organization Historians Against Slavery, where he is a co-director. [6] In this position he works to coordinate the efforts of activists and scholars to end modern forms of slavery and human trafficking.
John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador and also as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and later, in the mid-1830s, became affiliated with the Whig Party.
Abigail Adams was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. She was a founder of the United States, and was both the first second lady and second first lady of the United States, although such titles were not used at the time. She and Barbara Bush are the only two women in American history who were both married to a U.S. president and the mother of a U.S. president.
Dallin Harris Oaks is an American religious leader and former jurist and academic who since 2018 has been the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984. Currently, he is the second most senior apostle by years of service and is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The National Republican Party, also known as the Anti-Jacksonian Party or simply Republicans, was a political party in the United States which evolved from a conservative-leaning faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that supported John Quincy Adams in the 1824 presidential election.
Charles Francis Adams Sr. was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat. As United States Minister to the United Kingdom during the American Civil War, Adams was crucial to Union efforts to prevent British recognition of the Confederate States of America and maintain European neutrality to the utmost extent. Adams also featured in national and state politics before and after the Civil War.
Leonard James Arrington was an American author, academic and the founder of the Mormon History Association. He is known as the "Dean of Mormon History" and "the Father of Mormon History" because of his many influential contributions to the field. Since 1842, he was the first non-general authority Church Historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1972 to 1982, and was director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History from 1982 until 1986.
Marcus Morton was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician from Taunton, Massachusetts. He served two terms as the governor of Massachusetts and several months as Acting Governor following the death in 1825 of William Eustis. He served for 15 years as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, all the while running unsuccessfully as a Democrat for governor. He finally won the 1839 election, acquiring exactly the number of votes required for a majority win over Edward Everett. After losing the 1840 and 1841 elections, he was elected in a narrow victory in 1842.
John Davis was an American lawyer, businessman and politician from Massachusetts. He spent 25 years in public service, serving in both houses of the United States Congress and for three non-consecutive years as Governor of Massachusetts. Because of his reputation for personal integrity he was known as "Honest John" Davis.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian specializing in early America and the history of women, and a professor at Harvard University. Her approach to history has been described as a tribute to "the silent work of ordinary people". Ulrich has also been a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Her most famous book, A Midwife’s Tale, was later the basis for a PBS documentary film.
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips was an American historian who largely defined the field of the social and economic studies of the history of the Antebellum South and slavery in the U.S. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves. He concluded that plantation slavery produced great wealth, but was a dead end, economically, that left the South bypassed by the industrial revolution underway in the North.
The Slave Power, or Slavocracy, referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period. Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealthy slaveholders had seized political control of their states and were trying to take over the federal government illegitimately to expand and protect slavery. The claim was later used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854–55 to oppose the expansion of slavery.
The Second Party System was the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to early 1854, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest, beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by Election Day turnouts, rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.
Mormon studies is the interdisciplinary academic study of the beliefs, practices, history and culture of individuals and denominations belonging to the Latter Day Saint movement, a religious movement associated with the Book of Mormon, though not all churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement identify with the terms Mormon or Mormonism. Denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far the largest, as well as the Community of Christ (CoC) and other smaller groups, include some categorized under the umbrella term Mormon fundamentalism.
Like most contemporaries, John Quincy Adams's views on slavery evolved over time. He never joined the movement called "abolitionist" by historians—the one led by William Lloyd Garrison—because it demanded the immediate abolition of slavery and insisted it was a sin to enslave people. Further, abolitionism meant disunion and Adams was a staunch champion of American nationalism and union.
Reid Larkin Neilson is the assistant academic vice president (AAVP) for religious scholarly publications at Brigham Young University (BYU). He was the Assistant Church Historian and Recorder for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2015 to 2019, and the managing director of the church's history department from 2010 to 2019.
The following is a list and discussion of scholarly resources relating to John Adams.
The following is a list of important scholarly resources related to John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States.
Civil rights and Mormonism have been intertwined since the religion's start, with founder Joseph Smith writing on slavery in 1836. Initial Mormon converts were from the north of the United States and opposed slavery. This caused contention in the slave state of Missouri, and the church began distancing itself from abolitionism and justifying slavery based on the Bible. During this time, several slave owners joined the church, and brought their enslaved people with them when they moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. The church adopted scriptures which teach against influencing slaves to be "dissatisfied with their condition" as well as scriptures which teach that "all are alike unto God." As mayor of Nauvoo, Smith prohibited Black people from holding office, joining the Nauvoo Legion, voting or marrying whites; but, as president of the church Black people became members and several Black men were ordained to the priesthood. Also during this time, Smith began his presidential campaign on a platform for the government to buy slaves into freedom over several years. He was killed during his presidential campaign.
Slavery as a positive good in the United States was the prevailing view of Southern politicians and intellectuals just before the American Civil War, as opposed to seeing it as a crime against humanity or a necessary evil. They defended the legal enslavement of people for their labor as a benevolent, paternalistic institution with social and economic benefits, an important bulwark of civilization, and a divine institution similar or superior to the free labor in the North.
Catherine Allgor is an American historian focusing on women and early American history; she has written and lectured extensively on Dolley Madison and the founding generation of American women. Since 2017 she has served as the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Previously Allgor was appointed to the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation by President Barack Obama and has served as the Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Formerly she was a Professor of History and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside, and has taught at Claremont McKenna College, Harvard University, and Simmons University. Allgor was a Frances Perkins Scholar at Mount Holyoke College and received her PhD from Yale University where she was awarded the Yale Teaching Award. Her dissertation was awarded best dissertation in American history at Yale and received the Lerner-Scott Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. Women's History.