The Federal Union

For other uses, see Federal Union (disambiguation).
The Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1877
First edition hardcover
Authors
Original titleThe Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1865
LanguageEnglish
SubjectHistory
Published
  • 1937 (1st ed.)
  • 1949 (2nd ed.)
  • 1957 (3rd ed.)
  • 1964 (4th ed.)
  • 1970 (5th ed.)
PublisherHoughton Mifflin
Publication placeUnited States
ISBN978-0-395-04620-3
OCLC855172180

The Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1877 (originally published as The Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1865) is history of the United States written by John D. Hicks, George E. Mowry and Robert E. Burke. First published in 1937, it covered the period from the discovery of the Americas in 1492 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Four revised editions followed that also covered the Reconstruction Era up to 1877, and accordingly were published with an updated subtitle. The fifth and final edition appeared in 1970.[1][2]

The Federal Union was primarily written as a university-level textbook, and was published with accompanying manuals for instructors[3] and for students.[4] It was the first of a two-volume set. The second volume was entitled The American Nation: 1865 to the Present. An abridged one-volume edition first appeared in 1946 as A Short History of American Democracy.[5]

The book was aimed at undergraduate students, other readers appreciated its qualities. For example, historian George Fort Milton admired Hicks's "capacity for extraordinary compression without at the same time either getting the style too bare-bones for pleasurable reading; or the facts too black-and-white for the necessary implications of gradations of gray."[6]

  1. ^ Hicks, John Donald; Mowry, George Edwin; Burke, Robert Eugene (1970). The Federal Union: a History of the United States to 1877 (5th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  2. ^ "Formats and Editions of 'The Federal Union: a history of the United States to 1865'". WorldCat.org. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  3. ^ Hicks, John Donald; Berg, Harry D (1956). Instructor's Manual to Accompany The Federal Union, Second Edition and The American Nation, Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
  4. ^ Hicks, John Donald (1957). Student's Manual to Accompany The Federal Union. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  5. ^ John Donald Hicks (1949). A Short History of American Democracy. Houghton Mifflin Company.
  6. ^ Ian Tyrrell (2005). Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890-1970. University of Chicago Press. p. 56. ISBN 9780226821931.