Author: John BrownPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Slavery
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Boats Against the Current
Author: Lewis PerryPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742522503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Boats Against the Current provides a fascinating account of how American culture emerged from the sheltered, elitist world of the eighteenth century into the dynamic, turbulent civilization that reached full bloom after the Civil War. The antebellum years were times of flux and change, years of a society rushing into the western wilds, muscular and ambitious, yet haunted by uncertainty about its future and its past. Renowned scholar Lewis Perry begins his study with a fresh look at Andrew Jackson--vividly recreating a time when Americans, feeling their ties to the past disintegrating, fostered a new fascination with history. Then Perry introduces us to the observations of such articulate foreign travelers as Alexis de Tocqueville and Fredrika Bremer. He deftly weaves together these writers' perspectives to provide a fascinating look at our emergent nation. Here, too, are the women of the cities and frontier, the peddlers, preachers, and showmen, along with such writers as Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier, and Parker. Perry brings these personalities and writings together to show us how early nineteenth century America saw itself, in both its promise and its fears. Now available for the first time in paperback, Boats Against the Current offers a brilliant portrait of a society in the midst of change, expansion, and reflection about its own future and past. Written by one of our leading intellectual historians, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of the emergence of modern American culture.
Slave Life in Georgia
Author: John BrownU.S. History
Author: P. Scott CorbettPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1886
Book Description
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
Navigating Failure
Author: Edward J. BalleisenPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807875503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
The "self-made" man is a familiar figure in nineteenth-century American history. But the relentless expansion of market relations that facilitated such stories of commercial success also ensured that individual bankruptcy would become a prominent feature in the nation's economic landscape. In this ambitious foray into the shifting character of American capitalism, Edward Balleisen explores the economic roots and social meanings of bankruptcy, assessing the impact of widespread insolvency on the evolution of American law, business culture, and commercial society. Balleisen makes innovative use of the rich and previously overlooked court records generated by the 1841 Federal Bankruptcy Act, building his arguments on the commercial biographies of hundreds of failed business owners. He crafts a nuanced account of how responses to bankruptcy shaped two opposing elements of capitalist society in mid-nineteenth-century America--an entrepreneurial ethos grounded in risk taking and the ceaseless search for new markets, new products, and new ways of organizing economic activity, and an urban, middle-class sensibility increasingly averse to the dangers associated with independent proprietorship and increasingly predicated on salaried, white-collar employment.
Slavery, Southern Culture, and Education in Little Dixie, Missouri, 1820-1860
Author: Jeffrey C. StonePublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135516162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 120
Book Description
This dissertation examines the cultural and educational history of central Missouri between 1820 and 1860, and in particular, the issue of master-slave relationships and how they affected education (broadly defined as the transmission of Southern culture). Although Missouri had one of the lowest slave populations during the Antebellum period, Central Missouri - or what became known as Little Dixie - had slave percentages that rivaled many regions and counties of the Deep South. However, slaves and slave owners interacted on a regular basis, which affected cultural transmission in the areas of religion, work, and community. Generally, slave owners in Little Dixie showed a pattern of paternalism in all these areas, but the slaves did not always accept their masters' paternalism, and attempted to forge a life of their own.
Antebellum American Culture
Author: David Brion DavisPublisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271016467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502
Book Description
First published in 1979, this volume offers students and teachers a unique view of American history prior to the Civil War. Distinguished historian David Brion Davis has chosen a diverse array of primary sources that show the actual concerns, hopes, fears, and understandings of ordinary antebellum Americans. He places these sources within a clear interpretive narrative that brings the documents to life and highlights themes that social and cultural historians have brought to our attention in recent years. Beginning with the family and the issue of socialization and influence, the units move on to struggles over access to wealth and power; the plight of &"outsiders&" in an &"open&" society; and ideals of progress, perfection, and mission. The reader of this volume hears a great diversity of voices but also grasps the unities that survived even the Civil War.
Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture
Author: Sarah N. RothPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139992805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331
Book Description
In the decades leading to the Civil War, popular conceptions of African American men shifted dramatically. The savage slave featured in 1830s' novels and stories gave way by the 1850s to the less-threatening humble black martyr. This radical reshaping of black masculinity in American culture occurred at the same time that the reading and writing of popular narratives were emerging as largely feminine enterprises. In a society where women wielded little official power, white female authors exalted white femininity, using narrative forms such as autobiographies, novels, short stories, visual images, and plays, by stressing differences that made white women appear superior to male slaves. This book argues that white women, as creators and consumers of popular culture media, played a pivotal role in the demasculinization of black men during the antebellum period, and consequently had a vital impact on the political landscape of antebellum and Civil War-era America through their powerful influence on popular culture.
Manifest Destiny's Underworld
Author: Robert E. MayPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
This fascinating study sheds new light on antebellum America's notorious "filibusters--the freebooters and adventurers who organized or participated in armed invasions of nations with whom the United States was formally at peace. Offering the first full-scale analysis of the filibustering movement, Robert May relates the often-tragic stories of illegal expeditions into Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries and details surprising numbers of aborted plots, as well. May investigates why thousands of men joined filibustering expeditions, how they were financed, and why the U.S. government had little success in curtailing them. Surveying antebellum popular media, he shows how the filibustering phenomenon infiltrated the American psyche in newspapers, theater, music, advertising, and literature. Condemned abroad as pirates, frequently in language strikingly similar to modern American denunciations of foreign terrorists, the filibusters were often celebrated at home as heroes who epitomized the spirit of Manifest Destiny. May concludes by exploring the national consequences of filibustering, arguing that the practice inflicted lasting damage on U.S. relations with foreign countries and contributed to the North-South division over slavery that culminated in the Civil War.
Family Or Freedom
Author: Emily WestPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081313692X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
In the antebellum South, the presence of free people of color was problematic to the white population. Not only were they possible assistants to enslaved people and potential members of the labor force; their very existence undermined popular justifications for slavery. It is no surprise that, by the end of the Civil War, nine Southern states had enacted legal provisions for the "voluntary" enslavement of free blacks. What is surprising to modern sensibilities and perplexing to scholars is that some individuals did petition to rescind their freedom. Family or Freedom investigates the incentives for free African Americans living in the antebellum South to sacrifice their liberty for a life in bondage. Author Emily West looks at the many factors influencing these dire decisions -- from desperate poverty to the threat of expulsion -- and demonstrates that the desire for family unity was the most important consideration for African Americans who submitted to voluntary enslavement. The first study of its kind to examine the phenomenon throughout the South, this meticulously researched volume offers the most thorough exploration of this complex issue to date.
The Industrial Book, 1840-1880
Author: Scott E. CasperPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807830852
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Book Description
V. 1. The colonial book in the Atlantic world: This book carries the interrelated stories of publishing, writing, and reading from the beginning of the colonial period in America up to 1790. v. 2 An Extensive Republic: This volume documents the development of a distinctive culture of print in the new American republic. v. 3. The industrial book 1840-1880: This volume covers the creation, distribution, and uses of print and books in the mid-nineteenth century, when a truly national book trade emerged. v. 4. Print in Motion: In a period characterized by expanding markets, national consolidation, and social upheaval, print culture picked up momentum as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. v. 5. The Enduring Book: This volume addresses the economic, social, and cultural shifts affecting print culture from Word War II to the present.