Part 1. A growing rivalry between the North and South, 1846-1854. The Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, and the election of 1848 ; The Compromise of 1850 ; The fugitive slave controversy, the election of 1852, and growing sectionalism -- Part 2. Southern successes, Northern anxieties, 1854-1857. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, bleeding Kansas, and the Republican Party ; The elction of 1856 and its aftermath -- Part 3. The Union comes apart, 1857-1861. Dred Scott, Kansas, and the events of 1858 ; John Brown's raid, party conventions, the election of 1860, and secession.
Summary
Voices from the Gathering Storm explains the dramatic change in thinking about the nature and value of the American Union from 1846 to1861 which impelled citizens from 11 southern states to declare independence and the remaining 22 states to fight the bloodiest war in the nation's history. This reader tells the story of seventeen Northerners and Southerners who lived through the critical fifteen years prior to the Civil War. In their letters and diaries, they describe in their own words what it was like to live during the sectional crisis and the coming of the war. [from the publisher]
Young Center books in Anabaptist and Pietist studies
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction : religion, religious minorities, and the American Civil War -- Politics and peoplehood in a restless republic -- Our country is at war -- Conscription, combat, and Virginia's "war of self-defense," 1861-1862 -- Negotiation and notoriety in Pennsylvania, 1862 -- Patterns of peace and patriotism in the Midwest -- The fighting comes north, 1862-1863 -- Thaddeus Stevens and Pennsylvania Mennonite politics -- Did Jesus Christ teach men war? -- Resistance and revenge in Virginia, 1863-1864 -- Burning the Shenandoah Valley -- Reconstructed nation, reconstructed peoplehood.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [419]-478) and index.
Summary
"They began their existence as everyday objects, but in the hands of award-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, fourteen domestic items from preindustrial America-ranging from a linen tablecloth to an unfinished sock-relinquish their stories and offer profound insights into our history.In an age when even meals are rarely made from scratch, homespun easily acquires the glow of nostalgia. The objects Ulrich investigates unravel those simplified illusions, revealing important clues to the culture and people who made them. Ulrich uses an Indian basket to explore the uneasy coexistence of native and colonial Americans. A piece of silk embroidery reveals racial and class distinctions, and two old spinning wheels illuminate the connections between colonial cloth-making and war. Pulling these divergent threads together, Ulrich demonstrates how early Americans made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert their identities, shape relationships, and create history." [from the publisher]
Guide to the microfilm of the miscellaneous manuscripts of the Revolutionary War era, 1771-1791 (manuscript group 275) in the Pennsylvania State Archives, 1 roll : a microfilm project of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-361).
Summary
Examines how the spiritual beliefs and vision of America's founders shaped the country's history and culture and assesses the influence of the spiritual traditions of African slaves, Native Americans, and early mystical communities on colonial America.
"An eclectic mixture of autobiography, U.S. intellectual history, philosophical inquiry, and spiritual wonderment, this extended meditative essay examines "America as an Idea" by uncovering the latent wisdom of many of its shining lights: Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman. Needleman, a philosophy professor and author of Money and the Meaning of Life, reinterprets the lives of each of these leaders in the context of their strong spiritual beliefs and their contributions to unifying a deeply divided body politic. The author liberally quotes classical philosophers, historians, biographers, and the subjects themselves, and he often interjects his own life experiences and spiritual beliefs into his loosely structured narrative. Needleman also tackles what he considers to be America's two most grievous historical blemishes: the murder of Native American culture and slavery and suggests how America should confront these wrongs." [from the "Library Journal"]
Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-218) and index.
Contents
Theater, nation, and state in early America -- Cato and company : a genealogy of performance -- Free-born poeples : the politics of professional theater in early America -- A school for patriots : colonial college theater -- Bellicose letters : propaganda plays of the Revolution -- Epilogue : Post-revolutionary patriotism and the American theater.
Summary
Performing Patriotism examines the role of theatrical performance and printed drama in the development of early American political culture. Building on the eighteenth-century commonplace that the theater could be a school for public virtue, Jason Shaffer illustrates the connections between the popularity of theatrical performances in eighteenth-century British North America and the British and American national identities that colonial and Revolutionary Americans espoused. The result is a wide-ranging survey of eighteenth-century American theater history and print culture. [from the publisher]
