"None of the well-dressed crowd that gathered on the Hudson River side of Lower Manhattan on the hot afternoon of August 17, 1808, could have known the importance of the object they had come to see and, mostly, deride: Robert Fulton's new steamboat, the North River, the boat that is frequently - and wrongly - remembered as the Clermont. But, as Kirkpatrick Sale shows in this biography of Fulton, the North River's successful four-day round-trip to Albany proved a technology that would transform nineteenth-century America, open up the interior to huge waves of settlers, create and sustain industrial and plantation economies in the nation's heartland, and destroy the remaining Indian civilizations and most of the wild lands on which they depended. The North River's four-day trip introduced the machines and culture that marked the birth of the Industrial Revolution in America. The Fire of His Genius tells the story of the extraordinarily driven and ambitious inventor who brought all this about, probing into the undoubted genius of his mind but, too, laying bare the darker side of the man - and the darker side of the American dream that inspired him."--BOOK JACKET.
"Hosted by the Southern Lancaster County Historical Society and our many friends from Lancaster's "Southern End.'"
Contains local advertisements.
Contains bibliographic references.
Contents
Fulton's early years -- Southern Lancaster County Historical Society -- Events of the day -- Map of celebration events -- Robert Fulton the painter -- Index of advertisers -- Joseph Swift family -- Robert Fulton in Paris -- Robert Fulton's Clermont -- For further reading -- L. O. & S. Railroad at the centennial -- Press clippings from 1909 -- Committee members -- Clermont bicentennial sponsors.
