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"]
I. The crisis of the new order. -- American democracy in a revolutionary age -- The Republican interest and the self-created democracy -- The making of Jeffersonian democracy -- Jefferson's two presidencies -- Nationalism and the War of 1812 -- II. Democracy ascendant. -- The era of bad feelings -- Slavery, compromise, and democratic politics -- The politics of moral improvement -- The aristocracy and democracy of America -- The Jackson era: uneasy beginnings -- Radical democracies -- 1832: Jackson's crucial year -- Banks, abolitionists, and the equal rights democracy -- "The republic has degenerated into a democracy" -- The politics of hard times -- Whigs, Democrats, and democracy -- III. Slavery and the crisis of American democracy. -- Whig debacle, Democratic confusion -- Antislavery, annexation, and the advent of young Hickory -- The bitter fruits of Manifest Destiny -- War, slavery, and the American 1848 -- Political truce, uneasy consequences -- The truce collapses -- A nightmare broods over society -- The faith that right makes might -- The Iliad of all our woes.
Summary
Political historian Wilentz traces an arc from the earliest days of the Republic to the opening shots of the Civil War, showing how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy. He brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontent--two starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the South--and the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution.--From publisher description.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 467-498) and index.
Contents
The newspaper-based political system of the nineteenth-century United States -- The printing trade in early American politics -- The two national Gazettes and the beginnings of newspaper politics -- Benjamin Franklin Bache and the price of partisanship -- The background and failure of the sedition Act -- Charles Holt's generation: from commercial printers to political professionals -- The expansion of the Republican newspaper network, 1798-1800 -- A presence in the public sphere: William Duane and the triumph of newspaper politics -- The new conventional wisdom: consolidating and expanding a newspaper-based political system -- The federalists strike back -- Improving on the Sedition Act: press freedom and political culture after 1800 -- The "tyranny of printers" in Jeffersonian Philadelphia -- Ordinary editors and everyday politics: how the system worked -- Newspaper editors and the reconstruction of party politics.
Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine. Volume 25, Folk Festival Supplement (Summer 1976), p. 48-56Lancaster History Library - Periodical Article905.748 PDF v. 25
This essay provides contextual information concerning how the English actually hired the soldiers and why the German princes, and not other nations who were asked, were willing to sell their men to English. It also discusses how the English and German public reacted to the hiring of German soldiers.
American convention for promoting the abolition of slavery and improving the condition of the African race at Philadelphia, in October, 1819, to the people of the United States
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America; : being the second session of the Second Congress, begun and held at the city of Philadelphia, November 5th, 1792, and in the seventeenth year of the sovereignty of the said United States
Second Congress, 2nd Session: from 5 November 1792 to 2 March 1793.
Speech of President Washington to Congress, Nov. 6, 1792: p. 5-9.
Signed on p. 89: Samuel A. Otis, secretary [of the Senate].
Signatures: [A]² B-2B².
Appendix: Titles of the acts passed at the second session of the Second Congress of the United States, begun and held at Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania, on Monday the 5th day of November 1792. -- Bills originated during the session, but were either rejected or postponed. -- The classes of the Senators of the United States, on the 4th day of March 1793.
