Includes bibliographical references (p. [341]-376) and index.
Contents
A new year and a fresh start -- Politics and the social milieu -- James Buchanan : President-elect -- The President, the Chief Justice, and a slave named Scott -- The heart of the matter : slavery and sectionalism -- Popular sovereignty, Kansas style -- Dog days -- Flush times and an autumn panic -- Northern politics : the parties in equipoise -- Politics as farce : the Lecompton Constitution -- Politics as tragedy : Buchanan's decision -- 1858 : the fruits of Lecompton.
Summary
It was a year packed with unsettling events. The Panic of 1857 closed every bank in New York City, ruined thousands of businesses, and caused widespread unemployment among industrial workers. The Mormons in Utah Territory threatened rebellion when federal troops approached with a non-Morman governor to replace Brigham Young. The Supreme Court outraged northernRepublicans and abolitionists with the Dred Scott decision ("a breathtaking example of judicial activism"). etc.
The colonies and their churches -- The libertarians: Jefferson and Madison -- The icons: Franklin and Washington -- The philosophies: Adams and Jefferson -- The churches and the people.
Lineage and family in colonial America -- The rise of American genealogy -- Antebellum blood and vanity -- "Upon the love of country and pride of race" -- Pedigrees and the market -- Everybody's search for roots.
Summary
Traces the history of genealogy in the United States, from its early preoccupation with social status and lineage, to a nineteenth-century search for Anglo-Saxon roots, to a twentieth-century acceptance of diversity and the introduction of DNA technology.
Folklore and American Studies, Pennsylvania State University,
Date of Publication
1989
Physical Description
volume 6 28 cm
Publication Frequency
Annual, 1990-
Dates of Publication
Vol. 6, no. 2 Fall 1989
Contents
"The Clapboard Lifted:" Henry Chapman Mercer and the origin of an American log building style / by Scott H. Suter. pp. 76-88. "The Mercer Museum and the Landis Valley Farm Museum : exhibitions of typology and ethnicity in Pennsylvania." / by Ruth Ann Cary. pp. 38-75.
Chapters: The liberal tradition -- The English jurisprudential tradition -- The literature of political economy and improvement -- The civic humanist tradition -- The literature of enlightenment -- The Scottish moral and historical tradition -- American voices
Summary
This publication shows the importance of "The Library Company" in Philadelphia and its books during the formation of the United States. The books were used by the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to create a constitution for the nation. The library held books of all political theories of the time,as well as books about law, history, etc. This book describes the various bodies of knowledge available there to the founders.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-240) and index.
Contents
1. Constitutionalism, Capitalism, and Antebellum Society -- 2. Constitutionalism and the Associational Economy -- 3. Taxation and Capitalist Accountability -- 4. Taking Property -- 5. Railroad Accidents and Capitalist Accountability.
Summary
Throughout much of American history the relationship between the Constitution and capitalism has been contentious. Recently, however, consensus has replaced conflict as the framework for understanding capitalism's relationship to constitutional development. Thus the recurrent struggles between producers and capitalists (financiers, speculators, corporations, and the like) over the constitutionality of capitalistic practices have come to be viewed simply as politically manageable tensions within a liberal-capitalist consensus. This study focuses on how antebellum constitutional law and principles responded to and shaped producers' appeals for protection from capitalists' predations. Placing the constitutional system's operation in the context of the nation's profound ideological and social conflicts, Tony A. Freyer suggests that the normative force of constitutional values often enabled pro-producer, protectionist policies to be enacted, despite an emerging corporate and mercantile capitalist consensus. The first chapter sets out a framework for understanding the social basis of constitutionalism and its policymaking impact between 1800 and 1860. Subsequent chapters employ this framework in the setting of the mid-Atlantic states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They focus on four principal policy areas: debtor-creditor relations, taxation, eminent domain, and railroad accidents. This mid-Atlantic region is intended to serve as a federal system in miniature, offering opportunities for comparative analysis. By illuminating the interplay between social conflict and constitutional institutions, the book reveals a policy-making process which was dynamic, reflecting a multiplicity of values and supporting diverse producer interests, many of which conflicted with those of corporate and mercantile capitalists. Freyer challenges established historical interpretations not only of social-class conflict but also of the Supreme Court under chief justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney, with particular regard to states' rights versus federal power and the growth of the Constitution's contract, commerce, and judicial clauses. Thus the book will be of interest not only to political scientists and to judges, lawyers, and professors of law but also to historians and general readers.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [187]-220) and index.
Contents
The Rights of Woman -- Female Politicians -- Patriotism and Partisanship -- Women and the "War of Politics" -- A Democracy--For Whom? -- Epilogue: Memory and Forgetting.
Summary
"The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. The debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, Rosemarie Zagarri explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson." "Spanning the first fifty years of the nation's history, Revolutionary Backlash uncovers women's forgotten role in early American politics and explores alternative meanings for the rise of democracy in the early United States."--BOOK JACKET.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [1181]-1201) and index.
Summary
"The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was represented at every level of American politics - local, state, and federal - in the years before the Civil War, and controlled the White House for eight of the twenty-two years that it existed. Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written - a monumental history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion."--BOOK JACKET.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 415-436) and index.
Contents
Young ambition -- The Great South Sea -- The deplorable expedition -- Most glorious hopes -- At sea -- The turning point -- Commodore of the Pacific -- Antarctica -- A new continent --- The cannibal isles -- Massacre at Mololo -- Mauna Loa -- The wreck of the Peacock -- Homeward bound -- Reckoning -- This thing called science -- Legacy.
Summary
In 1838, the U.S. government launched the largest discovery voyage the Western world had ever seen-6 sailing vessels and 346 men bound for the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Four years later, the U.S. Exploring Expedition returned with an astounding array of accomplishments and discoveries: 87,000 miles logged, 280 Pacific islands surveyed, 4,000 zoological specimens collected, including 2,000 new species, and the discovery of the continent of Antarctica. And yet at a human level, the project was a disaster-not only had 28 men died and 2 ships been lost, but a series of sensational courts-martial had also ensued that pitted the expedition's controversial leader, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, against almost every officer under his command. Though comparable in importance and breadth of success to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Ex. Ex. has been largely forgotten. Now, Nathaniel Philbrick re-creates this chapter of American maritime history in all its triumph and scandal. Sea of glory combines meticulous history with spellbinding human drama as it circles the globe from the palm-fringed beaches of the South Pacific to the treacherous waters off Antarctica and to the stunning beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and, finally, to a court-martial aboard a ship of the line anchored off New York City.