Download or read book Alexander Robey Shepherd written by John P. Richardson and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Alexander Robey Shepherd, John P. Richardson gives us the first full-length biography of his subject, who as Washington, D.C.’s, public works czar (1871–74) built the infrastructure of the nation’s capital in a few frenetic years after the Civil War. The story of Shepherd is also the story of his hometown after that cataclysm, which left the city with churned-up streets, stripped of its trees, and exhausted. An intrepid businessman, Shepherd became president of Washington’s lower house of delegates at twenty-seven. Garrulous and politically astute, he used every lever to persuade Congress to realize Peter L’Enfant’s vision for the capital. His tenure produced paved and graded streets, sewer systems, trees, and gaslights, and transformed the fetid Washington Canal into one of the city’s most stately avenues. After bankrupting the city, a chastened Shepherd left in 1880 to develop silver mines in western Mexico, where he lived out his remaining twenty-two years. In Washington, Shepherd worked at the confluence of race, party, region, and urban development, in a microcosm of the United States. Determined to succeed at all costs, he helped force Congress to accept its responsibility for maintenance of its stepchild, the nation’s capital city.
Download or read book The Unveiling of a Statue to the Memory of Alexander R Shepherd in Front of the District Building Washington D C May 3 1909 written by Shepherd Memorial Committee (Washington, D.C.) and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Silver of the Sierra Madre written by John Mason Hart and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the great barranca known today as Copper Canyon, the small mining town of Batopilas once experienced a silver bonanza among the largest ever known. American investors, believing that Mexico offered an unexploited cornucopia, began purchasing mines in the Sierra Madre, seeking to expand their hold on natural resources outside U.S. borders. From 1861 until the Revolution of 1910, the men of the Batopilas Mining Company ruled the region using their wealth, armed might, and extensive connections. The technology, industrialism, and politics their interests brought to this remote community tied the Tarahumara, Yaqui, Mayo, and other peoples of the barrancas directly to the economies of the United States and China. Local society was revolutionized, and a dramatic tapestry of human interactions was created. Based on many volumes of mining company records, The Silver of the Sierra Madre exposes the mentality and methods of mine owners John Robinson and Alexander “Boss” Shepherd, vividly detailing their exploitation of the people and the natural resources of Chihuahua. Hart aptly demonstrates the human and financial losses resulting from President Porfirio Díaz’s development programs, which relied on foreign investors, foreign managers, and foreign technology. This unprecedented work also provides a highly interesting ethnographic and social description of one of the least-known areas of Mexico. It is a tale of power and desperation, respect and arrogance, adventure and tragedy, and, ultimately, triumph and survival.
Download or read book Empire and Revolution written by John Mason Hart and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-01-10 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is an extraordinarily important history of both U.S.-Mexico relations and of the political, economic, social, and cultural activities of Americans in Mexico."—Friedrich Katz, author of The Life and Times of Pancho Villa "Empire and Revolution is empowering as well as informative, providing a detailed record and judicious interpretation of the protean relations between the United States and Mexico. As John Mason Hart convincingly narrates, the association is of dynamic importance for people of both countries. While there have been studies on discrete parts and periods of the U.S.-Mexico relation, this book charts and anchors the relation globally. Hart allows the reader intellectual as well as imaginative insight into the multifaceted social, cultural, and political reality of the sharing of North America—then, now, and in the future."—Juan Gomez-Quinones, author of Mexican-American Labor, 1790-1990
Download or read book Records of the Columbia Historical Society Washington D C written by Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.) and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Writings on American History written by and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Song to My City written by Carol Lancaster and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1 Why Washington, DC? -- 2 The History and Politics -- 3 Natural Washington -- 4 Cityscape -- 5 Three People Who Made the City -- 6 Washingtonians -- 7 Toward the City's Future -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y
Download or read book Washington written by Tom Lewis and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation's capital: ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions and compromises, Washington has been, from its beginnings, the stage on which our national dramas have played out. In Washington, the historian Tom Lewis paints a sweeping portrait of the capital city whose internal conflicts and promise have mirrored those of America writ large. Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city "en grande" members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city's progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington's Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I "Bonus Army" veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. "It is our national center," Frederick Douglass once said of Washington, DC; "it belongs to us, and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny." Interweaving the story of the city's physical transformation with a nuanced account of its political, economic, and social evolution, Lewis tells the powerful history of Washington, DC " the site of our nation's highest ideals and some of our deepest failures.
Download or read book Nature and History in the Potomac Country written by James D. Rice and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How environmental forces, and human responses to them, profoundly shaped both Native American and colonial life along the Potomac River. James D. Rice’s fresh study of the Potomac River basin begins with a mystery. Why, when the whole of the region offered fertile soil and excellent fishing and hunting, was nearly three-quarters of the land uninhabited on the eve of colonization? Rice wonders how the existence of this no man’s land influenced nearby Native American and, later, colonial settlements. Did it function as a commons, as a place where all were free to hunt and fish? Or was it perceived as a strange and hostile wilderness? Rice discovers environmental factors at the center of the story. Making use of extensive archaeological and anthropological research, as well as the vast scholarship on farming practices in the colonial period, he traces the region’s history from its earliest known habitation. With exceptionally vivid prose, Rice makes clear the implications of unbridled economic development for the forests, streams, and wetlands of the Potomac River basin. With what effects, Rice asks, did humankind exploit and then alter the landscape and the quality of the river’s waters? Equal parts environmental, Native American, and colonial history, Nature and History in the Potomac Country is a useful and innovative study of the Potomac River, its valley, and its people.
Download or read book Massachusetts Avenue Architecture written by United States. Commission of Fine Arts and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Massachusetts Avenue Architecture Northwest Washington District of Columbia written by United States. Commission of Fine Arts and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nation s Metropolis written by Royce Hanson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation’s Metropolis describes how the national capital region functions as a metropolitan political economy. Its authors distinguish aspects of the Washington region that reflect its characteristics as a national capital from those common to most other metropolitan regions and to other capitals. To do so, they employ an interdisciplinary approach that draws from economics, political science, sociology, geography, and history. Royce Hanson and Harold Wolman focus on four major themes: the federal government as the region’s basic industry and its role in economic, physical, and political development; race as a core force in the development of the metropolis; the mismatch of the governance and economy of the national capital region; and the conundrum of achieving fully democratic governance for Washington, DC. Critical regional issues and policy problems are analyzed in the context of these themes, including poverty, inequality, education, housing, transportation, water supply, and governance. The authors conclude that the institutions and practices that accrued over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are inadequate for dealing effectively with the issues confronting the city and the region in the twenty-first. The accumulation of problems arising from the unique role of the federal government and the persistent problem of racial inequality has been compounded by failure to resolve the conundrum of governance for the District of Columbia. They recommend rethinking the governance of the entire region. While many books are concerned with the city of Washington, DC, Nation’s Metropolis is the only book focused on the development and political economy of the metropolitan region as a whole. It will engage readers interested in the national capital, metropolitan development more generally, and the growing comparative literature on national capitals.
Download or read book Crestwood written by David Swerdloff and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 200 photographs, maps, documents and news articles, Crestwood: 300 acres, 300 years reveals how a leafy retreat above the commotion of the capital city affected and reflected the historic events of Washington. Crestwood has been a recognizable geographic area beginning with the first survey of an estate called Argyle Cowall and Lorn in 1720. Among the people traveling to and through the neighborhood over the centuries have been Native American tool makers, Civil War soldiers, United States presidents, unemployed protest marchers and horse racing fans. Clues to the community's history can be found in Crestwood's streets and alleys, in its earliest homes and remnants of older structures, and in the annals of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Download or read book The Avenue of the Presidents written by Mary Cable and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Records of the Columbia Historical Society Washington D C written by Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.) and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Samuel Shellabarger s Civil War 1817 1896 written by William A. Kinnison and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2022-01-26 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Mud Run, near the recently abandoned Shawnee Indian village of Pickewe, Samuel Shellabarger was born in a log cabin on December 10, 1817. It was in the middle of an endless Ohio forest, a world away from civilization. Indians said a bird could fly from the Ohio River to Lake Erie never having to land on the ground. Mud Run was so deep into the forest that it seemed unlikely that anyone lost there could in a single lifetime win national fame and fortune. There were clues in Samuel Shellabargers early years that suggest he might surely rise above this wilderness. Shellabargers inspiration for a new America was a religious belief that "God had created of one blood all the peoples of the earth" and all were equal in God's sight, whether he or his father wanted it to be so or not. The nation, he believed, for its own sake, should embrace equality before the law or dire consequences would result. The nation's founders had declared that all men were equal but failed to achieve equality in practice. His generation was called upon to correct the mistake. But they let the opportunity slip from their grasp and created instead a new America he described as, "not fit to be." Samuel Shellabarger did not become famous, though he almost did. He became instead a footnote in a forgotten story that the nation should have remembered. And America, he believed, missed the only chance it might ever have to preserve democracy in the nation.
Download or read book An Example for All the Land written by Kate Masur and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Example for All the Land reveals Washington, D.C. as a laboratory for social policy in the era of emancipation and the Civil War. In this panoramic study, Kate Masur provides a nuanced account of African Americans' grassroots activism, municipal politics, and the U.S. Congress. She tells the provocative story of how black men's right to vote transformed local affairs, and how, in short order, city reformers made that right virtually meaningless. Bringing the question of equality to the forefront of Reconstruction scholarship, this widely praised study explores how concerns about public and private space, civilization, and dependency informed the period's debate over rights and citizenship.
