Download or read book Footloose in Jacksonian America written by Thomas Dionysius Clark and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journal entries from Scott's 1829-30 trip present a vivid picture of Jacksonian America and of the prominent people of the era. In the second half of the book, Clark traces the later life of this fascinating diarist.
Download or read book Democracy s Lawyer written by J. Roderick Heller III and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central political figure in the first post-Revolutionary generation, Felix Grundy (1775--1840) epitomized the "American democrat" who so famously fascinated Alexis de Tocqueville. Born and reared on the isolated frontier, Grundy rose largely by his own ability to become the Old Southwest's greatest criminal lawyer and one of the first radical political reformers in the fledgling United States. In Democracy's Lawyer, the first comprehensive biography of Grundy since 1940, J. Roderick Heller reveals how Grundy's life typifies the archetypal, post--founding fathers generation that forged America's culture and institutions. After his birth in Virginia, Grundy moved west at age five to the region that would become Kentucky, where he lost three brothers in Indian wars. He earned a law degree, joined the legislature, and quickly became Henry Clay's main rival. At age thirty-one, after rising to become chief justice of Kentucky, Grundy moved to Tennessee, where voters soon elected him to Congress. In Washington, Grundy proved so voracious a proponent of the War of 1812 that a popular slogan of the day blamed the war on "Madison, Grundy, and the Devil." A pivotal U.S. senator during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, Grundy also served as Martin Van Buren's attorney general and developed a close association with his law student and political protégé James K. Polk. Grundy championed the ideals of the American West, and as Heller demonstrates, his dominating belief -- equality in access to power -- motivated many of his political battles. Aristocratic federalism threatened the principles of the Revolution, Grundy asserted, and he opposed fetters on freedom of opportunity, whether from government or entrenched economic elites. Although widely known as a politician, Grundy achieved even greater fame as a criminal lawyer. Of the purported 185 murder defendants that he represented, only one was hanged. At a time when criminal trials served as popular entertainment, Grundy's mere appearance in a courtroom drew spectators from miles around, and his legal reputation soon spread nationwide. One nineteenth-century Nashvillian declared that Grundy "could stand on a street corner and talk the cobblestones into life." Shifting seamlessly within the worlds of law, entrepreneurship, and politics, Felix Grundy exemplified the questing, mobile society of early nineteenth-century America. With Democracy's Lawyer, Heller firmly establishes Grundy as a powerful player and personality in early American law and politics.
Download or read book The Trials of a Scold written by Jeff Biggers and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Trials of a Scold, by American Book Award-winning author Jeff Biggers, is a well-researched and passionate biography of Anne Royall, one of America's first female muckrakers, who was convicted as a "common scold" in 1829 in one of the most bizarre trials in the nation's history. Anne Royall was an American original, a stranger to fear, and one of the nation's most daring, impassioned, and indomitable social critics. A servant in the house of the man she would later marry, Royall read constantly and pursued an education that few women at that time had access to. When fifteen years later she was left widowed and destitute after her husband's family declared their marriage invalid, she turned to her writing, and to her political interests. Travelling from Alabama to Washington DC to Pennsylvania, Royall was a fiercely dedicated journalist. Her tenacity earned her the first presidential interview ever granted to a woman, but she acquired enemies for her scathing denouncement of the increasingly blurry lines between church and state. Royall's pioneering role as a chronicler, publisher, muckraker, and social commentator brought to light the timeless issues that still define the great American experience: religion and politics.
Download or read book Three Rivers written by Dan Lee and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-03-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kentucky is richly blessed with rivers. This book tells the stories of three of the most beautiful and historic: the Rolling Fork, the Nolin, and the Rough. Each is an unpredictable force of nature flowing through a land that varies from wide, sunny meadows to dark, rock-bound hollows.Chapters describe the people who lived in the river valleys, including pioneers, frontier preachers, a future president, cave explorers, Confederate and Union soldiers, desperate killers, hardscrabble farmers, and inspired visionaries. Sometimes they were wasteful and violent and vain; at other times they were inventive and graceful and kind. Their descendants realized that survival had come to mean something new: living in harmony with the land and the rivers.
Download or read book Appalachia written by John Alexander Williams and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-04-03 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart. Williams begins his story in the colonial era and describes the half-century of bloody warfare as migrants from Europe and their American-born offspring fought and eventually displaced Appalachia's Native American inhabitants. He depicts the evolution of a backwoods farm-and-forest society, its divided and unhappy fate during the Civil War, and the emergence of a new industrial order as railroads, towns, and extractive industries penetrated deeper and deeper into the mountains. Finally, he considers Appalachia's fate in the twentieth century, when it became the first American region to suffer widespread deindustrialization, and examines the partial renewal created by federal intervention and a small but significant wave of in-migration. Throughout the book, a wide range of Appalachian voices enlivens the analysis and reminds us of the importance of storytelling in the ways the people of Appalachia define themselves and their region.
Download or read book John Quincy Adams written by Paul E. Teed and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the standards that historians usually use to judge presidents, John Quincy Adams was a failure. Although better qualified for the office than any American of his generation, he served for only one term and was unable to accomplish any of the most cherished goals set forth so boldly at the beginning of his presidency. His election to the presidency in 1824 was itself fraught with controversy and charges of political corruption and he was soundly defeated in his bid for re-election by Andrew Jackson. To many contemporaries and even some historians, Adams has appeared completely out of touch with the democratic revolution that was transforming American life at the time. He seemed a relic of a discredited, eighteenth-century political world. Yet John Quincy Adams has not shared the fate of other presidential failures who have faded almost entirely from the national memory.
Download or read book Florida Founder William P DuVal written by James M. Denham and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length biography of the well-connected, but nearly forgotten frontier politician of antebellum America. The scion of a well-to-do Richmond, Virginia, family, William Pope DuVal (1784–1854) migrated to the Kentucky frontier as a youth in 1800. Settling in Bardstown, DuVal read law, served in Congress, and fought in the War of 1812. In 1822, largely because of the influence of his lifelong friend John C. Calhoun, President James Monroe appointed DuVal the first civil governor of the newly acquired Territory of Florida. Enjoying successive appointments from the Adams and Jackson administrations, DuVal founded Tallahassee and presided over the territory’s first twelve territorial legislative sessions, years that witnessed Middle Florida’s development into one of the Old Southwest’s most prosperous slave-based economies. Beginning with his personal confrontation with Miccosukee chief Neamathla in 1824 (an episode commemorated by Washington Irving), DuVal worked closely with Washington officials and oversaw the initial negotiations with the Seminoles. A perennial political appointee, DuVal was closely linked to national and territorial politics in antebellum America. Like other “Calhounites” who supported Andrew Jackson’s rise to the White House, DuVal became a casualty of the Peggy Eaton Affair and the Nullification Crisis. In fact he was replaced as Florida governor by Mrs. Eaton’s husband, John Eaton. After leaving the governor’s chair, DuVal migrated to Kentucky, lent his efforts to the cause of Texas Independence, and eventually returned to practice law and local politics in Florida. Throughout his career DuVal cultivated the arts of oratory and story-telling—skills essential to success in the courtrooms and free-for-all politics of the American South. Part frontiersman and part sophisticate, DuVal was at home in the wilds of Kentucky, Florida, Texas, and Washington City. He delighted in telling tall tales, jests, and anecdotes that epitomized America’s expansive, democratic vistas. Among those captivated by DuVal’s life and yarns were Washington Irving, who used DuVal’s tall tales as inspiration for his “The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood,” and James Kirke Paulding, whose “Nimrod Wildfire” shared Du Val’s brashness and bonhomie. “In large brushstrokes, but with great attention to detail, Denham embeds DuVal’s life in a wider portrait of the young Republic, and particularly in issues affecting the western states and the former Spanish borderlands Readers will find in this book a well-researched and well-written history that informs on many levels.” —The Historian “Relying on a variety of sources extending well beyond DuVal’s papers, Denham’s work provides an intriguing account of a southerner immersed in the dynamics of politics at both the local and national levels. The study will be a definitive must for any student of antebellum regional and national history.” —The Journal of Southern History
Download or read book Thomas D Clark of Kentucky written by John E. Kleber and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the flip of a coin, Thomas Dionysius Clark became intertwined in the vast history of Kentucky. In 1928, Clark received scholarships to both the University of Cincinnati and to the University of Kentucky. Kentucky won the coin toss and the claim to one of the South's eminent historians. In 1990, when the Kentucky General Assembly honored Clark by declaring him Kentucky's Historian Laureate for life, Governor Brereton Jones described Clark as "Kentucky's greatest treasure." Historian, advocate, educator, preservationist, publisher, writer, mentor, friend, Kentuckian—Dr. Clark has filled all these roles and more. Thomas D. Clark of Kentucky is a celebration of his life and careerby just a few of those who have felt his influence and shared his enthusiasm for his adopted home state of Kentucky.
Download or read book The True Mary Todd Lincoln written by Betty Boles Ellison and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-04-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new biography provides a startlingly different picture of Mary Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's wife. Preconceived myths about the former first lady are factually disproved. At times her judgment was faulty; in other instances it was brilliant. After her 1861 refurbishing of the Executive Mansion, she made no further furnishings purchases, only replacement items. The furniture she purchased is still in use and the Lincoln bed is well known. Committed to an insane asylum by her only surviving son, she organized, while under constant scrutiny, her friends in a skillfully successful scheme to obtain her freedom and resume control of her life and money. Mary Todd Lincoln had a brilliant mind, a caring heart and an exuberant personality and she was, in every aspect, a true partner to Abraham Lincoln.
Download or read book Gabriel s Rebellion written by Douglas R. Egerton and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gabriel's Rebellion tells the dramatic story of what was perhaps the most extensive slave conspiracy in the history of the American South. Douglas Egerton illuminates the complex motivations that underlay two related Virginia slave revolts: the first, in 1800, led by the slave known as Gabriel; and the second, called the 'Easter Plot,' instigated in 1802 by one of his followers. Although Gabriel has frequently been portrayed as a messianic, Samson-like figure, Egerton shows that he was a literate and highly skilled blacksmith whose primary goal was to destroy the economic hegemony of the 'merchants,' the only whites he ever identified as his enemies. According to Egerton, the social, political, and economic disorder of the Revolutionary era weakened some of the harsh controls that held slavery in place during colonial times. Emboldened by these conditions, a small number of literate slaves--most of them highly skilled artisans--planned an armed insurrection aimed at destroying slavery in Virginia. The intricate scheme failed, as did the Easter Plot that stemmed from it, and Gabriel and many of his followers were hanged. By placing the revolts within the broader context of the volatile political currents of the day, Egerton challenges the conventional understanding of race, class, and politics in the early days of the American republic.
Download or read book The Kentucky Anthology written by Wade Hall and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-12 with total page 898 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the official establishment of the Commonwealth, intrepid pioneers ventured west of the Allegheny Mountains into an expansive, alluring wilderness that they began to call Kentucky. After blazing trails, clearing plots, and surviving innumerable challenges, a few adventurers found time to pen celebratory tributes to their new homeland. In the two centuries that followed, many of the world’s finest writers, both native Kentuckians and visitors, have paid homage to the Bluegrass State with the written word. In The Kentucky Anthology, acclaimed author and literary historian Wade Hall has assembled an unprecedented and comprehensive compilation of writings pertaining to Kentucky and its land, people, and culture. Hall’s introductions to each author frame both popular and lesser-known selections in a historical context. He examines the major cultural and political developments in the history of the Commonwealth, finding both parallels and marked distinctions between Kentucky and the rest of the United States. While honoring the heritage of Kentucky in all its glory, Hall does not blithely turn away from the state’s most troubling episodes and institutions such as racism, slavery, and war. Hall also builds the argument, bolstered by the strength and significance of the collected writings, that Kentucky’s best writers compare favorably with the finest in the world. Many of the authors presented here remain universally renowned and beloved, while others have faded into the tides of time, waiting for rediscovery. Together, they guide the reader on a literary tour of Kentucky, from the mines to the rivers and from the deepest hollows to the highest peaks. The Kentucky Anthology traces the interests and aspirations, the achievements and failures and the comedies and tragedies that have filled the lives of generations of Kentuckians. These diaries, letters, speeches, essays, poems, and stories bring history brilliantly to life. Jesse Stuart once wrote, “If these United States can be called a body, Kentucky can be called its heart.” The Kentucky Anthology captures the rhythm and spirit of that heart in the words of its most remarkable chroniclers.
Download or read book The Kentucky Encyclopedia written by John E. Kleber and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 1082 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kentucky Encyclopedia's 2,000-plus entries are the work of more than five hundred writers. Their subjects reflect all areas of the commonwealth and span the time from prehistoric settlement to today's headlines, recording Kentuckians' achievements in art, architecture, business, education, politics, religion, science, and sports. Biographical sketches portray all of Kentucky's governors and U.S. senators, as well as note congressmen and state and local politicians. Kentucky's impact on the national scene is registered in the lives of such figures as Carry Nation, Henry Clay, Louis Brandeis, and Alben Barkley. The commonwealth's high range from writers Harriette Arnow and Jesse Stuart, reformers Laura Clay and Mary Breckinridge, and civil rights leaders Whitney Young, Jr., and Georgia Powers, to sports figures Muhammad Ali and Adolph Rupp and entertainers Loretta Lynn, Merle Travis, and the Everly Brothers. Entries describe each county and county seat and each community with a population above 2,500. Broad overview articles examine such topics as agriculture, segregation, transportation, literature, and folklife. Frequently misunderstood aspects of Kentucky's history and culture are clarified and popular misconceptions corrected. The facts on such subjects as mint juleps, Fort Knox, Boone's coonskin cap, the Kentucky hot brown, and Morgan's Raiders will settle many an argument. For both the researcher and the more casual reader, this collection of facts and fancies about Kentucky and Kentuckians will be an invaluable resource.
Download or read book Rock Fences of the Bluegrass written by Carolyn Murray-Wooley and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gray rock fences built of ancient limestone are hallmarks of Kentucky's Bluegrass landscape. Why did Kentucky farmers turn to rock as fence-building material when most had earlier used hardwood rails? Who were the masons responsible for Kentucky's lovely rock fences and what are the different rock forms used in this region? In this generously illustrated book, Carolyn Murray-Wooley and Karl Raitz address those questions and explore the background of Kentucky's rock fences, the talent and skill of the fence masons, and the Irish and Scottish models they followed in their work. They also correct inaccurate popular perceptions about the fences and use census data and archival documents to identify the fence masons and where they worked. As the book reveals, the earliest settlers in Kentucky built dry-laid fences around eighteenth-century farmsteads, cemeteries, and mills. Fence building increased dramatically during the nineteenth century so that by the 1880s rock fences lined most roads, bounded pastures and farmyards throughout the Bluegrass. Farmers also built or commissioned rock fences in New England, the Nashville Basin, and the Texas hill country, but the Bluegrass may have had the most extensive collection of quarried rock fences in North America. This is the first book-length study on any American fence type. Filled with detailed fence descriptions, an extensive list of masons' names, drawings, photographs, and a helpful glossary, it will appeal to folklorists, historians, geographers, architects, landscape architects, and masons, as well as general readers intrigued by Kentucky's rock fences.
Download or read book Sam Patch the Famous Jumper written by Paul E. Johnson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2004-06-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true history of a legendary American folk hero In the 1820s, a fellow named Sam Patch grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, working there (when he wasn't drinking) as a mill hand for one of America's new textile companies. Sam made a name for himself one day by jumping seventy feet into the tumultuous waters below Pawtucket Falls. When in 1827 he repeated the stunt in Paterson, New Jersey, another mill town, an even larger audience gathered to cheer on the daredevil they would call the "Jersey Jumper." Inevitably, he went to Niagara Falls, where in 1829 he jumped not once but twice in front of thousands who had paid for a good view. The distinguished social historian Paul E. Johnson gives this deceptively simple story all its deserved richness, revealing in its characters and social settings a virtual microcosm of Jacksonian America. He also relates the real jumper to the mythic Sam Patch who turned up as a daring moral hero in the works of Hawthorne and Melville, in London plays and pantomimes, and in the spotlight with Davy Crockett—a Sam Patch who became the namesake of Andrew Jackson's favorite horse. In his shrewd and powerful analysis, Johnson casts new light on aspects of American society that we may have overlooked or underestimated. This is innovative American history at its best.
Download or read book A New History of Kentucky written by Lowell H. Harrison and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1997-03-27 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " The first comprehensive history of the state since the publication of Thomas D. Clark's landmark History of Kentucky over sixty years ago. A New History of Kentucky brings the Commonwealth to life, from Pikeville to the Purchase, from Covington to Corbin, this account reveals Kentucky's many faces and deep traditions. Lowell Harrison, professor emeritus of history at Western Kentucky University, is the author of many books, including George Rogers Clark and the War in the West, The Civil War in Kentucky, Kentucky's Road to Statehood , Lincoln of Kentucky, and Kentucky's Governors.
Download or read book Conversations with Kentucky Writers II written by Linda Elisabeth LaPinta and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sequel to Conversations with Kentucky Writers, L. Elisabeth Beattie brings together in-depth interviews with sixteen of the state's premiere wordsmiths. This new volume offers the perspectives of poets, journalists, and scholars as they discuss their views on creativity, the teaching of writing, and the importance of Kentucky in their work. They talk frankly about how and why they do what they do. The writers speak for themselves, and their thoughts come alive on the page. Beattie's interviews reveal the allegiances and alliances among Kentucky writers that have shaped literary trends by bringing together people with shared interests, values, subjects, and styles. The interviewees include authors who are captivated in other writers and in what they have to say about the process and craft of writing; educators who are interested in Kentucky writers and what their work reveals about the nature of creativity; and historians who are concerned with Kentucky's literary and cultural heritage. The interviews reveal patterns in Kentucky literature from mid-century to the millennium, as authors talk about how their sense of place has changed over the decades and reveal the ways in which the roots of Kentucky writing have produced a literary flowering at the century's end. Includes: Sallie Bingham, Joy Bale Boone, Thomas D. Clark, John Egerton, Sarah Gorham, Lynwood Montell, Maureen Morehead, John Ed Pearce, Ameilia Blossom Pegram, Karen Robards, Jeffrey Skinner, Frederick Smock, Frank Steele, Martha Bennett Stiles, Richard Taylor, and Michael Williams.
Download or read book Jacksonian America written by Edward Pessen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A perennial choice for courses on antebellum America, Jacksonian America continues to be a popular classroom text with scholars of the period, even among those who bridle at Pessen's iconoclastic views of Old Hickory and his "inegalitarian society."
