Download or read book City on a Hill written by Abram C. Van Engen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase “City on a Hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status throughout time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how those tales continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.
Download or read book The Massachusetts Historical Society written by Louis Leonard Tucker and published by Massachusetts Historical Society. This book was released on 1995 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jeremy Belknap and seven associates met in Boston on January 24, 1791, to establish the Massachusetts Historical Society, there was nothing like it anywhere in North America. Belknap, concerned that accident and carelessness were jeopardizing America's documentary heritage, proposed an organization to provide a secure repository for rare manuscripts and printed works and a publication program to "multiply the copies" of these valuable items. The Society that eight Boston gentlemen created that evening was the first institution anywhere for "the collection and preservation of materials for a political and natural history of the United States". The Massachusetts Historical Society: A Bicentennial History, 1791-1991, is a candid and detailed account of this remarkable institution's first two centuries. Despite its location and its name, the Society has never been a provincial institution, dedicated to chronicling the story of a single city or state. Through its incomparable library and publications, as well as through the writings of such illustrious members as Belknap, Francis Parkman, William Hickling Prescott, Samuel Eliot Morison, and scores of modern scholars, the Society has been - and continues to be - a profound influence on the study of a nation's history.
Download or read book The Boston Massacre written by Serena R. Zabin and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prologue: March, 1770 -- Families of Empire -- Inseparable Interests, 1766-1767 -- Seasons of Discontent, 1766-1767 -- Under One Roof -- Love Your Neighbor, 1768-1770 -- Absent Without Leave 1768-1770 -- A Deadly Riot -- Gathering Up, 1770-1772 -- Epilogue: Civil War, 1772-1775.
Download or read book The American Revolution written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2002-03-05 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft.
Download or read book Boston s Massacre written by Eric Hinderaker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-05 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Washington Prize Finalist Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati Prize “Fascinating... Hinderaker’s meticulous research shows that the Boston Massacre was contested from the beginning... [Its] meanings have plenty to tell us about America’s identity, past and present.” —Wall Street Journal On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous and least understood incidents in American history. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic confrontation, examining in forensic detail the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity. “Hinderaker brilliantly unpacks the creation of competing narratives around a traumatic and confusing episode of violence. With deft insight, careful research, and lucid writing, he shows how the bloodshed in one Boston street became pivotal to making and remembering a revolution that created a nation.” —Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions “Seldom does a book appear that compels its readers to rethink a signal event in American history. It’s even rarer...to accomplish so formidable a feat in prose of sparkling clarity and grace. Boston’s Massacre is a gem.” —Fred Anderson, author of Crucible of War
Download or read book Fashioning the New England Family written by Kimberly S. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As America's first historical society, the Massachusetts Historical Society has collected family materials since 1791, including long-cherished pieces of clothing that were acquired alongside papers such as letters and diaries. Because of the different storage requirements for textiles and manuscripts, these survivors-many of them hundreds of years old-have largely been divorced from their familial ties. Fashioning the New England Family, an initiative encompassing a fall 2018 exhibition and this companion volume, reconnects the textiles with the associated stories carried in the family papers. Generously illustrated with full-color photographs of garments, fabrics, and accessories, including exquisite detail shots, the book creates a lasting overview of the exhibition but also delves into specific topics. The chapters cover a spam of more than three hundred years, tracing the history of New England clothing from the colonial seventeenth century, through the Revolutionary eighteenth century, and into the national nineteenth. In these pages, readers will find a fragment of Mayflower passenger Priscilla Mullins Alden's dress; Governor John Leverett's bloodstained buff coat, which saw battle in the English Civil War; and the luxurious Spitalfields green silk damask wedding dress and shoes that Rebecca Tailer Byles wore at her 1747 wedding in Boston. Across these examples and more, the text traces patterns of global production and local consumption and reuse, demonstrating how New Englanders used costume to establish their situation, especially in terms of class and gender, and also to express their political affiliations. Patriots and loyalists-Hancocks, Adamses, Dawses, and Olivers-make many appearances, as they are so well represented in the society's rich holdings. Manuscripts drawn from the collections-receipts, daybooks, account books, diaries-further amplify the historical insights, even at times making it possible to interpret the way in which a specific garment may have embodied one individual's sense of identity. Distributed for the Massachusetts Historical Society
Download or read book Tell it with Pride written by Sarah Greenough and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, this catalogue presents photographs of men who were part of one of the first African American regiments to fight for the Union in the Civil War and explores the way the Shaw Memorial and other works of art commemorate the sacrifices and hopes of the soldiers, their families, and communities"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book The Town of Roxbury written by Francis Samuel Drake and published by . This book was released on 1878 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society written by Massachusetts Historical Society and published by . This book was released on 1863 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the statement above quoted, also for full bibliographical information regarding this publication, and for the contents of the volumes [1st ser.] v. 1- 7th series, v. 5, cf. Griffin, Bibl. of Amer. hist. society. 2d edition, 1907, p. 346-360.
Download or read book The Atlas of Boston History written by Nancy S. Seasholes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few American cities possess a history as long, rich, and fascinating as Boston’s. A site of momentous national political events from the Revolutionary War through the civil rights movement, Boston has also been an influential literary and cultural capital. From ancient glaciers to landmaking schemes and modern infrastructure projects, the city’s terrain has been transformed almost constantly over the centuries. The Atlas of Boston History traces the city’s history and geography from the last ice age to the present with beautifully rendered maps. Edited by historian Nancy S. Seasholes, this landmark volume captures all aspects of Boston’s past in a series of fifty-seven stunning full-color spreads. Each section features newly created thematic maps that focus on moments and topics in that history. These maps are accompanied by hundreds of historical and contemporary illustrations and explanatory text from historians and other expert contributors. They illuminate a wide range of topics including Boston’s physical and economic development, changing demography, and social and cultural life. In lavishly produced detail, The Atlas of Boston History offers a vivid, refreshing perspective on the development of this iconic American city. Contributors Robert J. Allison, Robert Charles Anderson, John Avault, Joseph Bagley, Charles Bahne, Laurie Baise, J. L. Bell, Rebekah Bryer, Aubrey Butts, Benjamin L. Carp, Amy D. Finstein, Gerald Gamm, Richard Garver, Katherine Grandjean, Michelle Granshaw, James Green, Dean Grodzins, Karl Haglund, Ruth-Ann M. Harris, Arthur Krim, Stephanie Kruel, Kerima M. Lewis, Noam Maggor, Dane A. Morrison, James C. O’Connell, Mark Peterson, Marshall Pontrelli, Gayle Sawtelle, Nancy S. Seasholes, Reed Ueda, Lawrence J. Vale, Jim Vrabel, Sam Bass Warner, Jay Wickersham, and Susan Wilson
Download or read book The Crooked Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston 1630 1822 written by Annie Haven Thwing and published by Franklin Classics Trade Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Ways and Means written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal “Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Download or read book Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts written by John Langdon Sibley and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 1 includes "an appendix, containing an abstract of the steward's accounts, and notices of non-graduates, from 1649-50 to 1659."
Download or read book The Selling of Joseph written by Samuel Sewall and published by . This book was released on 1700 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Trumbull Papers written by Jonathan Trumbull and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nazis of Copley Square written by Charles Gallagher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten history of American terrorists who, in the name of God, conspired to overthrow the government and formed an alliance with Hitler. On January 13, 1940, FBI agents burst into the homes and offices of seventeen members of the Christian Front, seizing guns, ammunition, and homemade bombs. J. Edgar HooverÕs charges were incendiary: the group, he alleged, was planning to incite a revolution and install a Òtemporary dictatorshipÓ in order to stamp out Jewish and communist influence in the United States. Interviewed in his jail cell, the frontÕs ringleader was unbowed: ÒAll I can say isÑlong live Christ the King! Down with communism!Ó In Nazis of Copley Square, Charles Gallagher provides a crucial missing chapter in the history of the American far right. The men of the Christian Front imagined themselves as crusaders fighting for the spiritual purification of the nation, under assault from godless communism, and they were hardly alone in their beliefs. The front traced its origins to vibrant global Catholic theological movements of the early twentieth century, such as the Mystical Body of Christ and Catholic Action. The frontÕs anti-Semitism was inspired by Sunday sermons and by lay leaders openly espousing fascist and Nazi beliefs. Gallagher chronicles the evolution of the front, the transatlantic cloak-and-dagger intelligence operations that subverted it, and the mainstream political and religious leaders who shielded the frontÕs activities from scrutiny. Nazis of Copley Square offers a grim tale of faith perverted to violent ends, and its lessons provide a warning for those who hope to stop the spread of far-right violence today.
Download or read book A Short History of Boston written by Robert J. Allison and published by Short Histories. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Until 2004 and the publication of ""A Short History of Boston,"" there was no good short history of the city of Boston, not in print anyway. With economy and style, Dr. Robert Allison brings Boston history alive, from the Puritan theocracy of the seventeenth century to the Big Dig of the twenty-first. His book includes a wealth of illustrations, a lengthy chronology of the key events in four centuries of Boston history, and twenty short profiles of exceptional Bostonians, from founder John Winthrop to heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan, from ""heretic"" Anne Hutchinson to Russian-American author Mary Antin. Says the Provincetown Arts, ""A first-rate short history of the city, lavishly illustrated, lovingly written, and instantly the best book of its kind."" "
