Download or read book From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee A Study in Frontier Democracy written by Thomas Perkins Abernethy and published by Routledge/Curzon. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM FRONTIER TO PLANTATION IN TENNESSEE A STUDY IN FRONTIER DEMOCRACY BY THOMAS PERKINS ABERNETHY RICHMOND ALUMNI ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CHAPEL HILL THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS 1932 TO FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER PREFACE narrative histories of the United States give but a fragmentary idea of the development of Jl democracy in this country. This is due primarily to the fact that our Federal system is a government of limited powers, and its activities touch the lives of the people at only a few points. Narrative histories of the individual states, on the other hand, have ordinarily dealt with local politics in a local way. Science is studied by the examination of specimens, and general truths are discovered through the investiga tion of typical forms. History has been studied mainly by national units, and the field is too broad to allow of minute examination. It would seem, therefore, that the study of a single state, not with an eye to its local politics but concentrating on its development as a com munity, should throw new light upon die growth of our democracy. For the purposes of such a study, Tennessee offers unique advantages. It was the first state to undergo the territorial status, and was without precedent to guide it on its way. Its boundaries include the earliest organized transmontane settlements. The frontiersmen planting these settlements were therefore shackled neither by powerful precedent, nor crystallized opinion, nor petri fied institutions in developing their community life. Not only were these settlements planted under striking con ditions, but they were established under famous leaders. Certainly the frontier history ofno western state is richer or more significant than that of Tennessee. It is also important for the purposes of this study that x PREFACE the forms of economic life to be found during the ante bellum period were varied. The state was a part of the West and a part of the South. Its eastern section had a self-sustaining, small-farmer population. Its Cumberland basin was largely a grain-growing, stock-raising area, while its western section was, in all respects, a part of the cotton kingdom. It therefore affords a rare oppor tunity to study the political effects of these several types of agricultural economy. Land was in the early days the chief form of wealth in the United States, and Tennessee is almost unique among western states in having had a land problem of her own. The laws passed in disposing of the public domain constitute the most significant economic legisla tion with which the state government had to deal, and through such legislation may be tested the living pulse of the body politic. We have been accustomed, in studying our history, to pay too much attention to what the politicians have said and too little to what they have done. It is possibly accidental, yet no less significant, that Tennessee furnished far more than her due share of the leaders of that western democracy which grew in importance so astoundingly between the outbreak of the Revolution and the War of Secession. The activities of these men in the politics of the state give its history an importance and a significance which it would otherwise lack. Taken together these factors render Tennessee an admirable spedimen for such a type study as that which is here presented. Periods of changing conditions have beengiven special attention static periods have been passed more rapidly in review. PREFACE xi An expression of appreciation is due to Professor Ulrich B. Phillips, of Yale University, for valuable suggestions, and to Professor J. B. Sanders, of the University of Alabama, for a critical reading of the manuscript. It is fitting that I should acknowledge here my indebtedness to Ida Robertson Abernethy, my wife, who edited and typed the entire work. THOMAS PERKINS ABERNETHY THE UNIVERSITY OP VIRGINIA DECEMBER, 1931 TABLfe OF CONTENTS PREFAClE IX I. WATAUGA i II...
Download or read book From frontier to plantation in Tennessee written by Thomas Perkins Abernethy and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Antebellum Politics in Tennessee written by Paul H. Bergeron and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-11-21 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tennessee played a critical and vital role in national politics in the mid-nineteenth century. Two Tennesseans, for example, served as president and two others were presidential candidates. Such prominence be-speaks the importance of politics in the state's antebellum culture. For the first time in its history Tennessee developed a two-party system, one that was vigorous and exciting. In his study Paul H. Bergeron examines the development of this two-party competition by focusing on statewide contests. Two-party politics in Tennessee was marked by intense and evenly balanced competition, so much so that the outcome of virtually every election was un-certain. In such an environment each party worked diligently to stir the voters; that they were successful is indicated by the exceedingly high levels of turnout for elections. Paul H. Bergeron, the first scholar to study the development of the two-party system in Tennessee, presents a detailed narrative of this period coupled with a quantitative analysis of electoral behavior. He relates the peculiarities of Tennessee's experiences to other states during the antebellum decades. Bergeron also offers fresh insights and information on Tennessee's defections from Jacksonianism in the pre-Civil War period. His book is an important contribution to the growing list of state studies, north and south, that are steadily building a greater appreciation of the complexities of politics in Jacksonian America.
Download or read book Tennessee Farming Tennessee Farmers written by Donald L. Winters and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular exploration of the fundamental structure of the universe. Another example of Bernstein's lucid and lively writing for the layman. Winters (history, Vanderbilt U.) chronicles the agricultural history of Tennessee during the antebellum period, exploring ways in which farmers created a complex agricultural system that provided goods for household consumption and for sale in markets off the farm. He details the commercial network, agricultural slavery, and farming innovations in this state that occupied a transitional position between the staple agriculture of the South and the grain-livestock agriculture of the North. Contains bandw maps and tables. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Blood in the Hills written by Bruce Stewart and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many antebellum Americans, Appalachia was a frightening wilderness of lawlessness, peril, robbers, and hidden dangers. The extensive media coverage of horse stealing and scalping raids profiled the regionÕs residents as intrinsically violent. After the Civil War, this characterization continued to permeate perceptions of the area and news of the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys, as well as the bloodshed associated with the coal labor strikes, cemented AppalachiaÕs violent reputation. Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia provides an in-depth historical analysis of hostility in the region from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Editor Bruce E. Stewart discusses aspects of the Appalachian violence culture, examining skirmishes with the native population, conflicts resulting from the regionÕs rapid modernization, and violence as a function of social control. The contributors also address geographical isolation and ethnicity, kinship, gender, class, and race with the purpose of shedding light on an often-stereotyped regional past. Blood in the Hills does not attempt to apologize for the region but uses detailed research and analysis to explain it, delving into the social and political factors that have defined Appalachia throughout its violent history.
Download or read book Tennessee Frontiers written by John R. Finger and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of the Volunteer State’s formation, from the prehistoric era to the closing of the frontier in 1840. This chronicle of the formation of Tennessee from indigenous settlements to the closing of the frontier in 1840 begins with an account of the prehistoric frontiers and a millennia-long habitation by Native Americans. The rest of the book deals with Tennessee’s historic period beginning with the incursion of Hernando de Soto’s Spanish army in 1540. John R. Finger follows two narratives of the creation and closing of the frontier. The first starts with the early interaction of Native Americans and Euro-Americans and ends when the latter effectively gained the upper hand. The last land cession by the Cherokees and the resulting movement of the tribal majority westward along the “Trail of Tears” was the final, decisive event of this story. The second describes the period of Euro-American development that lasts until the emergence of a market economy. Though from the very first Anglo-Americans participated in a worldwide fur and deerskin trade, and farmers and town dwellers were linked with markets in distant cities, during this period most farmers moved beyond subsistence production and became dependent on regional, national, or international markets. Two major themes emerge from Tennessee Frontiers: first, that of opportunity the belief held by frontier people that North America offered unique opportunities for advancement; and second, that of tension between local autonomy and central authority, which was marked by the resistance of frontier people to outside controls, and between and among groups of whites and Indians. Distinctions of class and gender separated frontier elites from lesser whites, and the struggle for control divided the elites themselves. Similarly, native society was riddled by factional disputes over the proper course of action regarding relations with other tribes or with whites. Though the Indians lost in fundamental ways, they proved resilient, adopting a variety of strategies that delayed those losses and enabled them to retain, in modified form, their own identity. Along the way, the author introduces the famous personalities of Tennessee’s frontier history: Attakullakulla, Nancy Ward, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, and John Ross, among others. They remind us that this is the story of real people who dealt with real problems and possibilities in often difficult circumstances. “Finger . . . draws on his rich research into the Southern frontier to illuminate not only Tennessee’s three physiographic zones but also their spheres of interaction . . . .. The author skillfully summarizes and illustrates the complexity of Tennessee’s frontier history, addressing issues of leadership (Jackson versus all rivals), land speculation (ever dominant), and Indian affairs (where he is at his best). . . . Like the late Stanley Folmsbee, Finger knows the three Tennessees, linguistically, geographically, politically, socially, and economically; fortunately for the reader, he has constructed a well-balanced account of them all. Maps, charts, illustrations, and 48 pages of sources enhance the volume’s usefulness for collections on the American frontier. All levels and collections.” —J. H. O’Donnell III
Download or read book Tennessee A Bicentennial History written by Wilma Dykeman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1975-12-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tennessee, the long, thin state stretching from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Mississippi River, is as richly varied in history as in terrain. And from Davy Crockett, "Old Hickory" Andrew Jackson, and presidential candidate Estes Kefauver's coonskin cap, it has derived the colorful image of a frontier state. Tennessee has been a land of many kinds of frontiers--from the day in 1540 when Spaniards in armor, fevered for gold and glory, struggled along the river banks near present-day Memphis, to the latest developments in radiation research at today's complicated laboratories in Oak Ridge.
Download or read book Senators of the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Lost State of Franklin written by Kevin T. Barksdale and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years following the Revolutionary War, the young American nation was in a state of chaos. Citizens pleaded with government leaders to reorganize local infrastructures and heighten regulations, but economic turmoil, Native American warfare, and political unrest persisted. By 1784, one group of North Carolina frontiersmen could no longer stand the unresponsiveness of state leaders to their growing demands. This ambitious coalition of Tennessee Valley citizens declared their region independent from North Carolina, forming the state of Franklin. The Lost State of Franklin: America's First Secession chronicles the history of this ill-fated movement from its origins in the early settlement of East Tennessee to its eventual violent demise. Author Kevin T. Barksdale investigates how this lost state failed so ruinously, examining its history and tracing the development of its modern mythology. The Franklin independence movement emerged from the shared desires of a powerful group of landed elite, yeoman farmers, and country merchants. Over the course of four years they managed to develop a functioning state government, court system, and backcountry bureaucracy. Cloaking their motives in the rhetoric of the American Revolution, the Franklinites aimed to defend their land claims, expand their economy, and eradicate the area's Native American population. They sought admission into the union as America's fourteenth state, but their secession never garnered support from outside the Tennessee Valley. Confronted by Native American resistance and the opposition of the North Carolina government, the state of Franklin incited a firestorm of partisan and Indian violence. Despite a brief diplomatic flirtation with the nation of Spain during the state's final days, the state was never able to recover from the warfare, and Franklin collapsed in 1788. East Tennesseans now regard the lost state of Franklin as a symbol of rugged individualism and regional exceptionalism, but outside the region the movement has been largely forgotten. The Lost State of Franklin presents the complete history of this defiant secession and examines the formation of its romanticized local legacy. In reevaluating this complex political movement, Barksdale sheds light on a remarkable Appalachian insurrection and reminds readers of the extraordinary, fragile nature of America's young independence.
Download or read book Empire of Liberty written by Gordon S. Wood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-28 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in the newest volume in the series, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life--in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe's wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country. Named a New York Times Notable Book, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.
Download or read book John Sevier written by Gordon T. Belt and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on John Sevier, founding father of the state of Tennessee. A celebrated soldier, admired politician and founding father of the state of Tennessee, John Sevier led an adventurous life. He commanded a frontier militia into battle against British Loyalists at Kings Mountain. He waged a relentless war against the Cherokees in his effort to claim America's first frontier. He forged the state of Franklin from the western lands of North Carolina and later became Tennessee's first governor. Following his death, Sevier's accomplishments faded from public memory, but years later, writers resurrected his image through romanticized accounts of his exploits, relying heavily on folk tales and recollections from aging pioneers. Thus, life and legend intertwined. Join authors Gordon T. Belt and Traci Nichols-Belt as they examine John Sevier's extraordinary life through the lens of history and memory, shedding new light on this remarkable Tennessee figure.
Download or read book North Carolina s Revolutionary Founders written by Jeff Broadwater and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays profiles a diverse array of North Carolinians, all of whom had a hand in the founding of the state and the United States of America. It includes stories of how men who stood together to fight the British soon chose opposing sides in political debates over the ratification of the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. It also includes accounts of women, freedmen, and Native Americans, whose narratives shed light on the important roles of marginalized peoples in the Revolutionary South. Together, the essays reveal the philosophical views and ideology of North Carolina's revolutionaries. Contributors: Jeff Broadwater, Jennifer Davis-Doyle, Lloyd Johnson, Benjamin R. Justesen, Troy L. Kickler, Scott King-Owen, James MacDonald, Maggie Hartley Mitchell, Karl Rodabaugh, Kyle Scott, Jason Stroud, Michael Toomey, and Willis P. Whichard.
Download or read book The New Cambridge Modern History Volume 8 The American and French Revolutions 1763 93 written by Elliot H. Goodwin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1965-01-01 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of the The New Cambridge Modern History looks specifically at the American and French Revolutions in the eighteenth century.
Download or read book Tennesseans at War 1812 1815 written by Tom Kanon and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2014-06-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815 by Tom Kanon tells the often forgotten story of the central role citizens and soldiers from Tennessee played in the Creek War in Alabama and War of 1812. Although frequently discussed as separate military conflicts, the War of 1812 against Great Britain and the Creek War against Native Americans in the territory that would become Alabama were part of the same forceful projection of growing American power. Success in both wars won for America security against attack from abroad and vast tracks of new land in “the Old Southwest.” In Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815, Tom Kanon explains the role Tennesseans played in these changes and how they remade the south. Because it was a landlocked frontier state, Tennessee’s economy and security depended heavily upon the river systems that traversed the region; some, like the Tennessee River, flowed south out of the state and into Native American lands. Tennesseans of the period perceived that gaining mastery of these waterways formed an urgent part of their economic survival and stability. The culmination of fifteen years’ research, Kanon’s work draws on state archives, primary sources, and eyewitness accounts, bringing the information in these materials together for first time. Not only does he narrate the military campaigns at the heart of the young nation’s expansion, but he also deftly recalls the economic and social pressures and opportunities that encouraged large numbers of Tennesseans to leave home and fight. He expertly weaves these themes into a cohesive narrative that culminates in the vivid military victories of the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the legendary Battle of New Orleans—the victory that catapulted Tennessee’s citizen-soldier Andrew Jackson to the presidency. Expounding on the social roles and conditions of women, slaves, minorities, and Native Americans in Tennessee, Kanon also brings into focus the key idea of the “home front” in the minds of Tennesseans doing battle in Alabama and beyond. Kanon shows how the goal of creating, strengthening, and maintaining an ordered society permeated the choices and actions of the American elites on the frontiers of the young nation. Much more than a history of Tennesseans or the battles they fought in Alabama, Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815, is the gripping story of a pivotal turning point in the history of the young American republic.
Download or read book Democracy s Lawyer written by John Roderick Heller and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 382 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 Ledger and the Chain written by Joshua D. Rothman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America's internal slave trade—and its role in the making of America. Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men—who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South—were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States. In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.
Download or read book Appalachia s Path to Dependency written by Paul Salstrom and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Appalachia's Path to Dependency, Paul Salstrom examines the evolution of economic life over time in southern Appalachia. Moving away from the colonial model to an analysis based on dependency, he exposes the complex web of factors—regulation of credit, industrialization, population growth, cultural values, federal intervention—that has worked against the region. Salstrom argues that economic adversity has resulted from three types of disadvantages: natural, market, and political. The overall context in which Appalachia's economic life unfolded was one of expanding United States markets and, after the Civil War, of expanding capitalist relations. Covering Appalachia's economic history from early white settlement to the end of the New Deal, this work is not simply an economic interpretation but draws as well on other areas of history. Whereas other interpretations of Appalachia's economy have tended to seek social or psychological explanations for its dependency, this important work compels us to look directly at the region's economic history. This regional perspective offers a clear-eyed view of Appalachia's path in the future.
