American Identity Crisis, 1789-1815

American Identity Crisis, 1789-1815 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
When the Constitution was drafted in 1789, Americans did not have a sense of national identity. The process toward achieving a national identity was long and fraught with conflict. Some of the most influential events on the United States were foreign affairs. American reactions to these events reveal the gradual coalescence of national identity. The French Revolution was incredibly divisive and Americans defined their political views in relation to it. The wars spawned by it caused Great Britain and France to seize American ships believed to be carrying contraband. The American public took an active role in making its opinions known on specific foreign policy decisions, revealing a growing trend toward democracy and away from the hierarchical world of the Federalists. The election of 1800 ushered in a new era for the United States. Thomas Jefferson, the leading Republican, promoted continued democratization. Also under his administration can be found the seeds of American expansionism in the Louisiana Purchase. A strong sense of national honor reveals itself through the Barbary Wars and in the United States handling of British impressment and the aftermath of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. British insults to American honor would eventually lead to the War of 1812. While not an official war aim, many Americans desired the permanent conquest of Canada, revealing the continued growth of American expansionism. Although many New England Federalists bitterly opposed the war, battlefield victories instilled in Americans a new sense of pride and gave them new heroes to admire. The combined news of the victory at New Orleans and the Peace Treaty at Ghent allowed them to reinvent the War of 1812 as a second American Revolution. As far as they were concerned, their national honor had been insulted, they had sought satisfaction for it, and they had received it. That the United States finally had a sense of national identity-one defined by expansionism, a strong sense of national honor, and increasing democratization-is seen in James Monroe's visit to New England in 1817.

American Identity Crisis, 1789-1815

American Identity Crisis, 1789-1815 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
When the Constitution was drafted in 1789, Americans did not have a sense of national identity. The process toward achieving a national identity was long and fraught with conflict. Some of the most influential events on the United States were foreign affairs. American reactions to these events reveal the gradual coalescence of national identity. The French Revolution was incredibly divisive and Americans defined their political views in relation to it. The wars spawned by it caused Great Britain and France to seize American ships believed to be carrying contraband. The American public took an active role in making its opinions known on specific foreign policy decisions, revealing a growing trend toward democracy and away from the hierarchical world of the Federalists. The election of 1800 ushered in a new era for the United States. Thomas Jefferson, the leading Republican, promoted continued democratization. Also under his administration can be found the seeds of American expansionism in the Louisiana Purchase. A strong sense of national honor reveals itself through the Barbary Wars and in the United States handling of British impressment and the aftermath of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. British insults to American honor would eventually lead to the War of 1812. While not an official war aim, many Americans desired the permanent conquest of Canada, revealing the continued growth of American expansionism. Although many New England Federalists bitterly opposed the war, battlefield victories instilled in Americans a new sense of pride and gave them new heroes to admire. The combined news of the victory at New Orleans and the Peace Treaty at Ghent allowed them to reinvent the War of 1812 as a second American Revolution. As far as they were concerned, their national honor had been insulted, they had sought satisfaction for it, and they had received it. That the United States finally had a sense of national identity-one defined by expansionism, a strong sense of national honor, and increasing democratization-is seen in James Monroe's visit to New England in 1817.

The Oxford Handbook of American Political History

The Oxford Handbook of American Political History PDF Author: Paula Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190628693
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 569

Get Book Here

Book Description
American political and policy history has revived since the turn of the twenty-first century. After social and cultural history emerged as dominant forces to reveal the importance of class, race, and gender within the United States, the application of this line of work to American politics and policy followed. In addition, social movements, particularly the civil rights and feminism, helped rekindle political and policy history. As a result, a new generation of historians turned their attention to American politics. Their new approach still covers traditional subjects, but more often it combines an interest in the state, politics, and policy with other specialties (urban, labor, social, and race, among others) within the history and social science disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of American Political History incorporates and reflects this renaissance of American political history. It not only provides a chronological framework but also illustrates fundamental political themes and debates about public policy, including party systems, women in politics, political advertising, religion, and more. Chapters on economy, defense, agriculture, immigration, transportation, communication, environment, social welfare, health care, drugs and alcohol, education, and civil rights trace the development and shifts in American policy history. This collection of essays by 29 distinguished scholars offers a comprehensive overview of American politics and policy.

Empire of Liberty

Empire of Liberty PDF Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199738335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 801

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

A Nation of Outsiders

A Nation of Outsiders PDF Author: Grace Elizabeth Hale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199314586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
A broad cultural history of the postwar US, this book traces how middle-class white Americans increasingly embraced figures they understood as outsiders and used them to re-imagine their own cultural position as marginal and alienated. Romanticizing outsiders and becoming rebels, middle-class whites denied the contradictions between self-determination and social connection.

American Sanctuary

American Sanctuary PDF Author: A. Roger Ekirch
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525563636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1797 the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy took place on the British frigate HMS Hermione off the coast of Puerto Rico. Jonathan Robbins, a reputed American sailor who had been impressed into service, made his way to American shores. President John Adams bowed to Britain’s request for his extradition. Convicted of murder and piracy by a court-martial in Jamaica, Robbins was hanged. Adams’s catastrophic miscalculation ignited a political firestorm, only to be fanned by Robbins’s failure to receive his constitutional rights of due process and trial by jury by an American court. American Sanctuary brilliantly lays out in riveting detail the story of how the Robbins affair, amid the turbulent presidential campaign of 1800, inflamed the new nation and set in motion a constitutional crisis, resulting in Adams’s defeat and Thomas Jefferson’s election as the third president of the United States. Robbins’s martyrdom led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to foreign refugees—a major achievement in fulfilling the promise of American independence.

No Useless Mouth

No Useless Mouth PDF Author: Rachel B. Herrmann
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501716123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesis―all based on extensive archival research―produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative."―The Journal of American History In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war. In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors—food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare—the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay. Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"—not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power—who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era. Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Revolutionary America, 1750-1815

Revolutionary America, 1750-1815 PDF Author: Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN: 9780130898678
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
A core text or supplementary reader for advanced undergraduate courses on the era of the American Revolution. Unique in both coverage and focus, this collection of primary documents and original interpretive essays provides an unusually well-balanced introduction to the era of the American Revolution. Chronologically, the text explores the period from 1750 to 1815--examining sources of both stability and discontent within the British Empire (and thereby discouraging students from assuming the inevitability of the Revolution), and ending with the War of 1812 (which many Americans saw as securing independence and the ideals of the Revolution). Topically, the text covers traditional political and military subjects as well as the newer social and cultural history of the era--providing students with a broad understanding of the Revolution as both a war for independence and an occasion for political, social, and cultural conflict and transformation. The wide variety of documents range from classic texts--such as Common Sense and the Federalist--to excerpts from diaries and travelers' accounts to newspapers advertisements and selections from contemporary histories and novels.

The Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers PDF Author: Richard B. Bernstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190273518
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
This concise and elegant contribution to the Very Short Introduction series reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them. The book provides a context within which to explore the world of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton, as well as their complex and still-controversial achievements and legacies.

The Idea of America

The Idea of America PDF Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101515147
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution-from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment-and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy. As Wood reveals, while the founders hoped to create a virtuous republic of yeoman farmers and uninterested leaders, they instead gave birth to a sprawling, licentious, and materialistic popular democracy. Wood also traces the origins of American exceptionalism to this period, revealing how the revolutionary generation, despite living in a distant, sparsely populated country, believed itself to be the most enlightened people on earth. The revolution gave Americans their messianic sense of purpose-and perhaps our continued propensity to promote democracy around the world-because the founders believed their colonial rebellion had universal significance for oppressed peoples everywhere. Yet what may seem like audacity in retrospect reflected the fact that in the eighteenth century republicanism was a truly radical ideology-as radical as Marxism would be in the nineteenth-and one that indeed inspired revolutionaries the world over. Today there exists what Wood calls a terrifying gap between us and the founders, such that it requires almost an act of imagination to fully recapture their era. Because we now take our democracy for granted, it is nearly impossible for us to appreciate how deeply the founders feared their grand experiment in liberty could evolve into monarchy or dissolve into licentiousness. Gracefully written and filled with insight, The Idea of America helps us to recapture the fears and hopes of the revolutionary generation and its attempts to translate those ideals into a working democracy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical Hamilton has sparked new interest in the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. In addition to Alexander Hamilton, the production also features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Lafayette, and many more. Look for Gordon's new book, Friends Divided.

Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States. (SPD-9)

Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States. (SPD-9) PDF Author: Raymond Grew
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400868432
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
As the last volume in the series sponsored by the SSRC Committee on Comparative Politics, this book reflects—as does the preceding volume—the Committee's decision to devote renewed attention to the original state building experiences of the West, after having studied political development in the newer countries of the Third World. The contributors attempt to discern patterns of historical change in the different sequences of crises that affect all states in their development. Following an introductory and theoretical statement by Raymond Grew, each chapter focuses on a different country or area. Each of these essays applies and evaluates the Committee's concept of crises of development, i.e., crises of identity, legitimacy, participation, penetration, and distribution. The distinguished historians and political scientists who contribute to the volume are: Keith Thomas (on the United Kingdom), Aristide R. Zolberg (on Belgium), Folke Dovring (on Scandinavia), J. Rogers Hollingsworth (on the United States), Stanley G. Payne (on Spain and Portugal), David D. Bien (on France), Raymond Grew (on France and Italy), John R. Gillis (on Germany), Walter M. Pintner (on Russia), and Roman Szporluk (on Poland), with Lucian W. Pye providing the Preface. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.