Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy PDF Author: Christopher Grasso
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019754732X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Teacher, preacher, soldier, spy: the civil wars of John R. Kelso is an account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life. A schoolteacher and Methodist preacher in Missouri, in the Civil War Kelso earned fame fighting rebel guerrillas. Seeking personal revenge as well as defending the Union, he vowed to slay twenty-five rebels with his own hand, and when he did so he was elected to Congress. In the House of Representatives during Reconstruction, he was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. After his term in Congress, personal tragedy drove him west, where he became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a Spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. John R. Kelso was many things. He was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life, challenging his notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality, and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private wars-not only against former friends and alienated family members, rebellious students and disaffected church congregations, political opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring impulses in his own complex character. His life story moreover, offers a unique vantage upon dimensions of nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex, divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West"--

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy PDF Author: Christopher Grasso
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019754732X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Teacher, preacher, soldier, spy: the civil wars of John R. Kelso is an account of an extraordinary nineteenth-century American life. A schoolteacher and Methodist preacher in Missouri, in the Civil War Kelso earned fame fighting rebel guerrillas. Seeking personal revenge as well as defending the Union, he vowed to slay twenty-five rebels with his own hand, and when he did so he was elected to Congress. In the House of Representatives during Reconstruction, he was one of the first to call for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. After his term in Congress, personal tragedy drove him west, where he became a freethinking lecturer and author, an atheist, a Spiritualist, and, before his death in 1891, an anarchist. John R. Kelso was many things. He was also a strong-willed son, a passionate husband, and a loving and grieving father. The Civil War remained central to his life, challenging his notions of manhood and honor, his ideals of liberty and equality, and his beliefs about politics, religion, morality, and human nature. Throughout his life, too, he fought private wars-not only against former friends and alienated family members, rebellious students and disaffected church congregations, political opponents and religious critics, but also against the warring impulses in his own complex character. His life story moreover, offers a unique vantage upon dimensions of nineteenth-century American culture that are usually treated separately: religious revivalism and political anarchism; sex, divorce, and Civil War battles; freethinking and the Wild West"--

Bloody Engagements

Bloody Engagements PDF Author: John Russell Kelso
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300210965
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Secession and War: April to July 1861 -- 2. The Battle of Wilson's Creek and the First Spy Mission: August to September 1861 -- 3. Big River and Scouting the Southwest Corner: August to September 1861 -- 4. Federals in Retreat, Refugees in the Snow, and Vengeance in Buffalo: October 1861 to February 1862 -- 5. The March to Pea Ridge: February 1862 -- 6. Scouting, Recruiting, and the Cavalry: February to May 1862 -- 7. A Defeat and a Victory: May to July 1862 -- 8. The Battle of Forsyth, and a Raid on Thieves and Cut-Throats: July to August 1862 -- 9. A Plundering Expedition: September to October 1862 -- 10. Fighting Rebels in Arkansas: October to November 1862 -- 11. Capturing and Destroying: November to December 1862 -- 12. The Battle of Springfield: January 1863 -- Appendix 1: Speech Delivered at Mt. Vernon, Missouri, April 23, 1864 -- Appendix 2: Speech Delivered at Walnut Grove, Missouri, September 19, 1865 (Excerpts) -- Appendix 3: Government Analyzed, 1892 (Excerpts) -- Chronology -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Z

The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery

The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery PDF Author: Phil Roycraft
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476694958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the aftermath of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued the most significant presidential decree in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which would forever free all slaves in territory not under Union control. Nevertheless, his chief military commander in the field, Major General George B. McClellan, was outraged. Within days, two former Union officers nefariously crossed the lines into rebeldom, an initiative resulting in an elaborate subterfuge to scam Lincoln into withdrawing the Proclamation in return for nebulous promises of peace. This book tells the story, obscured in a veil of secrecy for 150 years, of the cloak and dagger chess match between Union detectives and Southern operatives in the months before emancipation become effective. Despite an ominous warning by author Herman Melville five years before, the scheme to perpetuate slavery almost succeeded, for it was engineered by a man the National Police Gazette once declared the "King of the Confidence Men."

Wicked Georgetown

Wicked Georgetown PDF Author: Canden Schwantes
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625840837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
Georgetown has long been home to the most affluent and influential residents of the capital--but it has also played host to its fair share of high-end misdeeds and wickedly amusing scandals. Culprits range from Confederate spies to the prankster students who stole the clock hands of Georgetown University's Healy Hall, while crime scenes include murder on the C&O Canal and floating brothels on the Potomac. Navigating her way through Cold War-era intrigues and the true-ish story of an exorcism, author Canden Schwantes guides readers through the tawdry and downright devilish side of Georgetown.

Moon Over Manifest

Moon Over Manifest PDF Author: Clare Vanderpool
Publisher: Yearling
ISBN: 0375858296
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the 2011 Newbery Award. The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I’d seen only in Gideon’s stories: Manifest—A Town with a rich past and a bright future. Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the summer while he works a railroad job. Armed only with a few possessions and her list of universals, Abilene jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was. Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it’s just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers a hidden cigar box full of mementos, including some old letters that mention a spy known as the Rattler. These mysterious letters send Abilene and her new friends, Lettie and Ruthanne, on an honest-to-goodness spy hunt, even though they are warned to “Leave Well Enough Alone.” Abilene throws all caution aside when she heads down the mysterious Path to Perdition to pay a debt to the reclusive Miss Sadie, a diviner who only tells stories from the past. It seems that Manifest’s history is full of colorful and shadowy characters—and long-held secrets. The more Abilene hears, the more determined she is to learn just what role her father played in that history. And as Manifest’s secrets are laid bare one by one, Abilene begins to weave her own story into the fabric of the town. Powerful in its simplicity and rich in historical detail, Clare Vanderpool’s debut is a gripping story of loss and redemption.

A Speaking Aristocracy

A Speaking Aristocracy PDF Author: Christopher Grasso
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807847725
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book Here

Book Description
As cultural authority was reconstituted in the Revolutionary era, knowledge reconceived in the age of Enlightenment, and the means of communication radically altered by the proliferation of print, speakers and writers in eighteenth-century America began to describe themselves and their world in new ways. Drawing on hundreds of sermons, essays, speeches, letters, journals, plays, poems, and newspaper articles, Christopher Grasso explores how intellectuals, preachers, and polemicists transformed both the forms and the substance of public discussion in eighteenth-century Connecticut. In New England through the first half of the century, only learned clergymen regularly addressed the public. After midcentury, however, newspapers, essays, and eventually lay orations introduced new rhetorical strategies to persuade or instruct an audience. With the rise of a print culture in the early Republic, the intellectual elite had to compete with other voices and address multiple audiences. By the end of the century, concludes Grasso, public discourse came to be understood not as the words of an authoritative few to the people but rather as a civic conversation of the people.

Church of Spies

Church of Spies PDF Author: Mark Riebling
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465061559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
The heart-pounding history of how Pope Pius XII -- often labeled "Hitler's Pope" -- was in fact an anti-Nazi spymaster, plotting against the Third Reich during World War II. The Vatican's silence in the face of Nazi atrocities remains one of the great controversies of our time. History has accused wartime pontiff Pius the Twelfth of complicity in the Holocaust and dubbed him "Hitler's Pope." But a key part of the story has remained untold. Pope Pius in fact ran the world's largest church, smallest state, and oldest spy service. Saintly but secretive, he sent birthday cards to Hitler -- while secretly plotting to kill him. He skimmed from church charities to pay covert couriers, and surreptitiously tape-recorded his meetings with top Nazis. Under his leadership the Vatican spy ring actively plotted against the Third Reich. Told with heart-pounding suspense and drawing on secret transcripts and unsealed files by an acclaimed author, Church of Spies throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal some of the most astonishing events in the history of the papacy. Riebling reveals here how the world's greatest moral institution met the greatest moral crisis in history.

Refusing to Kiss the Slipper

Refusing to Kiss the Slipper PDF Author: Michael W. Bruening
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197566979
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
History has long viewed French Protestants as Calvinists. Refusing to Kiss the Slipper re-examines the Reformation in francophone Europe, presenting for the first time the perspective of John Calvin's evangelical enemies and revealing that the French Reformation was more complex and colorful than previously recognized. Michael Bruening brings together a cast of Calvin's opponents from various French-speaking territories to show that opposition to Calvinism was stronger and better organized than has been recognized. He examines individual opponents, such as Pierre Caroli, Jerome Bolsec, Sebastian Castellio, Charles Du Moulin, and Jean Morély, but more importantly, he explores the anti-Calvinist networks that developed around such individuals. Each group had its own origins and agenda, but all agreed that Calvin's claim to absolute religious authority too closely echoed the religious sovereignty of the pope. These oft-neglected opponents refused to offer such obeisance-to kiss the papal slipper-arguing instead for open discussion of controversial doctrines. They believed Calvin's self-appointed leadership undermined the bedrock principle of the Reformation that the faithful be allowed to challenge religious authorities. This book shows that the challenge posed by these groups shaped the way the Calvinists themselves developed their reform strategies. Bruening's work demonstrates that the breadth and strength of the anti-Calvinist networks requires us to abandon the traditional assumption that Huguenots and other francophone Protestants were universally Calvinist.

Skepticism and American Faith

Skepticism and American Faith PDF Author: Christopher Grasso
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190494379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 662

Get Book Here

Book Description
Between the Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith profoundly shaped America. Although usually rendered nearly invisible, skepticism touched-and sometimes transformed-more lives than might be expected from standard accounts. This book examines Americans wrestling with faith and doubt as they tried to make sense of their world.

Closing of the American Mind

Closing of the American Mind PDF Author: Allan Bloom
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book Here

Book Description
The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.