America 1844

America 1844 PDF Author: John Bicknell
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613730101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The presidential election of 1844 was one of the two or three most momentous elections in American history. Had Henry Clay won instead of James K. Polk, we'd be living in a very different country today. It cemented the westward expansion that brought Texas, California, and Oregon into the union. It also took place amid religious turmoil that included anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic violence, and the "Great Disappointment" in which thousands of followers of an obscure preacher named William Miller believed Christ would return to earth in October 1844. Author and journalist John Bicknell details even more compelling, interwoven events that occurred during this momentous year-the murder of Joseph Smith, the religious fermentation of the Second Great Awakening, John C. Frémont's exploration of the West, Charles Goodyear's patenting of vulcanized rubber, the near-death of President John Tyler in a freak naval explosion, and much more. All of these elements illustrate the competing visions of the American future-Democrats v. Whigs, Mormons v. Millerites, nativists v. Catholics, those who risked the venture westward and those who stayed safely behind-and how Polk's victory cemented the vision of a continental nation. John Bicknell has written and edited for FCW, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, and was coeditor of the 2012 edition of Politics in America, CQ's 1200-page guide to the US Congress. He lives in Haymarket, Virginia.

Joseph Smith for President

Joseph Smith for President PDF Author: Spencer W. McBride
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190909439
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
By the election year of 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers. Nearly half of them lived in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith was not only their religious leader but also the mayor and the commander-in-chief of a militia of some 2,500 men. In less than twenty years, Smith had helped transform the American religious landscape and grown his own political power substantially. Yet the standing of the Mormon people in American society remained unstable. Unable to garner federal protection, and having failed to win the support of former president Martin Van Buren or any of the other candidates in the race, Smith decided to take matters into his own hands, launching his own bid for the presidency. While many scoffed at the notion that Smith could come anywhere close to the White House, others regarded his run—and his religion—as a threat to the stability of the young nation. Hounded by mobs throughout the campaign, Smith was ultimately killed by one—the first presidential candidate to be assassinated. Though Joseph Smith's run for president is now best remembered—when it is remembered at all—for its gruesome end, the renegade campaign was revolutionary. Smith called for the total abolition of slavery, the closure of the country's penitentiaries, and the reestablishment of a national bank to stabilize the economy. But Smith's most important proposal was for an expansion of protections for religious minorities. At a time when the Bill of Rights did not apply to individual states, Smith sought to empower the federal government to protect minorities when states failed to do so. Spencer W. McBride tells the story of Joseph Smith's quixotic but consequential run for the White House and shows how his calls for religious freedom helped to shape the American political system we know today.

Transactions

Transactions PDF Author: Cambridge Philosophical Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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The American and British Debate Over Equality, 1776–1920

The American and British Debate Over Equality, 1776–1920 PDF Author: James L. Huston
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Historians have long contested the degree to which the central tenet of the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal—has manifested itself in American society and national policy. According to James L. Huston, many historians have focused too intently on class differences, slavery, and inequalities arising from ethnicity, sexuality, and gender, while overlooking important areas where notions of equality flourished during the century and a half after the Declaration’s signing. In The American and British Debate Over Equality, 1776–1920, Huston examines the egalitarian communities in rural northern America, particularly those enclaves that differed from the openly aristocratic cities and towns of the British Isles. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, British and American writers alike recognized that a growing philosophical rift divided the two nations: whereas Great Britain continued to embrace the inequality of its hierarchical class system, the United States professed allegiance to democratic ideals of equality—limited though these were by racial and gender norms of the day. Huston argues that the two countries engaged in an intellectual debate during the next century and a half over which ideal—equality or inequality—worked best in promoting social stability, political hegemony, and economic success. Exploring the effects of equality and inequality on many aspects of American life, he examines civil behavior, social customs, treatment of others, politics, education, religion, economic opportunity, and general public optimism. Drawing from decades of publications by American and British writers, Huston reveals the rhetorical strategies contemporary observers employed in defending or rejecting the organization of a society around broader notions of human equality. The American and British Debate Over Equality, 1776–1920 informs the modern debate over equality and inequality, not by theorizing and philosophizing, but by offering a glimpse into the practical applications of a functioning egalitarian society as compared to one that extolled monarchy and institutionalized inequality.

The Battle over America's Origin Story

The Battle over America's Origin Story PDF Author: Brian Regal
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030995380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book examines the legends of who ‘really’ discovered America. It argues that histories of America's origins were always based less on empirical evidence and more on social, political, and cultural wish fulfillment. Influenced by a complex interplay of Nativist hatred of immigrants and Aboriginal people, as well as distrust of academic scholarship, these legends ebbed and flowed with changing conditions in wider American society. The book focuses on the actions of a collection of quirky, obsessed amateur investigators who spent their lives trying to prove their various theories by promoting Welsh princes, Vikings, Chinese admirals, Neo-lithic Europeans, African explorers, and others who they say arrived centuries before Columbus. These myths acted as mitigating agencies for those who embraced them. Along with recent scholarship, this book makes extensive use of archival materials—some of which have never been employed before. It covers the period from the sixteenth century to the present. It brings together separate historiographic ideas to create a unified history rather than focusing on one particular legend as most books on the subject do. It shows how questions of who discovered America helped create the field of historical scholarship in this country. This book does not attempt to prove who discovered America, rather it tells the story of those who think they did.

America in the Making

America in the Making PDF Author: Charles Ernest Chadsey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 776

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Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893

Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893 PDF Author: Joshua D. Wolff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107012287
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This work chronicles the rise of Western Union Telegraph from its origins in the helter-skelter ferment of antebellum capitalism to its apogee as the first corporation to monopolize an industry on a national scale. The battles that raged over Western Union's monopoly on nineteenth-century American telecommunications - in Congress, in courts, and in the press - illuminate the fierce tensions over the rising power of corporations after the Civil War and the reshaping of American political economy. The telegraph debate reveals that what we understand as the normative relationship between private capital and public interest is the product of a historical process that was neither inevitable nor uncontested. Western Union's monopoly was not the result of market logic or a managerial revolution, but the conscious creation of entrepreneurs protecting their investments. In the process, these entrepreneurs elevated economic liberalism above traditional republican principles of public interest and helped create a new corporate order.

Latin America’s Wars

Latin America’s Wars PDF Author: Robert L. Scheina
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597974773
Category : TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
Robert ScheinaÆs latest book, drawn upon years of research, lecturing, and teaching in the field, is a groundbreaking and definitive study of Latin American military history. Despite the pivotal role of wars in U.S. history, few in the United States under.

The Coal Trade

The Coal Trade PDF Author: Frederick Edward Saward
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coal trade
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Narrative and Critical History of America: English explorations and settlements in North America. 1497-1689. [c1884

Narrative and Critical History of America: English explorations and settlements in North America. 1497-1689. [c1884 PDF Author: Justin Winsor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 618

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A Dictionary of Books Relating to America

A Dictionary of Books Relating to America PDF Author: Joseph Sabin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description