From Puritan to Yankee

From Puritan to Yankee PDF Author: Richard L. Bushman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Connecticut
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

From Puritan to Yankee

From Puritan to Yankee PDF Author: Richard L. Bushman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Connecticut
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


From Puritan to Yankee

From Puritan to Yankee PDF Author: L. Richard Bushman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description


From Puritan to Yankee

From Puritan to Yankee PDF Author: Richard L. BUSHMAN
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The years from 1690 to 1765 in America have usually been considered a waiting period before the Revolution. Mr. Bushman, in his penetrating study of colonial Connecticut, takes another view. He shows how, during these years, economic ambition and religious ferment profoundly altered the structure of Puritan society, enlarging the bounds of liberty and inspiring resistance to established authority. This is an investigation of the strains that accompanied the growth of liberty in an authoritarian society. Mr. Bushman traces the deterioration of Puritan social institutions and the consequences for human character. He does this by focusing on day-to-day life in Connecticut--on the farms, in the churches, and in the town meetings. Controversies within the towns over property, money, and church discipline shook the "land of steady habits," and the mounting frustration of common needs compelled those in authority, in contradiction to Puritan assumptions, to become more responsive to popular demands. In the Puritan setting these tensions were inevitably given a moral significance. Integrating social and economic interpretations, Mr. Bushman explains the Great Awakening of the 1740's as an outgrowth of the stresses placed on the Puritan character. Men, plagued with guilt for pursuing their economic ambitions and resisting their rulers, became highly susceptible to revival preaching. The Awakening gave men a new vision of the good society. The party of the converted, the "New Lights," which also absorbed people with economic discontents, put unprecedented demands on civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The resulting dissension moved Connecticut, almost unawares, toward republican attitudes and practices. Disturbed by the turmoil, many observers were, by 1765, groping toward a new theory of social order that would reconcile traditional values with their eighteenth-century experiences. Vividly written, full of illustrative detail, the manuscript of this book has been called by Oscar Handlin one of the most important works of American history in recent years. Table of Contents: PART ONE: SOCIETY IN 1690 1. Law and Authority 2. The Town and the Economy PART TWO: LAND, 1690-1740 3. Proprietors 4. Outlivers 5. New Plantations 6. The Politics of Land PART THREE: MONEY, 1710-1750 7. New Traders 8. East versus West 9. Covetousness PART FOUR: CHURCHES, 1690-1765 10. Clerical Authority 11. Dissent 12. Awakening 13. The Church and Experimental Religion 14. Church and State PART FIVE: POLITICS, 1740-1765 15. New Lights in Politics 16. A New Social Order Appendixes Bibliographical Note List of Works Cited Index Illustrations Map of Connecticut in 1765 Map of hereditary Mohegan lands and Wabbaquasset lands Reviews of this book: Employing his special training in psychology to advantage, Bushman has skillfully woven into his description and analysis of Connecticut society in the process of change, a bold interpretation of the impact of change upon individual character formation...The author has made a signal contribution to the history of liberty in America. --William and Mary Quarterly Reviews of this book: At the heart of history lies a vague but undeniable substance known as 'national character' or 'social character'...Richard L. Bushman has had the courage to offer his version of the evolution of the social character of Connecticut...The boldness of the attempt alone would make Puritan to Yankee an important book, but it is the general accuracy of its author's perception of the way the mechanism of historical change operates and the specific accuracy 0f his assessment of the results that makes the book one of the most fruitful historical studies produced in the last few years in any field of history. --History and Theory Reviews of this book: Professor Bushman's study of eighteenth-century Connecticut is a first-rate job of social history. He deals with large questions in satisfying detail...Energy in research is combined with courage in writing. --New England Quarterly

Making Manhood

Making Manhood PDF Author: Anne S. Lombard
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674010581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
"At its core was a suspicion of emotional attachments between men and women. Boys were taken under their father's wing from a young age and taught the virtues of reason, responsibility, and maturity. Intimate bonds with mothers were discouraged, as were individual expression, pride, and play. The mature man who moderated his passions and contributed to his family and community was admired, in sharp contrast to the young, adventurous, and aggressive hero who would emerge after the American Revolution and embody our modern image of masculinity."--BOOK JACKET.

Law and Religion in Colonial America

Law and Religion in Colonial America PDF Author: Scott Douglas Gerber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009289055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
By focusing on law, this book offers new insights into the history of religious liberty in colonial America.

One Holy and Happy Society

One Holy and Happy Society PDF Author: Gerald R. McDermott
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271028958
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Jonathan Edwards (1703&–58) was arguably this country's greatest theologian and its finest philosopher before the nineteenth century. His school if disciples (the &"New Divinity&") exerted enormous influence on the religious and political cultures of late colonial and early republican America. Hence any study of religion and politics in early America must take account of this theologian and his legacy. Yet historians still regard Edward's social theory as either nonexistent or underdeveloped. Gerald McDermott demonstrates, to the contrary, that Edwards was very interested in the social and political affairs of his day, and commented upon them at length in his unpublished sermons and private notebooks. McDermott shows that Edwards thought deeply about New England's status under God, America's role in the millennium, the nature and usefulness of patriotism, the duties of a good magistrate, and what it means to be a good citizen. In fact, his sociopolitical theory was at least as fully developed as that of his better-known contemporaries and more progressive in its attitude toward citizens' rights. Using unpublished manuscripts that have previously been largely ignored, McDermott also convincingly challenges generations of scholarly opinion about Edwards. The Edwards who emerges from this nook is both less provincial and more this-worldly than the persona he is commonly given.

Yankees in Michigan

Yankees in Michigan PDF Author: Brian C. Wilson
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 0870139703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
As Brian C. Wilson describes them in this highly readable and entertaining book, Yankees—defined by their shared culture and sense of identity—had a number of distinctive traits and sought to impose their ideas across the state of Michigan. After the ethnic label of "Yankee" fell out of use, the offspring of Yankees appropriated the term "Midwesterner." So fused did the identities of Yankee and Midwesterner become that understanding the larger story of America's Midwestern regional identity begins with the Yankees in Michigan.

America's God

America's God PDF Author: Mark A. Noll
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199882231
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new American ethos. In the 125 years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, theology played an extraordinarily important role in American public and private life. Its evolution had a profound impact on America's self-definition. The changes taking place in American theology during this period were marked by heightened spiritual inwardness, a new confidence in individual reason, and an attentiveness to the economic and market realities of Western life. Vividly set in the social and political events of the age, America's God is replete with the figures who made up the early American intellectual landscape, from theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel W. Taylor, William Ellery Channing, and Charles Hodge and religiously inspired writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Stowe to dominant political leaders of the day like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The contributions of these thinkers combined with the religious revival of the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the consuming struggle for independence, and the rise of evangelical Protestantism to form a common intellectual coinage based on a rising republicanism and commonsense principles. As this Christian republicanism affirmed itself, it imbued in dedicated Christians a conviction that the Bible supported their beliefs over those of all others. Tragically, this sense of religious purpose set the stage for the Civil War, as the conviction of Christians both North and South that God was on their side served to deepen a schism that would soon rend the young nation asunder. Mark Noll has given us the definitive history of Christian theology in America from the time of Jonathan Edwards to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of a flexible and creative theological energy that over time forged a guiding national ideology the legacies of which remain with us to this day.

Rethinking America

Rethinking America PDF Author: John M. Murrin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190870540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
For five decades John M. Murrin has been the consummate historian's historian. This volume brings together his seminal essays on the American Revolution, the United States Constitution, and the early American Republic. Collectively, they rethink fundamental questions regarding American identity, the decision to declare independence in 1776, and the impact the American Revolution had on the nation it produced. By digging deeply into questions that have shaped the field for several generations, Rethinking America argues that high politics and the study of constitutional and ideological questions--broadly the history of elites--must be considered in close conjunction with issues of economic inequality, class conflict, and racial division. Bringing together different schools of history and a variety of perspectives on both Britain and the North American colonies, it explains why what began as a constitutional argument, that virtually all expected would remain contained within the British Empire, exploded into a truly subversive and radical revolution that destroyed monarchy and aristocracy and replaced them with a rapidly transforming and chaotic republic. This volume examines the period of the early American Republic and discusses why the Founders' assumptions about what their Revolution would produce were profoundly different than the society that emerged from the American Revolution. In many ways, Rethinking America suggests that the outcome of the American Revolution put the new United States on a path to a violent and bloody civil war. With an introduction by Andrew Shankman, this long-awaited work by one of the most important scholars of the Revolutionary era offers a coherent interpretation of the complex period that saw the breakdown of colonial British North America and the founding of the United States.

Diversity and Unity in Early North America

Diversity and Unity in Early North America PDF Author: Phillip Morgan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134881622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Philip Morgan's selection of cutting-edge essays by leading historians represents the extraordinary vitality of recent historical literature on early America. The book opens up previously unexplored areas such as cultural diversity, ethnicity, and gender, and reveals the importance of new methods such as anthropology, and historical demography to the study of early America.