Antebellum America

This thesis details the Phase 1 archaeological investigation into Black-Americans who were active on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan during the mining boom of the 1850s-1880s. Using archaeological and archival methods, this thesis is a proof-of-concept for future work to be done that investigates the cultural heritage of Black Americans in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Though commonly implied on American Swedenborgian web sites that Carl Bernard Wadström’s visionary Swedenborgian crusade against the slave trade in English and French colonies inspired and informed the fight against slavery on U.S. soil by American Swedenborgians, an examination of Swedenborgian discourse in Antebellum America in sermons, pamphlets, articles, reports, and personal correspondence up through the end of the American Civil War in 1865 exposes another picture. In addition to complete absence of reference to Wadström among American Swedenborgians until long after the war’s conclusion, extant discourse bares a predominant silence up to 1850 followed by a mixed and tepid conversation leading up to the outbreak of war in 1861. Even after the war commenced when most American religious leaders and groups in the North finally swung into strong anti-slavery stands, Swedenborgians as a body in the North waited until 1864 to do so formally. Though several ardent anti-slavery Swedenborgian voices emerge, this study reveals that overall American Swedenborgians engaged Swedenborgian thought quite differently than did Wadström on the slavery issue, and it provides a heuristic case study illustrating how divergent local contexts can elicit radically unalike social applications of the same religious source texts.

From the days of the country’s beginnings where resistance to England brought together the founding fathers, to the present day two-party system of Republican versus Democrats, the United States of America was a country founded on political opposition.  Politics have always been a passionate endeavor of the American culture. Propaganda of political views has been able to seep into the American psyche since the creation of the penny press. The penny press newspapers that were invented during the antebellum years, made news and information readily available to people of all classes. They created new ploys to appeal to the masses and engage their desire to be political involved in the Republic. The newspapers became politically affiliated and soon their information began to disclose party’s political views as well as attacking opposing parties’ beliefs. During the antebellum years, a regional location could determine the views of its papers due to a political parties pro- or anti- slavery beliefs. Democrats were typically associated with the South and were pro-slavery, while Republicans were found in the North and were anti-slavery. Although these parties were not completely regionalized, this was a common trend that could be seen in many cases throughout the later stages of the antebellum period. By examining two different newspapers, one from the North and one from the South, the contrasting views of political parties based on region can be observed as well as the typical day-to-day use of newspapers during the antebellum period regardless of location.

In early America, the notion that settlers ought to receive undeveloped
land for free was enormously popular among the rural
poor and social reformers. Well into the Jacksonian era, however,
Congress considered the demand fiscally and economically
irresponsible. Increasingly, this led proponents to cast the idea as
a military matter: Land grantees would supplant troops in the efforts
to take the continent over from Indian nations and rival colonial
powers. Julius Wilm’s book examines the free land debates
of the 1790s to 1850s and reconstructs the settlement experiences
under the donation laws for Florida (1842) and the Oregon Territory
(1850).

(THE FULL TEXT IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST)

Throughout her life, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) remained deeply involved in religious movements, feminist causes, and the most divisive political and moral issue of her time: the abolition of slavery. From the time she wrote her first and most famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, controversy surrounds her portrayal of slavery and gender issues. While it is called a powerfully feminist book and one of the causes of the abolition of slavery, it is harshly criticized by some black and feminist scholars. New historicism’s belief in the mutual constitution of the text and the context justifies the controversy. As the feminist writer consciously tries to undermine the dominant discourse of patriarchy of her time, she is involuntarily and treacherously under the influence of and, to some extent, reinforcing the dominant discourse. This is true regarding the issues of the blacks.

Frances Wright, a British social reformer and feminist, published an account of her American travels: Views of Society and Manners in America in 1821. Wright founded an experimental community in Nashoba, Tennessee, whose aim was to buy black slaves, educate them, and then liberate them. Even though the enterprise turned out to be a failure, the author continued to fight for the cause of black emancipation.
My paper examines Wright’s portrayal of America in Views, which, compared to most other early 19th-century British travel accounts, is surprisingly enthusiastic. Wright idealizes the young republic, seeing it as a perfect embodiment of her ideals. I argue that Wright’s vision of the young republic is utopian, and it prevents her from seeing any flaws in the American system. This is especially pronounced in the case of the central problem posed by British travelogues of the era, slavery, which troubles her not so much on moral grounds, but as a blemish on the character of the country of freedom and equality.

The Common School Awakening offers a new narrative that counters previous conceptions about the rise of public schools in America. In this book, David Komline tells how Christian reformers played a defining role in the movement to systematize and professionalize American education in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Foundations for the “Communications Revolution” in the 19th century could not have occurred without advancements in writing and printing materials, making is easier and faster to disseminate information. The United States patent and business laws at the time also made it easier to test and perfect these advancements[1] creating a deluge in the allocation of information once the transfer from rag paper to wood pulp paper was complete.

[1] B. Zorina Khan, The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1790-1920, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 106.

My paper investigates 19th-century travel writing by British women visiting America: texts by such authors as Frances Trollope, Isabella Bird, or Frances Kemble. I analyze to what extent these travelers' gender influences their view of race. On the one hand, as Tim Youngs stresses, there seems to be very little difference between male and female travel writing in the 19th century, as women, in order to be accepted by their audience, needed to mimic men's style. On the other hand, women writers occasionally mention their gender, as for example Trollope, who explains that she is not competent enough to speak on political matters, which is why she wishes to limit herself only to domestic issues. This provision, however, may be seen as a mere performance of a conventional obligation, since it does not prevent Trollope from expressing her opinions on American democracy. Moreover, Jenny Sharpe shows how Victorian Englishwomen are trapped between a social role of superiority and inferiority, possessing "a dominant position of race and a subordinate one of gender". This makes the female authors believe that as women they owe to the oppressed people more sympathy than their male compatriots. My paper discusses female writing about the united states in order to see how these writers navigate their position of superiority/inferiority.

This paper critiques ‘presentism’ in approaches to writing about the experience of women in the Antebellum period of American history.  Examining the adverse effects of prioritising current notions of ‘success’ and the ‘public sphere’ when examining women’s experience in the past, it juxtaposes the activities of women from a variety of philosophical and religious traditions in the period, such as feminists Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony;  abolitionists Angelina and Sarah Grimké;  advocates of professionalising the domestic sphere Catherine E. Beecher and Sarah Josepha Hale;  teachers and missionaries Mary Lyon, Emma Willard and Hannah Reeves. Dichotomising the social topography of the era into discrete ‘public’ and ‘private’ arenas according to our own current understandings is shown to obscure the ongoing negotiation of social reality in which such women were all fully active, whilst preselecting particular ideas of ‘equality’ as ‘better’ or ‘sounder’ than others is proven merely to obscure the richness of ongoing discourse at the time between women and women, as well as women and men.

An examination of Antebellum American home libraries, as portrayed in contemporary popular literature, reveals an underexplored characteristic of the book’s life cycle. The text on the spine of books, which was the only visible part presented in middle-class home libraries, created feedback between viewer and object. This relatively new dynamic of displayed spine text communicated notions of class inclusion or exclusion to the viewer. The middle classes created social capital by exhibiting these texts to help distinguish themselves from the lower classes. Mid-nineteenth-century approaches to spine text display also suggest social and cultural cleavages within the developing middle classes’ social strata. This tension is evident in The Potiphar Papers, an 1853 satire of New York society by George William Curtis, serialized in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. The Potiphar Papers illustrates the changing antebellum relationship to book display. These developments suggest an expanded communication circuit and life cycle relative to the home library. This article attempts to illustrate that moment.

"This book is about how Joseph Smith established religious authority and a long-lasting, complex priesthood structure. The thesis of this book enlivens and builds upon three scholars’ major ideas about religious authority and Mormonism in antebellum America. In an effort to move the conversation toward politics and its relationship to religion, Porterfield argued that populism constrained that relationship. Though it is true that Mormonism grew, as Hatch shows, from the populist appeal of a lay priesthood and communal living in early Mormonism, Flake demonstrates that the Mormon priesthood was hierarchical. Left just outside the focus of the work of Hatch, Porterfield, and Flake is the role of Joseph Smith defining Mormon authority—a role that has not been fully examined within this context.

Smith’s authority grew in opposition to both civic and political authority being garnered by evangelicals and as a countertrend to the populist religious movements of the Second Great Awakening. In fact, Smith’s prophetic voice and scripture formed a hierarchical priesthood structure that eventually empowered every male member of his church to become a prophet, priest, and king, while they answered to each leader above them within the same structure. Thus this book argues that Smith’s prophetic voice became the arbiter of authority. It had the ultimate power to create and guide, while it was used to form a strong lay priesthood order in a stable hierarchical democracy devoid of the kind of political authority that evangelicals fostered."

Army schedules help to supplement this obscure area of the historical record. These records invite broader ways of thinking about the Mexican-American War. They are also immensely valuable in helping to define the extent of early Canadian emigrations, with the events of 1846-1848 constituting both a snapshot and a cause of further migration prior to the U.S. Civil War.

Full text: http://blog.utpjournals.com/2020/09/21/from-british-america-to-buena-vista-canadians-in-the-mexican-war/