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Ladies and Gentlemen on Display
Written as a dissertation in history at the U. of Virginia, this study recreates the societal mores displayed at summer resorts at Virginia Springs from 1790-1860, as this was recorded in the letters and other archives of families who sojourned there. Lewis (history, Widener U.) suggests that her history provides a new insight into plantation society by recording responses to unusual events and lack of routine. She supplements the account with some analysis of the sources for the romantic and idealistic views of this culture. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte
Two centuries ago, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte was one of the most famous women in America. Beautiful, scandalous, and outspoken, she had wed Napoleon's brother Jerome, borne his child, and seen the marriage annulled by the emperor himself. With her notorious behavior, dashing husband, and associations with European royalty, Elizabeth became one of America's first celebrities during a crucial moment in the nation's history. At the time of Elizabeth's fame, the United States had only recently gained its independence, and the character of American society and politics was not yet fully formed. Still concerned that their republican experiment might fail and that their society might become too...
Ladies and Gentlemen on Display
Each summer between 1790 and 1860, hundreds and eventually thousands of southern men and women left the diseases and boredom of their plantation homes and journeyed to the healthful and entertaining Virginia Springs. At the springs, visitors, as well as their slaves, interacted with one another and engaged in behavior quite different from the picture presented by most historians. In this book, Charlene Boyer Lewis argues that the Virginia Springs provided a theater of sorts, where contests for power between men and women, fashionables and evangelicals, blacks and whites, old and young, and even northerners and southerners played out away from the traditional roles of the plantation. In their pursuit of health and pleasure, white southerners created a truly regional community at the springs. At this edge of the South, elite southern society shaped itself, defining what it meant to be a "Southerner" and redefining social roles and relations.
Memories of War
Even in the midst of the Civil War, its battlefields were being dedicated as hallowed ground. Today, those sites are among the most visited places in the United States. In contrast, the battlegrounds of the Revolutionary War had seemingly been forgotten in the aftermath of the conflict in which the nation forged its independence. Decades after the signing of the Constitution, the battlefields of Yorktown, Saratoga, Fort Moultrie, Ticonderoga, Guilford Courthouse, Kings Mountain, and Cowpens, among others, were unmarked except for crumbling forts and overgrown ramparts. Not until the late 1820s did Americans begin to recognize the importance of these places. In Memories of War, Thomas A. Cham...
Black, White, & Olive Drab
One of the first Army bases to implement on a large scale President Truman's call for racial integration of the armed forces, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, quickly took its place in the Defense Department's official history of the process. What reporters, and later on, historians, overlooked was the interaction between the integration of Fort Jackson and developments, in particular, the civil rights movement, in the wider communities in which the base is situated.In Black, White, and Olive Drab, Andrew H. Myers redresses this oversight; taking a case-study approach, Myers meticulously weaves together a wide range of official records, newspaper accounts, and personal interviews, revealing the...
Destination Dixie
Once upon a time, it was impossible to drive through the South without coming across signs to “See Rock City” or similar tourist attractions. From battlegrounds to birthplaces, and sites in between, heritage tourism has always been part of how the South attracts visitors—and defines itself—yet such sites are often understudied in the scholarly literature. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the narrative of southern history told at these sites is often complicated by race, influenced by local politics, and shaped by competing memories. Included are essays on the meanings of New Orleans cemeteries; Stone Mountain, Georgia; historic Charleston, South Carolina; Yorktown National Battlefield; Selma, Alabama, as locus of the civil rights movement; and the homes of Mark Twain, Margaret Mitchell, and other notables. Destination Dixie reveals that heritage tourism in the South is about more than just marketing destinations and filling hotel rooms; it cuts to the heart of how southerners seek to shape their identity and image for a broader touring public—now often made up of northerners and southerners alike.
Founding Friendships
Elite men and women in America's founding era formed friendships with one another that were vibrant, intimate, and politically significant. These relationships put women on equal footing with the founding fathers and other prominent men. Such friendships, Cassandra Good shows in Founding Friendships, enriched both the lives of individuals and the political fabric of the new nation.
Being American in Europe, 1750–1860
When eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans made their Grand Tour of Europe, what did they learn about themselves? While visiting Europe In 1844, Harry McCall of Philadelphia wrote to his cousin back home of his disappointment. He didn’t mind Paris, but he preferred the company of Americans to Parisians. Furthermore, he vowed to be “an American, heart and soul” wherever he traveled, but “particularly in England.” Why was he in Europe if he found it so distasteful? After all, travel in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was expensive, time consuming, and frequently uncomfortable. Being American in Europe, 1750–1860 tracks the adventures of American travelers while...
Justice for Ourselves
A new look at the Black Virginians who defined and realized their freedom after the collapse of slavery “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery,” wrote Frederick Douglass in 1862, “but only begins.” The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment altered a legal status; to make freedom a reality represented a different challenge altogether. Justice for Ourselves tells the stories of remarkable Black men and women in post–Civil War Virginia who persevered in the face of overwhelming barriers to seek their freedom and create a new world for themselves and future generations. Drawing on the life stories of individuals from all regions of the state—political leaders, teachers, ministers, journalists, and entrepreneurs—Justice for Ourselves recounts their quests to attain full American citizenship and economic independence before the onset of Jim Crow repression. Centering Black voices, this book includes tales of opportunities seized and opportunities lost and will reshape the narrative of Black history and the history of Virginia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Foul Bodies
In colonial times few Americans bathed regularly; by the mid-1800s, a cleanliness “revolution” had begun. Why this change, and what did it signify? A nation’s standards of private cleanliness reveal much about its ideals of civilization, fears of disease, and expectations for public life, says Kathleen Brown in this unusual cultural history. Starting with the shake-up of European practices that coincided with Atlantic expansion, she traces attitudes toward “dirt” through the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that cleanliness—and the lack of it—had moral, religious, and often sexual implications. Brown contends that care of the body is not simply a private matter but an expr...
