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Early America

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Full-Text Articles in History

Republican Manhood And The Disabled Revolutionary War Veteran In The Early American Republic, 1789 – 1797, Virgil Clark Apr 2024

Republican Manhood And The Disabled Revolutionary War Veteran In The Early American Republic, 1789 – 1797, Virgil Clark

Madison Historical Review

In the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, several Disabled Continental Army soldiers scattered across the burgeoning Republic were driven by desperation to write letters, pleading with General George Washington for his support. The soldiers’ decision to draft these letters stemmed from their profound frustration and disillusionment with the post-Revolution American state. The soldiers' discontent resulted from the sense of neglect they experienced after the state rejected their petitions for a Disabled Veteran’s pension. As time passed and rent went unpaid, medical bills piled up, and the threat of vagrancy loomed over these men like a malevolent specter. Unable to …


Harbingers Of A New Age: Irish And Scots Irish Indian Fighters On The Colonial American Frontier, Christina A. Neely Jan 2024

Harbingers Of A New Age: Irish And Scots Irish Indian Fighters On The Colonial American Frontier, Christina A. Neely

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Through the examination of various points of Irish and Scots Irish settlement in the New World, a previously underrepresented portion of American history emerges to tell the story of a hearty and industrious people who literally went out into the wilderness and settled their own communities. Through their hard work and enterprising nature, they were able to not only survive in the face of extreme adversity on the frontier, but they preserved their culture for generations and contributed to the cultural, political, military, religious, and environmental influences that shaped the New World and the American nation. Their martial prowess and …


Mercy Otis Warren’S Marcia(S) And Cornelia(S): A Case Study In Women’S Internalization Of Classicism In Early America, Brittany Ellis May 2022

Mercy Otis Warren’S Marcia(S) And Cornelia(S): A Case Study In Women’S Internalization Of Classicism In Early America, Brittany Ellis

Honors Theses

The connection between people in early America and classicism is a field of study that has been heavily documented, although it has remained a very male-focused field with little research done about how women in early America formed a relationship with antiquity. This thesis reveals that elite white women had a deep emotional and intellectual attachment with mothers and matrons from ancient Greece and Rome as a basis for expressing political thoughts and identity; classicism formed a common language that many women could relate to each other before, during, and after the American Revolution. This assessment is achieved through a …


For Just Business, It’S Pretty Personal: The Impact Of Money On The Early Republic’S Economically Elite Families, Abigail L. Adam Oct 2021

For Just Business, It’S Pretty Personal: The Impact Of Money On The Early Republic’S Economically Elite Families, Abigail L. Adam

Student Publications

This essay examines the Adam Family Papers as a case study representing the Early American Republic’s economic elite. It argues that individual business practices affected the relationships between relatives—sometimes positively, other times negatively. The first section concerns other historians’ work on the family and on the Salisbury Iron District. The second section discusses women’s roles within their male relatives’ businesses. The third section relates to gift exchanges, while the fourth concerns business transactions between family members. The fifth section regards the economic hierarchy that emerged within the Forbes & Adam family. Letters concerning Samuel Forbes, John Adam Jr., Abigail Adam, …


“By Her Needle Maintain Herself With Reputation:” Philadelphia Quaker Women And The Materiality Of Piety, 1758-1760, Laura Earls May 2021

“By Her Needle Maintain Herself With Reputation:” Philadelphia Quaker Women And The Materiality Of Piety, 1758-1760, Laura Earls

Madison Historical Review

From the garments that they made to the ways that they spoke, Quakers grappled with the outward trappings of piety. Unofficial Quaker guidance enumerated some vague criteria for plain garments around the turn of the eighteenth century, but aside from this, pious members largely decided for themselves what was or was not plain. This paper utilizes a close study of the diaries and possessions of women including Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, Grace Peel Dowell Parr, Hannah Callender Sansom, and their contemporaries to argue that, rather than represent lapses of faith, their material worlds represented individual interpretations of plainness within rigid social …


Tackling The Taboo: A Cross-Generational Study Of The Adams-Smith Family And Their Moral Struggle With Alcoholism, Erin Van Gilder Mar 2021

Tackling The Taboo: A Cross-Generational Study Of The Adams-Smith Family And Their Moral Struggle With Alcoholism, Erin Van Gilder

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This thesis examines how the American perception of drunkenness changed in accordance with transformations in the tenants of virtue in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the definition and influence of virtue became more interpretive and circumstantial, so did attitudes towards habitual drunkenness. Before the American Revolution, the overconsumption of alcohol was condemned, as it was a clear deviation from classic conceptions of civic and religious virtue. After the Revolution, an individualized interpretation of virtue became popular and alcohol consumption rose dramatically. In the early 19th century, increasing self-interest meant less condemnation directed at the habitual drunkard. At the …


Rewriting Eden With The Book Of Mormon: Joseph Smith And The Reception Of Genesis 1-6 In Early America, Colby Townsend Dec 2019

Rewriting Eden With The Book Of Mormon: Joseph Smith And The Reception Of Genesis 1-6 In Early America, Colby Townsend

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The colonists living in the new United States after the American War for Independence were faced with the problem of forming new identities once they could no longer recognize themselves, collectively or individually, as subjects of Great Britain. After the French Revolution American politicians began to weed out the more radical political elements of the newly formed United States, particularly by painting one of the revolution’s biggest defenders, Thomas Paine, as unworthy of the attention he received during the American War for Independence, and fear ran throughout the states that an anarchic revolution like the French Revolution could bring the …


Atlantic Lives: A Comparative Approach To Early America, Timothy J. Shannon Jan 2019

Atlantic Lives: A Comparative Approach To Early America, Timothy J. Shannon

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Atlantic Lives offers insight into the lived experiences of a range of actors in the early modern Atlantic World. Organized thematically, each chapter features primary source selections from a variety of non-traditional sources, including travel narratives from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The fully-revised and expanded second edition goes into even greater depth in exploring the diverse roles and experiences of women, Native Americans, and Africans, as well as the critical theme of emerging capitalism and New World slavery. New chapters also address captivity experiences, intercultural religious encounters, and interracial sexuality and marriage.With classroom-focused discussion questions and suggested …


My Land Is My Flesh Silver Bluff, The Creek Indians, And The Transformation Of Colonized Space In Early America, Bryan C. Rindfleisch Jul 2018

My Land Is My Flesh Silver Bluff, The Creek Indians, And The Transformation Of Colonized Space In Early America, Bryan C. Rindfleisch

History Faculty Research and Publications

This essay explores how Native peoples like the Creek (Muscogee) Indians invested colonized spaces in early American society with their own material, commercial, political, and spiritual meanings and importance. In particular, Creek Indians from the town of Coweta transformed Silver Bluff, the plantation of the trader and merchant George Galphin, into a “white ground,” as a place connected to Creek Country by a “white path,” and as a space where Creek and British leaders congregated to conduct business and negotiate politics. For it is no coincidence that the treaties of Augusta in 1763 and 1773, peaceful resolutions agreed to by …


Blood From The Sky: Miracles And Politics In The Early American Republic, Kyle Roberts Mar 2018

Blood From The Sky: Miracles And Politics In The Early American Republic, Kyle Roberts

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Early nineteenth-century Americans might not have lived in the “world of wonders” of their seventeenth-century forbears, argues Adam Jortner, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University, but they did inhabit a world where people still believed in the supernatural, where they discussed and debated those beliefs, and occasionally found themselves on the receiving end of persecution and violence as a result. In this valuable study, Jortner recovers the enduring presence of miracles, wonders, and other supernatural events in the decades following the American Revolution and challenges us to rethink how we interpret their place in the religious and political life …


Friend From France: The Popular Image Of The Marquis De Lafayette In Early America, Elisabeth Iacono Jan 2018

Friend From France: The Popular Image Of The Marquis De Lafayette In Early America, Elisabeth Iacono

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper addresses the impressions the Marquis de Lafayette made upon the American people during the American Revolution and his return tour in 1824. As someone who has admired Lafayette since I was young, I was aware of the fact that many locations are named after the general and that he plays a prominent role in shows such as the Broadway musical Hamilton. I wanted to study why Lafayette had such an impact on the American people, and why he has been memorialized in a positive manner. As a promoter of liberty, Lafayette was embraced by the colonists for his …


God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture During The Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860, Keith Dwayne Lyon Aug 2016

God's Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture During The Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860, Keith Dwayne Lyon

Doctoral Dissertations

In reference to the early national and antebellum eras, the term "camp meeting" signifies a rural Protestant revival held over several days and nights, wherein participants utilized temporary living accommodations--typically wagons or tents--and prepared food on the grounds in order to attend multiple outdoor services. Eventually dominated by Methodists and Cumberland Presbyterians, camp meetings routinely attracted several thousand people, thus creating temporary communities larger than most permanent ones in many regions. Considering the scarcity of such sizeable, collective events in the country’s rural areas during this period, the assemblies inevitably generated an exciting array of social opportunities and served as …


From England's Bridewell To America's Brides: Imprisoned Women, Shakespeare's Measure For Measure, And Empire, Alicia Meyer Apr 2015

From England's Bridewell To America's Brides: Imprisoned Women, Shakespeare's Measure For Measure, And Empire, Alicia Meyer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the experience of largely single women in London’s house of correction, Bridewell Prison, and argues that Bridewell’s prisoners, and the nature of their crimes, reveal the state’s desire for dependent, sexually controlled, yet ultimately productive women. Scholars have largely neglected the place of early modern women’s imprisonment despite its pervasive presence in the everyday lives of common English women. By examining the historical and cultural implications of early modern women and prison, this thesis contends that women’s prisons were more than simply establishments of punishment and reform. A closer examination of Bridewell’s philosophy and practices shows how …


A Different Kind Of Race: How Native Racial Practice Affected Kinship In The Borderlands Of The Old Northwest, 1778-1813, Alexis Helen Smith Aug 2014

A Different Kind Of Race: How Native Racial Practice Affected Kinship In The Borderlands Of The Old Northwest, 1778-1813, Alexis Helen Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses changes in native racial practice in the Ohio River Valley and lower Great Lakes from 1778-1813. In this region, Native peoples altered their identities and racial practices in order to navigate an environment where Euro-Americans threatened their way of life and their land. They cultivated a pan-Indian identity in order to fight against westward expansion, making the isolation of "others" a typical function of kinship practices. While recognizing the racial hierarchy of whites, Native peoples created their own racial thought and practices, integrating their beliefs into their kinship structures, daily lives, and identities. As pan-Indianism evolved, "white" …


The Sodomy Trial Of Nicholas Sension, 1677: Documents And Teaching Guide, Richard Godbeer, Douglas L. Winiarski Apr 2014

The Sodomy Trial Of Nicholas Sension, 1677: Documents And Teaching Guide, Richard Godbeer, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The sodomy trial of Nicholas Sension in 1677 has long fascinated historians, in part because the surviving documentation from this particular case is exceptionally full and richly detailed, but also because it challenges long-held assumptions about attitudes toward sodomy in early America. The trial records cast light not only on the history of sexuality but also on a broad range of themes relating to seventeenth-century New England’s society and culture. Yet until now no complete edition of the documents from Sension’s trial has appeared in print. This edition is intended primarily for use in undergraduate courses. It includes a substantial …


Review Of The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler : A Story Of Rape, Incest, And Justice In Early America, Michael F. Russo May 2003

Review Of The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler : A Story Of Rape, Incest, And Justice In Early America, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.