Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Joseph Rogers Underwood - A Representative Nineteenth Century American, Ralph Ward Brashear

History Theses

Many men throughout history have been on the verge of greatness only to pass into oblivion because of convictions which would not let them compromise with expediency. Joseph Rogers Underwood was such a man, for he placed great importance upon duty, integrity and responsibility. The high values which he placed upon these virtues cost him the renomination for senator by the Kentucky Legislature in 1851. As the Louisville Daily Democrat, an opposition newspaper, so brilliantly stated about this election:

"The whig (sic) party in the Legislature have at last compromised the divisions among themselves, and elected a Senator nobody …

Nancy Huston Banks: Her Life & Works, Velma Hines

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Several books have been written about the various natural resources of the state of Kentucky. A number of excellent histories of the state have been published with descriptions of the pioneer and outlaw days when the state numbered its inhabitants by the very few thousands. The industrial, economic, and social activities of the Kentucky people have been written about for several years. But Kentucky literature has had practically no recognition. The average person has known very little about Kentucky writers who probably have deserved to be placed among those in the Hall of Fame. From the pen of Kentucky writers …

Matthew Lyon In Kentucky, Lyda Smith

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

“Men at some time are masters of their fate:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Thus Shakespeare has the wily Cassius speak, and thus Matthew Lyon must have believed; else he had not contended so fiercely, so incessantly, and so interminably against such adverse circumstances as the average individual would have submitted to sooner or later. Many may have thought so; the facts often indicated so; yet never in a true sense was Matthew Lyon an underling. His fierce spirit was supreme over material things. Even while an indentured servant …