Union general, federal judge, presidential contender, and cabinet officer—Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana stands as an enigmatic character in the politics of the Gilded Age, one who never seemed comfortable in the offices he sought. This first scholarly biography not only follows the turns of his career but seeks also to find the roots of his disaffection. Entering politics as a Whig, Gresham shortly turned to help organize the new Republican Party and was a contender for its presidential nomination in the 1880s. But he became popular with labor and with the Populists and closed his political career by serving as secretary of state under Grover Cleveland. In reviewing Gresham's conduct of foreign affairs, Charles W. Calhoun disputes the widely held view that he was an economic expansionist who paved the way for imperialism. Gresham, instead, is seen here as a traditionalist who tried to steer the country away from entanglements abroad. It is this traditionalism that Calhoun finds to be the clue to Gresham's career. Troubled with self-doubt, Gresham, like the Cato of old, sought strength in a return to the republican virtues of the Revolutionary generation. Based on a thorough use of the available resources, this will stand as the definitive biography of an important figure in American political and diplomatic history, and in its portrayal of a man out of step with his times it sheds a different light on the politics of the Gilded Age.
Bestselling author Lauren Tarshis tackles the Children's Blizzard of 1888 in this latest installment of the groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling I Survived series. Eleven-year-old John Hale has already survived one brutal Dakota winter, and now he's about to experience one of the deadliest blizzards in American history. The storm of 1888 was a monster, a frozen hurricane that slammed into America's midwest without warning. Within hours, America's prairie would be buried under ten feet of snow. Hundreds would be dead, thousands terrified and lost and freezing. John never wanted to move to the wide-open prairie. He's a city kid, not a tough pioneer! But his inner strength is seriously tested when he finds himself trapped in the blinding snow, the wind like a giant crushing hammer, pounding him over and over again. Will John ever find his way home?
"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine." So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.
On January 12, 1888, a sudden blizzard barreled across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakota Territory. Blinding snow and howling wind took rural towns by surprise. Many children were stranded in one-room schoolhouses. Far from their homes on the Midwestern prairie, would the people caught in the storm survive? To understand the impact of a disaster, you must understand its causes. How did warm weather earlier in the day give people a false sense of safety? How did the lack of an accurate forecast contribute to the severity of the disaster? Investigate the disaster from a cause-and-effect perspective and find out!
This book explores the improbable rise of medical hypnotism in Victorian Britain and its subsequent assimilation and neglect. It follows the careers of the ‘New Hypnotists’: Charles Lloyd Tuckey, John Milne Bramwell, George Kingsbury and Robert Felkin. This loosely knit group all trained with the Suggestion School of Nancy and published books on hypnotism. They had to confront the many public and medical prejudices against the trance state which had persisted after the scandalous disgrace of John Elliotson and medical mesmerism, fifty years before. Hypnotism was a highly contested technology and in the 1890s the debates about safety and utility were fought in the national newspapers as well as the medical journals. The new hypnotists took on the might of the medical institutions personified by Ernest Hart, Editor of the British Medical Journal. However their timing was propitious, as the rise of faith-healing forced the medical profession to confront the non-physical therapeutic aspects of the doctor-patient relationship. The hypnotic discourse was shaped by these developments, but also by the fascination of the general public, novelists, occultists, psychic investigators, educationalists and spiritualists in the myriad possibilities of the trance state. Despite growing interest in the prehistory of British psychology and talking therapies, and the recent challenges to the primacy of Freudian histories, there are few accounts of the development of British ‘eclectic therapy’. This book uses the New Hypnotists as a lens to examine Victorian medicine and society, exploring their role in establishing the term ‘psychotherapy,’ and legitimising medical hypnotism, a precursor of psychological therapies.
East End I888 documents in minute detail the social, political, and economic life in the notorious slums of East London during the reign of Queen Victoria. The setting for Jack the Ripper's atrocities, East End was synonymous with crime, filth, disease, and the dregs of humanity. W. J. Fishman focuses on a single year, one century ago and one century after the storming of the Bastille. Poignant accounts of homeless families choosing starvation rather than submitting to the inhumanity and separation of the workhouse are contrasted with lively reports of entertainment in music halls and "penny gaffs" or freak shows, where Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man, was discovered. Providing numerous excerpts from contemporary newspapers, police records, workhouse journals, novels, medical reports, church sermons, and political debates, Fishman illuminates a slice of life in Victorian England. Author note: William J. Fishman is Professor of Political Studies at Queen Mary College, University of London.
For centuries, slaveholding was a commonplace in Brazil among both whites and people of color. Abolition was only achieved in 1888, in an unprecedented, turbulent political process. How was the Abolitionist movement (1879-1888) able to bring an end to a form of labor that was traditionally perceived as both indispensable and entirely legitimate? How were the slaveholders who dominated Brazil's constitutional monarchy compelled to agree to it? To answer these questions, we must understand the elite political world that abolitionism challenged and changed—and how the Abolitionist movement evolved in turn. The Sacred Cause analyzes the relations between the movement, its Afro-Brazilian following, and the evolving response of the parliamentary regime in Rio de Janeiro. Jeffrey Needell highlights the significance of racial identity and solidarity to the Abolitionist movement, showing how Afro-Brazilian leadership, organization, and popular mobilization were critical to the movement's identity, nature, and impact.
Before the entrance of sin, Adam enjoyed open communion with his Maker; but since man separated himself from God by transgression, the human race has been cut off from this high privilege. By the plan of redemption, however, a way has been opened whereby the inhabitants of the earth may still have connection with heaven. God has communicated with men by His Spirit, and divine light has been imparted to the world by revelations to His chosen servants. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2 Peter 1:21. During the first twenty-five hundred years of human history, there was no written revelation. Those who had been taught of God, communicated their knowledge to others, and it was handed down from father to son, through successive generations. The preparation of the written word began in the time of Moses. Inspired revelations were then embodied in an inspired book. This work continued during the long period of sixteen hundred years,—from Moses, the historian of creation and the law, to John, the recorder of the most sublime truths of the gospel. The Bible points to God as its author; yet it was written by human hands; and in the varied style of its different books it presents the characteristics of the several writers. The truths revealed are all “given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim. 3:16); yet they are expressed in the words of men. The Infinite One by His Holy Spirit has shed light into the minds and hearts of His servants. He has given dreams and visions, symbols and figures; and those to whom the truth was thus revealed, have themselves embodied the thought in human language. The ten commandments were spoken by God Himself, and were written by His own hand. They are of divine, and not of human composition. But the Bible, with its God-given truths expressed in the language of men, presents a union of the divine and the human. Such a union existed in the nature of Christ, who was the Son of God and the Son of man. Thus it is true of the Bible, as it was of Christ, that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1:14. Written in different ages, by men who differed widely in rank and occupation, and in mental and spiritual endowments, the books of the Bible present a wide contrast in style, as well as a diversity in the nature of the subjects unfolded. Different forms of expression are employed by different writers; often the same truth is more strikingly presented by one than by another. And as several writers present a subject under varied aspects and relations, there may appear, to the superficial, careless, or prejudiced reader, to be discrepancy or contradiction, where the thoughtful, reverent student, with clearer insight, discerns the underlying harmony. As presented through different individuals, the truth is brought out in its varied aspects. One writer is more strongly impressed with one phase of the subject; he grasps those points that harmonize with his experience or with his power of perception and appreciation; another seizes upon a different phase; and each, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, presents what is most forcibly impressed upon his own mind—a different aspect of the truth in each, but a perfect harmony through all. And the truths thus revealed unite to form a perfect whole, adapted to meet the wants of men in all the circumstances and experiences of life. God has been pleased to communicate His truth to the world by human agencies, and He Himself, by His Holy Spirit, qualified men and enabled them to do this work. He guided the mind in the selection of what to speak and what to write. The treasure was intrusted to earthen vessels, yet it is, none the less, from Heaven. The testimony is conveyed through the imperfect expression of human language, yet it is the testimony of God; and the obedient, believing child of God beholds in it the glory of a divine power, full of grace and truth.
