Clarina Nichols (1810-1885) was a newspaper publisher and political speaker at a time when few women dared make their voice heard. A key player in the first womens rights movement following the historic Seneca Falls Convention, Nichols left the comforts of Vermont and colleagues like Susan B. Anthony behind to settle the frontier of Bleeding Kansas. There her presence ensured the new statess Constitution gave rights to women that they enjoyed nowhere else. Diane Eickhoffss meticulous quest to collect Nicholss scattered writings and papers has yielded a remarkable story about a fledgling movement with striking parallels to todayss MeToo movement. Despite ridicule and verbal abuse, Nichols thrived by using humor and pluck to persuade men to grant unprecedented rights for women. Amply illustrated and excitingly written, Revolutionary Heart is a window into an unjustly overlooked period in American history. Named a Kansas Notable Book and ForeWordss Book of the Year in Biography.
This comprehensive portrait of nineteenth-century reformer Clarina Howard Nichols uncovers the fascinating story of a complex woman and reveals her important role in women's rights, antislavery, and westward expansion.
This ¿well-organized¿ (Booklist) and ¿surprisingly versatile¿ (Library Journal) road trip guide features 130 hand-selected sites and battlefields, themed driving tours, kid-friendly sites, maps, informative essays, and the insights of two experienced road trippers. First released locally in 2013, and fully updated in 2015, The Big Divide is in thousands of glove boxes and travel bags across Missouri and Kansas. Now, the authors are reaching out to history buffs, budget travelers, and families across America to tell the incredible story of the Border Region. Among the discoveries: The liberation of four million enslaved Americans began not in the East but on the prairies of Kansas; black soldiers first fought and died for their freedom in Missouri, not the East; Missouri came uncomfortably close to falling into Confederate hands; and the Border Region had a pivotal role in American history, from westward expansion to Indian policy to the Border War to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Was Roger Williams too pure for the Puritans, and what does that have to do with Rhode Island? Why did Augustine Herman take ten years to complete the map that established Delaware? How did Rocky Mountain rogues help create the state of Colorado? All this and more is explained in Mark Stein's new book. How the States Got Their Shapes Too follows How the States Got Their Shapes looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while How The States Got Their Shapes told us why, this book tells us who. This personal element in the boundary stories reveals how we today are like those who came before us, and how we differ, and most significantly: how their collective stories reveal not only an historical arc but, as importantly, the often overlooked human dimension in that arc that leads to the nation we are today. The people featured in How the States Got Their Shapes Too lived from the colonial era right up to the present. They include African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women, and of course, white men. Some are famous, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Daniel Webster. Some are not, such as Bernard Berry, Clarina Nichols, and Robert Steele. And some are names many of us know but don't really know exactly what they did, such as Ethan Allen (who never made furniture, though he burned a good deal of it). In addition, How the States Got Their Shapes Too tells of individuals involved in the Almost States of America, places we sought to include but ultimately did not: Canada, the rest of Mexico (we did get half), Cuba, and, still an issue, Puerto Rico. Each chapter is largely driven by voices from the time, in the form of excerpts from congressional debates, newspapers, magazines, personal letters, and diaries. Told in Mark Stein's humorous voice, How the States Got Their Shapes Too is a historical journey unlike any other you've taken. The strangers you meet here had more on their minds than simple state lines, and this book makes for a great new way of seeing and understanding the United States.
From radical abolitionist John Brown to presidential candidate Bob Dole to visionary environmentalist Wes Jackson, Kansas history is bursting with fascinating stories of individuals who made a difference to the nation and whose lives reveal much about our collective past. Prominent Kansas historian Virgil Dean has gathered a distinguished team of writers-Thomas Isern, Craig Miner, and others-who have crafted incisive portraits of 27 notable men and women, covering 150 years of Kansas and American history. Here are agitators who moved their fellow citizens to action over political, social, and economic problems: not only John Brown, but also proslavery agitator William H. Russell; Mary Elizabeth Lease, lecturer for the Farmers' Alliance and Populist Party; Gerald B. Winrod, a.k.a. the "Jayhawk Hitler"; and Esther Brown, who challenged segregation in public schools. Here, too, are motivators, like women's rights activist Clarina I. H. Nichols; William Allen White, the "Sage of Emporia"; and favorite sons Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bob Dole. Then there are the innovators, from trailblazers like Joseph G. McCoy, who changed the face of the cattle industry, and wheat king Theodore C. Henry to Wes Jackson, a pioneer in the sustainable agriculture movement, and the multitalented Gordon Parks, photographer, filmmaker, and author of The Learning Tree. Reformers and preachers, publishers and artists, these fascinating personalities are brought vividly back to life by Dean and his fellow authors. They offer a fresh and engaging look at many of the important themes of Kansas history-especially the state's identification with some of the great radical movements, including abolitionism, populism, and civil rights--and ultimately recapture the true spirit of Kansas and its meaning for the rest of the nation.
With this book, Nancy Isenberg illuminates the origins of the women's rights movement. Rather than herald the singular achievements of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, she examines the confluence of events and ideas_before and after 1848_that, in her vie
Escaped slave, Civil War spy, scout, and nurse, and champion of women's suffrage, Harriet Tubman is an icon of heroism. Perhaps most famous for leading enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad, Tubman was dubbed "Moses" by followers. But abolition and the close of the Civil War were far from the end of her remarkable career. Tubman continued to fight for black civil rights, and campaign fiercely for women’s suffrage, throughout her life. In this vivid, concise narrative supplemented by primary documents, Kristen T. Oertel introduces readers to Tubman’s extraordinary life, from the trauma of her childhood slavery to her civil rights activism in the late nineteenth century, and in the process reveals a nation’s struggle over its most central injustices.
