Citizen Bachelors

Citizen Bachelors

Author: John Gilbert McCurdy

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0801457807

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In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed "a man without a wife is but half a man" and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship. In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences. At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society. Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.


New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

Author: Vernon Stauffer

Publisher: The Invisible College Press, LLC

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9781931468220

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The rift between the nation's two political parties is caused by a Conspiracy! New England the Bavarian Illuminati is the history of the Illuminati scare that occurred in America at the end of the eighteenth century. It tells how the Federalists, including the New England clergy in particular, seized upon the idea that the Illuminati were behind the actions of the Democrats. Only a far-reaching conspiracy could explain the irreverent habits and searing attacks of the Jeffersonians. Fear of the secret Democratic Clubs, magnified by fear of the French Jacobins, made such a conspiracy readily believable. Dr. Stauffer ably details the state of American politics and religion before and after the American Revolution. He recounts the known history of the Illuminati, and reviews how knowledge of the secret organization was transmitted to America. The conspiracy alarm is traced in detail, from the first announcement of the existence of the Illuminati given during a sermon, through the heated and virulent debates in newspapers and pamphlets, and finally to the decline of the public spectacle under counter-attacks and satirical mockery. This study of the Illuminati in New England was originally published in 1918. Acclaimed from its first printing, it has since then developed a respectable position as one of the most competent and important histories on the shadowy Order of the Illuminati.


The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775-1815

The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775-1815

Author: Curtis P. Nettels

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1315496755

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Part of a series of detailed reference manuals on American economic history, this volume traces the development of agriculture, transportation, labour movements and the factory system, foreign and domestic commerce, technology and the ramifications of slavery.


The Cultures of Celebrations

The Cultures of Celebrations

Author: Ray Broadus Browne

Publisher: Popular Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780879726522

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"Such celebrations are a text which provide the four births necessary for our full development - the anthropological concept of being "thrice born" (first into our culture, then into another culture we study, then back into our culture with new insights about both cultures) and finally a fourth birth into freedom from the grip of the two - and other - societies.".


The WPA Guide to Connecticut

The WPA Guide to Connecticut

Author: Federal Writers' Project

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 1595342060

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During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor. It isn’t surprising that a locale nicknamed the Constitution State has an impressive history—all of which is documented in the WPA Guide to Connecticut. The guide provides a comprehensive index of old and historic houses as well as an interesting timeline called “Connecticut Firsts” which lists historic happenings in the state from 1636 to 1936. The guide to the Nutmeg State also presents a number of tours through notable cities and towns, including New Haven and Yale University.


Empire of Guns

Empire of Guns

Author: Priya Satia

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 0735221871

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.