A Whaler at Twilight
A Whaler at Twilight

Author: Alexander R. Brash

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-09-05

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1493074776

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Nestled at the bottom of an old leather trunk for well over a century lay a forgotten manuscript—a long-lost story the author's great-great-grandson has now brought to life. At the heart of A Whaler at Twilight is the true account of an American whaler who embarked on a harrowing adventure in the South Pacific during the mid-nineteenth century in search of absolution and redemption. After the deaths of his parents, young Robert Armstrong lived with a successful uncle—a well-respected Methodist shopkeeper in bustling 1840s Baltimore—and attended the nation’s first dental school. But Armstrong threw his future away, drinking himself into oblivion. Devoured by guilt and shame, in December 1849 he sold his dental instruments, his watch, and all other possessions and signed on for a whaling voyage departing from New Bedford. Decades later, Armstrong wrote an autobiographical account based on his travel logs, chronicling his thrilling, gritty experiences during his ten years overseas. His memoirs describe his encounters with other whalers, beachcombers, Peruvian villagers, Pacific Islanders, Maori warriors in New Zealand, cannibals on Fiji, and the impacts of American expansionism. He also recounted his struggles with drink, his quest for God, and his own redemption. Armstrong’s gripping personal account is bookended by thoroughly researched contextual background compiled by Alexander Brash, a noted professional conservationist. Brash fills out Armstrong’s intimate and timeless tale by shedding further light on whaling and its impacts, his ancestor’s religious milieu, and the importance of marine conservation today. A Whaler at Twilight is a fascinating dive into both human morality and American history.

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams
The Selected Papers of Jane Addams

Author: Jane Addams

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 809

ISBN-13: 0252090373

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Venturing into Usefulness, the second volume of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, documents the experience of this major American historical figure, intellectual, social activist, and author between June 1881, when at twenty-one she had just graduated from Rockford Female Seminary, and early 1889, when she was on the verge of founding the Hull-House settlement with Ellen Gates Starr. During these years she was developing into the social reformer and advocate of women's rights, socioeconomic justice, and world peace she would eventually become. She evolved from a high-minded but inexperienced graduate of a women's seminary into an educated woman and seasoned traveler well-exposed to elite culture and circles of philanthropy. Artfully annotated, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams offers an evocative choice of correspondence, photographs, and other primary documents, presenting a multi-layered narrative of Addams's personal and emerging professional life. Themes inaugurated in the previous volume are expanded here, including dilemmas of family relations and gender roles; the history of education; the dynamics of female friendship; religious belief and ethical development; changes in opportunities for women; and the evolution of philanthropy, social welfare, and reform ideas.

A Brotherhood of Liberty
A Brotherhood of Liberty

Author: Dennis Patrick Halpin

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2019-07-12

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0812251393

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In A Brotherhood of Liberty, Dennis Patrick Halpin shifts the focus of the black freedom struggle from the Deep South to argue that Baltimore is key to understanding the trajectory of civil rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1870s and early 1880s, a dynamic group of black political leaders migrated to Baltimore from rural Virginia and Maryland. These activists, mostly former slaves who subsequently trained in the ministry, pushed Baltimore to fulfill Reconstruction's promise of racial equality. In doing so, they were part of a larger effort among African Americans to create new forms of black politics by founding churches, starting businesses, establishing community centers, and creating newspapers. Black Baltimoreans successfully challenged Jim Crow regulations on public transit, in the courts, in the voting booth, and on the streets of residential neighborhoods. They formed some of the nation's earliest civil rights organizations, including the United Mutual Brotherhood of Liberty, to define their own freedom in the period after the Civil War. Halpin shows how black Baltimoreans' successes prompted segregationists to reformulate their tactics. He examines how segregationists countered activists' victories by using Progressive Era concerns over urban order and corruption to criminalize and disenfranchise African Americans. Indeed, he argues the Progressive Era was crucial in establishing the racialized carceral state of the twentieth-century United States. Tracing the civil rights victories scored by black Baltimoreans that inspired activists throughout the nation and subsequent generations, A Brotherhood of Liberty highlights the strategies that can continue to be useful today, as well as the challenges that may be faced.

Baltimore
Baltimore

Author: Matthew A. Crenson

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 627

ISBN-13: 1421436337

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How politics and race shaped Baltimore's distinctive disarray of cultures and subcultures. Charm City or Mobtown? People from Baltimore glory in its eccentric charm, small-town character, and North-cum-South culture. But for much of the nineteenth century, violence and disorder plagued the city. More recently, the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody has prompted Baltimoreans—and the entire nation—to focus critically on the rich and tangled narrative of black–white relations in Baltimore, where slavery once existed alongside the largest community of free blacks in the United States. Matthew A. Crenson, a distinguished political scientist and Baltimore native, examines the role of politics and race throughout Baltimore's history. From its founding in 1729 up through the recent past, Crenson follows Baltimore's political evolution from an empty expanse of marsh and hills to a complicated city with distinct ways of doing business. Revealing how residents at large engage (and disengage) with one another across an expansive agenda of issues and conflicts, Crenson shows how politics helped form this complex city's personality. Crenson provocatively argues that Baltimore's many quirks are likely symptoms of urban underdevelopment. The city's longtime domination by the general assembly—and the corresponding weakness of its municipal authority—forced residents to adopt the private and extra-governmental institutions that shaped early Baltimore. On the one hand, Baltimore was resolutely parochial, split by curious political quarrels over issues as minor as loose pigs. On the other, it was keenly attuned to national politics: during the Revolution, for instance, Baltimoreans were known for their comparative radicalism. Crenson describes how, as Baltimore and the nation grew, whites competed with blacks, slave and free, for menial and low-skill work. He also explores how the urban elite thrived by avoiding, wherever possible, questions of slavery versus freedom—just as wealthier Baltimoreans, long after the Civil War and emancipation, preferred to sidestep racial controversy. Peering into the city's 300-odd neighborhoods, this fascinating account holds up a mirror to Baltimore, asking whites in particular to reexamine the past and accept due responsibility for future racial progress.

Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass

Author: Gregory P. Lampe

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0870139339

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This work in the MSU Press Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series chronicles Frederick Douglass's preparation for a career in oratory, his emergence as an abolitionist lecturer in 1841, and his development and activities as a public speaker and reformer from 1841 to 1845. Lampe's meticulous scholarship overturns much of the conventional wisdom about this phase of Douglass's life and career uncovering new information about his experiences as a slave and as a fugitive; it provokes a deeper and richer understanding of this renowned orator's emergence as an important voice in the crusade to end slavery. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Douglass was well prepared to become a full-time lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1841. His emergence as an eloquent voice from slavery was not as miraculous as scholars have led us to believe. Lampe begins by tracing Douglass's life as slave in Maryland and as fugitive in New Bedford, showing that experiences gained at this time in his life contributed powerfully to his understanding of rhetoric and to his development as an orator. An examination of his daily oratorical activities from the time of his emergence in Nantucket in 1841 until his departure for England in 1845 dispels many conventional beliefs surrounding this period, especially the belief that Douglass was under the wing of William Lloyd Garrison. Lampe's research shows that Douglass was much more outspoken and independent than previously thought and that at times he was in conflict with white abolitionists. Included in this work is a complete itinerary of Douglass's oratorical activities, correcting errors and omissions in previously published works, as well as two newly discovered complete speech texts, never before published.