George Bancroft (October 3, 1800 – January 17, 1891) was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. He was a senior American diplomat in Europe. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent. - Wikipedia.
A Christian Science Monitor best book of 2020 "Relentlessly accessible. . . . This is that rare history that tells what influential thinkers failed to think, what famous writers left unwritten." --Jill Leovy, The American Scholar By the bestselling author of American Nations, the story of how the myth of U.S. national unity was created and fought over in the nineteenth century--a myth that continues to affect us today Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood. On one hand, a small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned and promoted the idea of America as nation that had a God-given mission to lead humanity toward freedom, equality, and self-government. But this emerging narrative was swiftly contested by another set of intellectuals and firebrands who argued that the United States was instead the homeland of the allegedly superior "Anglo-Saxon" race, upon whom divine and Darwinian favor shined. Colin Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of our nation's path and purpose through the lives of the key figures who created them, a cast of characters whose personal quirks and virtues, gifts and demons shaped the destiny of millions.
A groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this revered metropolis from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston’s development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain’s Stuart monarchs and how—through its bargain with the slave trade and ratification of the Constitution—it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States. The City-State of Boston peels away layers of myth to offer a startlingly fresh understanding of this iconic urban center.
The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters is a narrative and epistolary biography drawn from the unpublished lifelong correspondence exchanged among four brothers: Charles Chauncy, Edward Bliss, Ralph Waldo, and William Emerson. This is an extensive correspondence, for not counting Waldo's previously published letters, there are 768 letters exchanged among the brothers and an additional 483 unpublished letters from the brothers to their aunt Mary Moody Emerson, mother Ruth Haskins Emerson, and Charles' fiancee Elizabeth Hoar, among others.While lesser figures might have faltered under the burden of having been born an Emerson, with social, political, and ecclesiastic roots extending back to the first century of New England settlement, the brothers' letters reveal that all were invigorated by a shared sense of origin and aspired to make a significant reputation for themselves. Across six richly developed chapters, the signal events and friendships that shaped the Emerson brothers' lives are strung together to reveal a remarkable family culture. For the first time, The Emerson Brothers treats the illustrious history of the Emerson family in America as a foreshadowing of expectations the brothers inherited; defines the extent of Waldo's debt to William for his encounter with German Biblical Criticism; develops Charles' and Edward's incredibly promising but ultimately tragic lives; examines the profound emotional and intellectual impact of Aunt Mary on the younger Emersons; considers the three-year courtship between Charles and Elizabeth Hoar in the context of Waldo's own marriages; and studies the brothers' preoccupation with financial security for "the family" (revealing, too, that finances were at least as powerful a motivation behind Waldo's 1832 resignation from Boston's Second Church as were the death of his first wife and his religious doubts).This biography approaches Waldo's inner life in a way that makes him a figure to imagine personally by portraying him in relation to his brothers who are his intellectual equals. It offers an imaginative social and cultural history of one of our oldest and most gifted families, unique players in a period often considered to be the "American Renaissance."
They Have No Rights is a historical account of the famous Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sanford, that influenced the Presidential election of 1860 and triggered a chain of events that thrust the United States into the Civil War.
