Rough Life on the Frontier
Author: Scott Van Gorden
Publisher:
Published: 1903
Total Pages: 536
ISBN-13:
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Frontier Swashbuckler
Author: Dick Steward
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 0826263437
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFew frontiersmen in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century epitomized the reckless energies of the West and the lust for adventure as did John Smith T pioneer, gunfighter, entrepreneur, militia colonel, miner, judge, and folk hero. In this fascinating biography, Dick Steward traces the colorful Smith T's life from his early days in Virginia through his young adulthood. He then describes Smith T's remarkable career in the wilds of Missouri and his armed raids to gain land from Indians, Spaniards, and others. Born into the fifth generation of Virginia gentry, young Smith first made his name on the Tennessee frontier. It was there that he added the "T" to his name to distinguish his land titles and other enterprises from those of the hosts of other John Smiths. By the late 1790s he owned or laid claim to more than a quarter million acres in Tennessee and northern Alabama. In 1797, Smith T moved to Missouri, then a Spanish territory, and sought to gain control of its lead-mining district by displacing the most powerful American in the region, Moses Austin. He acquired such public positions as judge of the court of common pleas, commissioner of weights and levies, and lieutenant colonel of the militia, which enabled him to mount a spirited assault on Austin's virtual monopoly of the lead mines. Although neither side emerged a winner from that ten-year-old conflict, it was during this period that Smith T's fame as a gunfighter and duelist spread across the West. Known as the most dangerous man in Missouri, he was said to have killed fourteen men in duels. Smith T was also recognized by many for his good works. He donated land for churches and schools and was generous to the poor and downtrodden. He epitomized the opening of the West, helping to build towns, roads, and canals and organizing trading expeditions. Even though Smith T was one of the most notorious characters in Missouri history, by the late nineteenth century he had all but disappeared from the annals of western history. Frontier Swashbuckler seeks to rescue both the man and the legend from historical obscurity. At the same time, it provides valuable insights into the economic, political, and social dynamics of early Missouri frontier history.
Till Death Do Us Part
Author: Salvatore G. Cilella
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2020-05-07
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 0806166738
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMajor General Emory Upton (1839–1881) served in all three branches of the U.S. military during the American Civil War. Lauded as a war hero, he later earned acclaim for his influence on military reforms, which lasted well beyond his lifetime. An account of Upton’s life is not complete, however, without a look into his brief, yet passionate, marriage to Emily Norwood Martin (1846–1870). This edition of Emory and Emily’s letters unveils the private life of a brilliant Civil War personality. It also introduces readers to the devout young woman who earned the general’s fanatic devotion before her untimely death from tuberculosis. Until now, only a few of the couple’s intimate letters have been published. During the years he spent editing and publishing Emory Upton’s correspondence, Salvatore G. Cilella Jr. deliberately set aside the general’s voluminous letters to his wife. Unfortunately, as Cilella explains in his editorial notes, Emily’s letters to Emory did not survive, but he was able to draw on the rich trove of letters Emily wrote to her mother and father while on her honeymoon and during her stays in Key West, Nassau, and Atlanta. Together, both sets of letters form a poignant narrative of the general’s tender love for his new wife and her reciprocal affection as they attempted to create a normal life together despite her declining health. The life of an army wife could be grueling, and despite her declining health, Emily longed to perform the role expected of her. It was not meant to be. Unwittingly, she and Emory chose the worst places for her to recover—Key West and Nassau—where the high humidity and heat must have exacerbated her difficulty breathing. She died in Nassau, far away from her husband. Eleven years later, racked by a sinus tumor and likely still grieving from his lost love, Upton committed suicide at the age of forty-one. Till Death Do Us Part offers a powerful—and poignant—tale of two star-crossed lovers against the backdrop of post–Civil War America. In addition, the volume gives readers a fascinating glimpse into gender roles and marital relations in the nineteenth century.
Mrs. Dred Scott
Author: Lea VanderVelde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 497
ISBN-13: 019975408X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. --from publisher description.
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick Jackson Turner
Publisher:
Published: 2014-02-13
Total Pages: 32
ISBN-13: 9781614275725
DOWNLOAD EBOOK2014 Reprint of 1894 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. The "Frontier Thesis" or "Turner Thesis," is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1894 that American democracy was formed by the American Frontier. He stressed the process-the moving frontier line-and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed consequences of a ostensibly limitless frontier and that American democracy and egalitarianism were the principle results. In Turner's thesis the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won very wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.
Wound from the Mouth of a Wound
Author: torrin a. greathouse
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2020-12-22
Total Pages: 77
ISBN-13: 1571317155
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA versatile missive written from the intersections of gender, disability, trauma, and survival. “Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound—selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.” Concrete and evocative, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw.
The Montana Frontier
Author: Joyce Litz
Publisher: UNM Press
Published: 2004-04-15
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 082633122X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis true story of a Victorian-era young woman who follows her husband to a small town with the improbable name of Gilt Edge, Montana, will remind readers of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, the classic novel of a woman's life in the Mountain West. As a young girl, Lillian Weston, the author's grandmother, aspired to be a concert pianist. However, as a young woman in turn-of-the-century New York, she became a newspaper columnist. Her marriage to Frank Hazen took her west in 1899, ending her career as a newspaperwoman. She turned her writing skills to journals, diaries, stories, and poems, which traced her family's life on a frontier that was no longer unspoiled. The Hazens endured brutal winters and dry summers and endeavored to raise cattle and chickens by trial and error. Lillian was an assiduous diarist who included details of her turbulent marriage challenged by Frank's bad business deals. The details of birth control and child rearing, gambling and prostitution, education and health care are all part of this story, offering glimpses into everyday life that often go unreported in the larger story of western expansion.
Schlepping Through Life Without a Road Map
Author: Bruce Warshal
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2023-07-28
Total Pages: 123
ISBN-13: 1666771996
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThere comes a time in most people’s lives when he or she asks key questions: What can I believe about God, prayer, the source of ethics, the problem of evil, the answers in which we find our own tranquility? Warning: There are no right or wrong answers. Rabbi Warshal shares his own quest but makes no claim to finding universal truth, only his personal truth. If this book helps each person find his or her own way—schlepping through life without a road map—then he would consider the book a success. The process works for readers of all religions and those with none. But he presents the topics within a Jewish context and concludes the book with relating one’s conclusions to the structure of the Jewish communal life in America.
Duty beyond the Battlefield
Author: Le'Trice D. Donaldson
Publisher: SIU Press
Published: 2020-02-07
Total Pages: 217
ISBN-13: 0809337606
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn a bold departure from previous scholarship, Le’Trice D. Donaldson locates the often overlooked era between the Civil War and the end of World War I as the beginning of black soldiers’ involvement in the long struggle for civil rights. Donaldson traces the evolution of these soldiers as they used their military service to challenge white notions of an African American second-class citizenry and forged a new identity as freedom fighters willing to demand the rights of full citizenship and manhood. Through extensive research, Donaldson not only illuminates this evolution but also interrogates the association between masculinity and citizenship and the ways in which performing manhood through military service influenced how these men struggled for racial uplift. Following the Buffalo soldier units and two regular army infantry units from the frontier and the Mexican border to Mexico, Cuba, and the Philippines, Donaldson investigates how these locations and the wars therein provide windows into how the soldiers’ struggles influenced black life and status within the United States. Continuing to probe the idea of what it meant to be a military race man—a man concerned with the uplift of the black race who followed the philosophy of progress—Donaldson contrasts the histories of officers Henry Flipper and Charles Young, two soldiers who saw their roles and responsibilities as black military officers very differently. Duty beyond the Battlefield demonstrates that from the 1870s to 1920s military race men laid the foundation for the “New Negro” movement and the rise of Black Nationalism that influenced the future leaders of the twentieth century Civil Rights movement.
Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels
Author: Barcley Owens
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2000-07-01
Total Pages: 156
ISBN-13: 9780816519279
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the continuing redefinition of the American West, few recent writers have left a mark as indelible as Cormac McCarthy. A favorite subject of critics and fans alike despite—or perhaps because of—his avoidance of public appearances, the man is known solely through his writing. Thanks to his early work, he is most often associated with a bleak vision of humanity grounded in a belief in man's primordial aggressiveness. McCarthy scholar Barcley Owens has written the first book to concentrate exclusively on McCarthy's acclaimed western novels: Blood Meridian, National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain. In a thought-provoking analysis, he explores the differences between Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy novels and shows how those differences reflect changing conditions in contemporary American culture. Owens captures both Blood Meridian's wanton violence and the Border Trilogy's fond remembrance of the Old West. He shows how this dramatic shift from atavistic brutality to nostalgic Americana suggests that McCarthy has finally given his readers what they most want—the stuff of their mythic dreams. Owens's study is both an incisive look at one of our most important and demanding authors and a penetrating analysis of violence and myth in American culture. Fans of McCarthy's work will find much to consider for ongoing discussions of this influential body of work.
