Kentucky In The New Republic

Reginald Horsman's powerful and comprehensive survey of the early years of the American Republic covers the dramatic years from the setting up of the US Constitution in 1789, the first US presidency under George Washington, and also the presidencies of Adams, Jeffersen and Madison. A major strength of the book is that the coverage of the traditional topics about the shaping of the new government and crisis in foreign policy is combined with chapters on race, slavery, the economy and westward expansion, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of the government and society that came into being after the Revolution. Key features include: Combines extensive research with the best recent scholarship on the period A balanced account of the contributions of the leading personalities Impressive coverage is given to questions of race and territorial expansion Chapter One provides a concise and lucid account of the state of American politics and society in 1789 Extensive chapter bibliographies The work will be welcomed by students studying the early republic as well as general readers interested in a stimulating and informative account of the early years of the American nation.

Presents the history of the New Republic of America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through excerpts from documents, letters, journals, and newspaper articles.

Kentucky's first settlers brought with them a dedication to democracy and a sense of limitless hope about the future. Determined to participate in world progress in science, education, and manufacturing, Kentuckians wanted to make the United States a great nation. They strongly supported the War of 1812, and Kentucky emerged as a model of patriotism and military spirit. Kentucky Rising: Democracy, Slavery, and Culture from the Early Republic to the Civil War offers a new synthesis of the sixty years before the Civil War. James A. Ramage and Andrea S. Watkins explore this crucial but often overlooked period, finding that the early years of statehood were an era of great optimism and progress. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Ramage and Watkins demonstrate that the eyes of the nation often focused on Kentucky, which was perceived as a leader among the states before the Civil War. Globally oriented Kentuckians were determined to transform the frontier into a network of communities exporting to the world market and dedicated to the new republic. Kentucky Rising offers a valuable new perspective on the eras of slavery and the Civil War. This book is a copublication with the Kentucky Historical Society.

Examines the roots of white supremacy and mass incarceration from the vantage point of history Why, asks Pem Davidson Buck, is punishment so central to the functioning of the United States, a country proclaiming “liberty and justice for all”? The Punishment Monopoly challenges our everyday understanding of American history, focusing on the constructions of race, class, and gender upon which the United States was built, and which still support racial capitalism and the carceral state. After all, Buck writes, “a state, to be a state, has to punish ... bottom line, that is what a state and the force it controls is for.” Using stories of her European ancestors, who arrived in colonial Virginia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and following their descendants into the early nineteenth century, Buck shows how struggles over the right to punish, backed by the growing power of the state governed by a white elite, made possible the dispossession of Africans, Native Americans, and poor whites. Those struggles led to the creation of the low-wage working classes that capitalism requires, locked in by a metastasizing white supremacy that Buck’s ancestors, with many others, defined as white, helped establish and manipulate. Examining those foundational struggles illuminates some of the most contentious issues of the twenty-first century: the exploitation and detention of immigrants; mass incarceration as a central institution; Islamophobia; white privilege; judicial and extra-judicial killings of people of color and some poor whites. The Punishment Monopoly makes it clear that none of these injustices was accidental or inevitable; that shifting our state-sanctioned understandings of history is a step toward liberating us from its control of the present.

The American colonists solidified their independence from England with the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783. However, the new citizens of this new country called the United States of America still had to figure out their own way forward. Students will hear from Founding Fathers including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin about how the government was formed. Students will also learn about how the United States handled international and domestic affairs, about explorations of new territories, and about the day-to-day lives of early Americans, including Native Americans and enslaved Africans, through letters, speeches, legal documents, slave narratives, newspaper articles, and more. Students will gain a rounded understanding of the foundations of America.

Reginald Horsman's powerful and comprehensive survey of the early years of the American Republic covers the dramatic years from the setting up of the US Constitution in 1789, the first US presidency under George Washington, and also the presidencies of Adams, Jeffersen and Madison. A major strength of the book is that the coverage of the traditional topics about the shaping of the new government and crisis in foreign policy is combined with chapters on race, slavery, the economy and westward expansion, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of the government and society that came into being after the Revolution. Key features include: Combines extensive research with the best recent scholarship on the period A balanced account of the contributions of the leading personalities Impressive coverage is given to questions of race and territorial expansion Chapter One provides a concise and lucid account of the state of American politics and society in 1789 Extensive chapter bibliographies The work will be welcomed by students studying the early republic as well as general readers interested in a stimulating and informative account of the early years of the American nation.

One of America's most enduring forms of public worship, the camp meeting had its beginnings at the dawn of the nineteenth century during the "Great Revival" that swept the newly settled regions of the young republic. The culmination of this phenonenon came in 1801 at Cane Ridge Presbyterian meetinghouse in Kentucky, where more than ten thousand people gathered for a week of worship and fellowship.