Browse

Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant

Translated by Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte

Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant is a translation of Tampa: impresiones de emigrante written by Cuban author Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte, published in 1897 in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, translated ... More

Tampa: Impressions of an Emigrant is a translation of Tampa: impresiones de emigrante written by Cuban author Wenceslao Gálvez y Delmonte, published in 1897 in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, translated from the Spanish by Noel M. Smith. Gálvez was an early diaspora writer in the costumbrismo genre, which emphasized the depiction of everyday manners and customs of a particular social milieu. Gálvez emigrated from Havana in 1896 to escape the Cuban War of Independence and join the Cuban exile community in Tampa. Gálvez was a champion baseball player in the earliest years of Cuban baseball, a lawyer/prosecutor/judge, and journalist/author. His charming and opinionated first-person narrative is in four parts. Part 1 begins with the escalation of the Spanish war effort that prompted his sea voyage to Tampa, followed by part 2 and descriptions of Tampa’s people and activities, geography, landmarks, municipal features, and cultural pursuits. Parts 3 and 4 extensively discuss many aspects of the Cuban exile community in Ybor City and West Tampa, including the patriotic pro-independence fervor that gripped the emigrants. He names notable personages in the exile community and describes their efforts to support the war against Spain and recounts his struggles working as a door-to-door salesman and as a lector (reader) in a cigar factory. Thirty historical photographs and newspaper clippings illuminate the text.Less

Reckoning with Rebellion: War and Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century

Aaron Sheehan-Dean

An innovative global history of the American Civil War, Reckoning with Rebellion compares and contrasts the American experience with other civil and national conflicts that happened at nearly the ... More

An innovative global history of the American Civil War, Reckoning with Rebellion compares and contrasts the American experience with other civil and national conflicts that happened at nearly the same time—the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Polish Insurrection of 1863, and China’s Taiping Rebellion. Aaron Sheehan-Dean identifies surprising new connections between these historical moments across three continents. Sheehan-Dean shows that insurgents around the globe often relied on irregular warfare and were labeled as criminals, mutineers, or rebels by the dominant powers. He traces commonalities between the United States, British empire, Russian empire, and Chinese empire, all large and ambitious states willing to use violence to maintain their authority. These powers were also able to control how these conflicts were described, affecting the way foreigners perceived them and whether they decided to intercede. While the stories of these conflicts are now told separately, Sheehan-Dean argues, the participants understood them in relation to each other. When Union officials condemned secession, they pointed to the violence unleashed by the Indian Rebellion. When Confederates denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant, they did so by comparing him to Tsar Alexander II. Sheehan-Dean demonstrates that the causes and issues of the Civil War were also global problems, revealing the important paradigms at work in the age of nineteenth-century nation-building.Less

The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America

Christopher W. Calvo

The first comprehensive examination of early American economic thought in over a generation, The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America challenges the traditional narrative that Americans were born ... More

The first comprehensive examination of early American economic thought in over a generation, The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America challenges the traditional narrative that Americans were born committed to the principles of Adam Smith. Americans are shown to have developed a distinct brand of hybrid capitalism, suited to the nation’s unique political, intellectual, cultural, and economic histories. Given America’s primary position in the history of capitalism, its economists were well situated to comment on market phenomenon. Covering a broad range of the period’s economic literature and offering close analyses of the antebellum reception of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, this book rescues America’s first economists from historical neglect. In thematically organized chapters, the intellectual cultures of American protectionism and free trade are examined. Protectionism exercised enormous influence in the discourse, constituting what rightly has been called an ‘American political economy.’ Henry Carey is highlighted as the central thinker in protectionist thought, providing an economic blueprint for the nation’s future industrial and commercial supremacy. Sharp regional divisions existed among the nation’s strongest proponents of free-trade ideology, namely Calhoun, Wayland, McVickar, Vethake, Cardozo, and Cooper, as well as important theoretical distinctions with Smithian-inspired laissez-faire. In a separate chapter, American conservative economists—among others, Fitzhugh and Holmes—are positioned alongside antebellum socialists—Skidmore and Byllesby—illustrating the rather awkward ideological arrangements attendant to emergent capitalism. Finally, the tricky relationship Americans have held with financial institutions is explored. Beginning with Hamilton, this book analyzes the financial literature as Americans learned to live with arguably the most complex and misunderstood manifestation of capitalism—finance.Less

United States Reconstruction across the Americas

William A. Link (ed.)

United States Reconstruction across the Americas explores how emancipation, nationhood and nationalism, and the spread of market capitalism—all central to United States Reconstruction—were interwoven ... More

United States Reconstruction across the Americas explores how emancipation, nationhood and nationalism, and the spread of market capitalism—all central to United States Reconstruction—were interwoven with patterns of post–Civil War global, political, social, and economic developments. The chapters answer these questions: How can an internationalization of US Reconstruction—through a consideration of national history as part of a process involving several state actors—enhance our understanding of this period? How did the American Civil War reshape the US’s relationship to the world, both regionally and internationally? And in what respects did international developments affect the US South’s transition from a slave to a free society?Less

Travels on the St. Johns River

John Bartram and William Bartram

Thomas Hallock and Richard Franz (eds)

Travels on the St. Johns River presents writings by pioneering American naturalists John Bartram and William Bartram during their exploration of Florida in the second half of the eighteenth century. ... More

Travels on the St. Johns River presents writings by pioneering American naturalists John Bartram and William Bartram during their exploration of Florida in the second half of the eighteenth century. Part I (chapters one–three) includes selections from John Bartram's Diary, William Bartram's description of the St. Johns River valley in his celebrated Travels, and selected correspondence. Part II (chapter four) describes the landscapes, plants and animals, people, and cultural artifacts that John and William encountered in their explorations. Descriptions of the natural world, written in binominal nomenclature, are updated and redefined. Here, armchair and active travelers will find a guide to both the St. Johns River valley, its landscapes, its flora and fauna, and to the Bartrams' responses to the natural world of their time. Photographs, drawings, and maps accompany the writings and the editors’ modern interpretations.Less

Unequal Freedoms: Ethnicity, Race, and White Supremacy in Civil War-Era Charleston

Jeff Strickland

Charleston, South Carolina, was a cosmopolitan city during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Germans, Irish, and a host of European and Latin American immigrants shared the same workplaces, ... More

Charleston, South Carolina, was a cosmopolitan city during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Germans, Irish, and a host of European and Latin American immigrants shared the same workplaces, neighborhoods, streets, residences, and even households. Charleston was a slave society, and its economy relied on the forced labor of thousands of slaves. Immigrants also worked as entrepreneurs, skilled artisans, and laborers. Immigrants and African Americans interacted on a daily basis, and their relations were often positive. White southerners found those positive relations threatening, and nativist sentiments prevailed during the 1850s. Slaveholding meant economic and political power, and although some immigrants owned slaves many found it objectionable. The Civil War presented slaveholding immigrants, and those that aspired to it, the opportunity to side with the Confederacy. While many German and Irish immigrants enlisted in the fight to preserve slavery, others avoided the conflict. Following the Civil War, German immigrants that had continued to operate their businesses during the war led efforts to rebuild the city. Reconstruction afforded German and Irish immigrants and African Americans political opportunities previously limited or denied. The majority of European immigrants supported the Democratic Party, the party of white supremacy, and African Americans chose the Republican Party.Less

The War Worth Fighting: Abraham Lincoln's Presidency and Civil War America

Stephen D. Engle (ed.)

This volume represents the multifaceted nature of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and offers a glimpse of Civil War America in the North. Taken together these essays are intended for a general audience ... More

This volume represents the multifaceted nature of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and offers a glimpse of Civil War America in the North. Taken together these essays are intended for a general audience and offer diverse perspectives on politics, war, and society. Lincoln and northerners grappled to vindicate democracy by reuniting a nation and accepting the changes that came with reunification. Since the conflict ended, scholars have written the Civil War into our national narrative to explain how and why it was (and still is) central to American history’s foundation. In the case of these essays, scholars explore the context of Lincoln’s presidency, his role as both pedagogue and commander in chief; they examine the war beyond the White House and the battlefield. Finally, these scholars examine Lincoln as leader, diplomat, and visionary, who used his ability, his influence, and the power of his office to shape the contours of the new republic born out of the conflict. In short, these reflections explore the broad nature of how the president touched the Civil War era, and in particular, northern society.Less

Creole City: A Chronicle of Early American New Orleans

Nathalie Dessens

The first half of the nineteenth century was, for New Orleans, a seminal period. Based on a voluminous correspondence, archived at The Historic New Orleans Collection, the present book draws a ... More

The first half of the nineteenth century was, for New Orleans, a seminal period. Based on a voluminous correspondence, archived at The Historic New Orleans Collection, the present book draws a chronicle of the Crescent City in the 1820s and 1830s. Starting in 1818, six years after Louisiana became a state, the 1200-page correspondence of Jean Boze, a resident of New Orleans, to Henri de Sainte-Gême, a former inhabitant of the city returned to his hometown in Southwestern France, describes at length the extraordinary changes the city underwent during the early American period. A small provincial frontier town in the early nineteenth century, it was the third largest city in the United States in 1840. Over these three decades, the city grew and modernized, taking advantage of its strategic geographical position at the mouth of the Mississippi River to become a bustling crossroads of the Atlantic World, connecting the young American Republic, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It also welcomed, in numbers unheard of until then, new migrants from the United States, Europe, and the former colony of Saint-Domingue, which became, in 1804, the Haitian republic. These migrants changed the face of the city and established with the Creole population complex relationships that eventually shaped the original identity of the city. The book, following Boze's eyes, draws an original chronicle of one of the most unusual cities in the United States, trying to understand and explain the process that turned the city into the Creole capital.Less

Mr. Flagler's St. Augustine

Thomas Graham

This book is a sympathetic, personal biography of Henry M. Flagler during the years after he left Standard Oil to pursue his second career as builder of Florida. This is also a narrative history of ... More

This book is a sympathetic, personal biography of Henry M. Flagler during the years after he left Standard Oil to pursue his second career as builder of Florida. This is also a narrative history of the transformation of St. Augustine, Florida, from a remote village on the Southern frontier of America into a modern city. However, the narrative expands beyond St. Augustine to follow the extension of Flagler's railroad and hotel empire down the East Coast of Florida to Palm Beach, Miami, and, ultimately, Key West. This book tells the stories of a variety of people whose lives touched Henry M. Flagler: the women who wrote guide books to promote tourism, the architects who designed his hotels, the artists who decorated the hotels, the black hotel waiters (and baseball players), the people who wrote society columns for the newspapers, employees of the hotels and railroads, Flagler's friends and relatives, and, of course, the rich and famous guests who stayed in Flagler's hotels. John D. Rockefeller makes several appearances that are not mentioned in earlier Flagler biographies. This, the first biography of Henry M. Flagler to appear in a quarter century, achieves a level of personal detail not reached in earlier books on Flagler during his Florida years. It is based upon years of research by a historian who spent his career teaching at Flagler College, which today occupies the magnificent halls of Flagler's former Hotel Ponce de Leon.Less

Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World: Slave Trader, Plantation Owner, Emancipator

Daniel L. Schafer

Zephaniah Kingsley Jr., 1765–1843, was born in England, reared in Charleston, South Carolina during the American Revolution, and moved to British New Brunswick when his merchant father was banished ... More

Zephaniah Kingsley Jr., 1765–1843, was born in England, reared in Charleston, South Carolina during the American Revolution, and moved to British New Brunswick when his merchant father was banished with other Loyalists. He became a ship captain engaged in Atlantic commerce, buying sugar and coffee in the Caribbean and slaves in Africa, and exchanging British nationality for loyalty to the United States, Denmark, and Spain to enhance his trade. Abolition of the Atlantic slave trade prompted Kingsley to become a plantation and slave owner in Spanish East Florida, and an advocate of liberal manumission policies found in Spanish laws on race and slavery. Kingsley practiced the humane and patriarchal system of labor discussed in his monograph, A Treatise on the Patriarchal. Kingsley is also remembered for his unorthodox family. Although never married, he fathered children by several enslaved women on his plantation and lived with them in coterminous relationships that lasted for decades. Anta Majigeen Njaay, Kingsley’s only acknowledged “wife,” was of royal lineage in the Kingdom of Jolof in Senegal before being captured in a slave raid. The 1821 American annexation of Florida brought severe laws regulating slavery, banning emancipation, and threatening rights and freedoms of free persons of color. Kingsley responded by purchasing thirty thousand acres of land near Puerto Plata, Haiti (now the Dominican Republic), and establishing a thriving agricultural settlement. Between 1836 and 1840, his extended family and more than fifty slaves (emancipated) moved to this refuge. Descendants still live in the area.Less