The Story of Mormon Polygamy, Shaker Celibacy, and Oneida Complex Marriage
With a revolution behind them, a continent before them, and the First Amendment protecting them, religio-sexual pioneers in antebellum America were free to strike out on their own, breaking with the orthodoxies of the past. Shakers followed the ascetic path; Oneida Perfectionists accepted sex as a gift from God; and Mormons redefined marriage in ......
As cities evolve and resources shift with time, spaces within those cities are often left fallow and abandoned. Cyclical City tells the stories behind these sites, from Philadelphia's Liberty Lands park to Lisbon's Green Plan, and it looks at the ways in which these narratives can be leveraged toward future engagement and use. Jill Desimini posits ......
Tort Law and the Construction of Change studies the interaction of law and social change in American history. Tort law-civil law made by judges, not legislators-is traditionally thought to arise out of legal precedent. But Kenneth S. Abraham and G. Edward White show that American judges over the course of the previous two centuries also paid close ......
My Journey from Segregated Roanoke to the Corridors of Power
Bill Robertson was one of our greatest pioneers and a tireless advocate for racial justice. One of his final acts was the completion of his memoirs. Lifting Every Voice reveals how the advances made during his lifetime were no foregone conclusion; without the passionate efforts of real people, our present could have been very different.The ......
Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation
In 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to America aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Preston family enslaved more than two hundred individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Daniel Thorp uncovers the stories of the men ......
Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism
In Preserving the White Man's Republic, Joshua Lynn reveals how the national Democratic Party rebranded majoritarian democracy and liberal individualism as conservative means for white men in the South and North to preserve their mastery on the eve of the Civil War.Responding to fears of African American and female political agency, Democrats in ......
Like several of America's founding fathers, George Washington was a Freemason. Yet Washington's ties to the fraternity and the role it played in his life have never been widely researched or understood. In A Deserving Brother, Mark Tabbert presents a complete story of Washington's known association with Freemasonry. Much more than a conventional ......
In volume 29 of the Revolutionary War Series, problems and frustrations dominate the final nine weeks of 1780 for Gen. George Washington-particularly the failure to strike a meaningful blow against the British headquartered in New York City and its environs. He abruptly canceled implementation of his own complex plan to assault the forts on ......
Volume 7 of The Selected Papers of John Jay opens in 1799 with John Jay well into his second term as governor of New York. After overseeing the passage of the law for gradually abolishing slavery in March 1799, Jay's administration faltered in its final months due to an ascendant Republican Party and a subsequent paralyzing conflict with the ......
