New Territories, New Perspectives
The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase
Edited with an Introduction by| Richard J. Callahan Jr.
With the doubling of America’s territory that came with the Louisiana Purchase, American culture was remapped in the bargain. The region’s indigenous inhabitants had already been joined by Catholic missionaries, both French and Spanish, along with Africans brought as slaves to the Caribbean islands and North America; now all were met by a predominantly Protestant culture rushing westward.
New Territories, New Perspectives marks the first study to take the Louisiana Purchase as the focal point for considering the development of American religious history. The process of transforming the Louisiana Territory into U.S. territory meant shaping the space to conform to American cultural and religious identity, and this volume investigates continuities, disruptions, and changes relating to religion in this context.
The contributors ask what might happen to our understanding of religion in America if we look at it through the lens of this annexation. Initial chapters offer fresh perspectives on the new territory by those who settled it, primarily easterners, exploring such topics as the built environment of the region as seen in such settings as frontier camp meetings and communitarian societies, ideas of destiny amid the clash of cultural groups, and religiously significant aspects of African American life.
Subsequent essays take up the religious history of the region from the perspective of New Orleans and the Caribbean. They include an exploration of the roots of Pentecostalism in the mix of black and white cultures in the Mississippi Delta, the “vodou” link between New Orleans and Haiti, and the African-Creole performances of Mardi Gras Indians.
Together, these essays invite readers to consider intersecting histories that are too often neglected in our understanding of America’s religious development, particularly issues that stand apart from traditional histories of religion in the Midwest. By exploring the unexpected, they also promote different ways of thinking about American religious history as a whole.
About the Editor
Richard J. Callahan Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri–Columbia.
ISBN 978-0-8262-1784-4
256 pages
6 x 9
index
$44.95s cloth
The Natural World of Lewis and Clark
David A. Dalton
“I couldn’t resist continuing until I had finished it! So much has already been written on the biological aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition that I imagined I would be traveling well-trodden and heavily overgrazed ground. I was very wrong.”—Paul A. Johnsgard, author of Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains: A Natural History
On their journey westward, Lewis and Clark demonstrated an amazing ability to identify the new plants and animals they encountered, and their observations enriched science’s understanding of the trans-Mississippi West. Others have written about their discoveries and have faithfully cataloged their findings; now a twenty-first-century biologist reexamines some of those discoveries in the light of modern science to show for the first time their lasting biological significance.
The Natural World of Lewis and Clark interprets the expedition’s findings from a modern perspective to show how advances such as DNA research, modern understanding of proteins, and the latest laboratory methods shed new light on them. David Dalton recounts the expedition’s observations and, in clear, readily accessible terms, relates them to principles of ecology, genetics, physiology, and even animal behavior.
Writing in informal language with a bit of wry humor, Dalton invites readers to imagine the West that Lewis and Clark found, revealing the dynamic features of nature and the dramatic changes that earlier peoples brought about. He explains surprising facts, ranging from why Indians used cottonwood bark as winter feed for horses to why the explorers experienced gastric distress with some foods, and even why the Expedition’s dog would have been well-advised to avoid a diet of salmon.
Dalton introduces the tools and techniques of today’s science in a way that won’t intimidate nonspecialist readers. Throughout the book he expertly balances botanical and zoological information, with coverage ranging from the extinction of large animals in North America a few thousand years ago to the expected effects of invasive species and climate change in the coming centuries.
Enhanced with unusual and informative illustrations—not only nature photography but also historical images—this book will fascinate any reader with an interest in the natural history of the American West as well as broader issues in conservation and ecology. The Natural World of Lewis and Clark tells the story behind the story of this remarkable expedition and shows that its legacy extended not only across a continent but also into our own time.
About the Author
David A. Dalton is Professor of Biology at Reed College and lives in Portland, Oregon.
ISBN 978-0-8262-1766-0
280 pages
6 x 9
88 illustrations, bibliography, index
maps, charts, tables
$29.95t
Lewis and Clark's Journey across Missouri
Brett Dufur and other contributors
This beautifully photographed and illustrated book explores in-depth Lewis and Clark’s time in Missouri through journal excerpts, one-of-a-kind maps made by nationally known geographer James Harlan that locate the Corps of Discovery’s campsites, and an along-the-river guide for travelers who wish to explore the historic towns, state parks, and other points of interest.
Individual chapters also probe the river then and now, the Native Americans then in the state, the fur trade at the time, the last European settlement on the river, and contemporary flora and fauna of Missouri. The return journey through the state, when the men were speeding homeward, is also included.
Primary contributing author Brett Dufur is the author of Exploring Lewis and Clark’s Missouri, The Complete Katy Trail Guidebook, Exploring Missouri Wine Country, and several other Missouri-related books. A member of the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles—official reenactors for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial—Dufur has logged hundreds of river miles in Corps of Discovery reenactments.ISBN 978-1-891708-19-0
114 pages
8 3/8 x 10 7/8
124 color illustrations
$24.95t paper
Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America
Ellis Sandoz
As debates rage over the place of faith in our national life, Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century crediting of religion for shaping America is largely overlooked today. Now, in Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America, Ellis Sandoz reveals the major role that Protestant Christianity played in the formation and early period of the American republic. Sandoz traces the rise of republican government from key sources in Protestant civilization, paying particular attention to the influence of the Bible on the Founders and the blossoming of the American mind in the eighteenth century.
Sandoz analyzes the religious debt of the emergent American community and its elevation of the individual person as unique in the eyes of the Creator. He shows that the true distinction of American republicanism lies in its grounding of human dignity in spiritual individualism and an understanding of man’s capacity for self-government under providential guidance. Along the way, he addresses such topics as the neglected question of the education of the Founders for their unique endeavor, common law constitutionalism, the place of Latin and Greek classics in the Founders’ thought, and the texture of religious experience from the Great Awakening to the Declaration of Independence
To establish a unifying theoretical perspective for his study, Sandoz considers the philosophical underpinnings of religion and the contribution that Eric Voegelin made to our understanding of religious experience. He contributes fresh studies of the character of Voegelin’s thought: its relationship to Christianity; his debate with Leo Strauss over reason, revelation, and the meaning of philosophy; and the theory of Gnosticism as basic to radical modernity. He also provides a powerful account of the spirit of Voegelin’s later writings, contrasting the political scientist with the meditative spiritualist and offering new insight into volume 5 of Order and History.
Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America concludes with timely reflections on the epoch now unfolding in the shadow of Islamic jihadism. Bringing a wide range of materials into a single volume, it confronts current academic concerns with religion while offering new insight into the construction of the American polity—and the heart of Americanism as we know it today.
About the Author
Ellis Sandoz is Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the author of numerous books, including A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding and The Politics of Truth and Other Untimely Essays: The Crisis of Civic Consciousness.
Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy:
Studies in Religion and Politics
ISBN 978-0-8262-1674-8
248 pages 6 x 9 bibliography, index, 2006
$39.95s cloth
$19.95s paper
Available September 2006
The Essence of Liberty
Free Black Women during the Slave Era
Wilma King
“The Essence of Liberty is well conceived and well organized. . . . King has drawn together secondary scholarship and major original source materials to provide a comprehensive history of free black women.” —Victoria Bynum, author of Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South
“A marvelous piece of scholarship, richly informed by careful digging in often obscure and far-flung primary sources. . . . This book will immediately become the standard source on its subject.” —Thomas H. Appleton Jr., coeditor of Searching for Their Places: Women in the South across Four Centuries
Before 1865, slavery and freedom coexisted tenuously in America in an environment that made it possible not only for enslaved women to become free but also for emancipated women to suddenly lose their independence. Wilma King now examines a wide-ranging body of literature to show that, even in the face of economic deprivation and draconian legislation, many free black women were able to maintain some form of autonomy and lead meaningful lives.
The Essence of Liberty blends social, political, and economic history to analyze black women’s experience in both the North and the South, from the colonial period through emancipation. Focusing on class and familial relationships, King examines the myriad sources of freedom for black women to show the many factors that, along with time spent in slavery before emancipation, shaped the meaning of freedom. Her book also raises questions about whether free women were bound to or liberated from gender conventions of their day.
Drawing on a wealth of untapped primary sources—not only legal documents and newspapers but also the diaries, letters, and autobiographical writings of free women—King opens a new window on the world of black women. She examines how they became free, educated themselves, found jobs, maintained self-esteem, and developed social consciousness—even participating in the abolitionist movement. She considers the stance of southern free women toward their enslaved contemporaries and the interactions between previously free and newly freed women after slavery ended. She also looks closely at women’s spirituality, disclosing the dilemma some women faced when they took a stand against men—even black men—in order to follow their spiritual callings.
Throughout this engaging history, King underscores the pernicious constraints that racism placed on the lives of free blacks in spite of the fact that they were not enslaved. The Essence of Liberty shows the importance of studying these women on their own terms, revealing that the essence of freedom is more complex than the mere absence of shackles.
About the Author
Wilma King has a joint appointment in the Department of History and Black Studies at the University of Missouri–Columbia, where she holds the Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professorship in African-American History and Culture. She is the author of Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America and editor of A Northern Woman in the Plantation South: Letters of Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox, 1856–1876.
ISBN 978-0-8262-1657-1
312 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
13 tables, 17 illustrations
bibliography, index
$39.95s cloth
$19.95s paper
Available April 2006
New World, Known World
Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing
David Read
New World, Known World examines the works of four writers closely associated with the early period of English colonization, from 1624 to 1649: John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, and Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America (in conjunction with another of Williams’s major works, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution). David Read addresses these texts as examples of what he refers to as “individual knowledge projects”— the writers’ attempts to shape raw information and experience into patterns and narratives that can be compared with and assessed against others from a given society’s fund of accepted knowledge.
Read argues that the body of Western knowledge in the period immediately before the development of well-defined scientific disciplines is primarily the work of individuals functioning in relative isolation, rather than institutions working in concert. The European colonization of other regions in the same period exposes in a way few historical situations do both the complexity and the uncertainty involved in the task of producing knowledge.
Read treats each work as the project of a specific mind, reflecting a high degree of intentionality and design, and not simply as a collection of documentary evidence to be culled in the service of a large-scale argument. He shows that each author adds a distinct voice to the experience of North American colonization and that each articulates it in ways that are open to analysis in terms of form, style, convention, rhetorical strategies, and applications of metaphor and allegory.
By applying the tools of literary interpretation to colonial texts, Read reaches a fuller understanding of the immediate consequences of English colonization in North America on the culture’s base of knowledge. Students and scholars of early modern colonialism and transatlantic studies, as well as those with interests in seventeenth-century American and English literature, should find this book of particular value.
About the author
David Read is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is the author of Temperate Conquests: Spenser and the Spanish New World.
192 pages
6 x 9
bibliography, index, appendix
$37.50s
Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network
Disseminating Virtue in Early America
Ralph Frasca
In Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Network, Ralph Frasca explores Franklin’s partnerships and business relationships with printers and their impact on the early American press. Besides analyzing the structure of the network, Frasca addresses two equally important questions: How did Franklin establish this informal group? What were his motivations for doing so?
This network grew to be the most prominent and geographically extensive of the early American printing organizations, lasting from the 1720s until the 1790s. Stretching from New England to the West Indies, it comprised more than two dozen members, including such memorable characters as the Job-like James Parker, the cunning Francis Childs, the malcontent Benjamin Mecom, the vengeful Benjamin Franklin Bache, the steadfast David Hall, and the deranged Anthony Armbruster.
Franklin’s network altered practices in both the European and the American colonial printing trades by providing capital and political influence to set up workers as partners and associates. As an economic entity and source of mutual support, the network was integral to the success of many eighteenth-century printers, as well as to the development of American journalism.
Frasca argues that one of Franklin’s principal motivations in establishing the network was his altruistic desire to assist Americans in their efforts to be virtuous. Using a variety of sources, Frasca shows that Franklin viewed virtue as a path to personal happiness and social utility. Franklin intended for his network of printers to teach virtue and encourage its adoption. The network would disseminate his moral truths to a mass audience, and this would in turn further his own political, economic, and moral ambitions.
By exploring Franklin’s printing network and addressing these questions, this work fills a substantial void in the historical treatment of Franklin’s life. Amateur historians and professional scholars alike will welcome Frasca’s clear and capable treatment of this subject.
About the Author
Ralph Frasca is Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of the “Saturday Globe” and American War Reporting: The Mexican-American War.ISBN 0-8262-1614-5
312 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
bibliography, index, illustrations
$44.95s
December 2005
February 5, 2008