Author: Dr. Shrout (Page 9 of 18)

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By admin

The 19th century was an interesting time in American history because as a young, vast nation, the advent of modern infrastructure greatly affected how it would come to be structured both economically and politically. More fundamentally, the influx of canals, roads, and railroads built in this time period would serve to carve a new perception of space in the minds of most americans, as new settlements became easier to build, and as the need for everything for survival to be produced in every town ceased to exist. The three sources analyzed in this essay demonstrate both the scope of the transformation american infrastructure underwent and also the reactions some Americans had to it.

The map produced by civil engineer, David Stevenson in 1838 gives a clear visual representation of the shape American infrastructure had taken by that time. It is also important to note that all rivers wide and deep enough would have been used to transport goods and people as well as the wholly man-made routes of transport. One feature of the map that jumps immediately to mind is the westerly trend of the canals across the United States, alluding to the use of infrastructure to expand into the mainland of America now that goods necessary for survival (food, textiles for clothing, firearms for hunting, construction materials, etc.) could be shipped over from the coast. This newfound expansionary power changed the mindset of Americans towards the prospect of moving west and was indicative of the ideological movement of manifest destiny that would sweep the nation in the 19th century. This map was produced early on in the railway boom in America and as such features very little in the way of railway lines (the number of lines would more than double before 1860), but we do see in this map a tendency to use rail in order to connect the northern and southern states. As another source analyzed in this essay will look into, the South was slower to hop aboard the notion of internal commerce, but the process, shown in its infancy in this map, to connect the states more naturally suited to agriculture with those more inclined towards industry was the beginning of a new way of looking at the geographical features of the nation. These railway lines, whilst also facilitating the movement of curious settlers, allude to the changing mentality towards economic specialization in the United States, and to the new understanding that different regions can be used of for the production of separate goods, which could improve both efficiency and average quality.

There were clear economic benefits to the revolutionary means of transporting goods long distances for both the northern factories and the southern plantations, but the map shows a clear disparity between the state of technological and infrastructural advancement in the North and that of the South. The editorial entitled, “National Industry” from the National Intelligencer outlines this same idea, as by the end it becomes more of an outcry to the landowners and agriculturalists in the South to embrace the exciting new world of internal commerce, making the point that they stand to make a great deal more money by using the newest technological advancements in order to ship their wares across the country to a new host of potential buyers. The point is outlined most clearly when the editor writes, in a plea to the southern landowners, “Who can have so much interest as you in the opening of canals and roads, the increase of national industry and capital, with all its ramifications, which must reach you like irrigating streams of living waters, and enhance the value of your possessions?”. It is clear from looking at strongly worded editorials like this one and the economic suggestions found in newspaper articles such as the article, “Thoughts on Commerce and Agriculture” from the Raleigh Register in which the author constantly sings the praise of devoting sales efforts to other Americans (newly possible as canals were beginning to take shape in 1800 when it was written) rather than overseas buyers. The new focus on the domestic market as a separate target for exporting goods is a perfect example of the changing views of space in America at this time because no longer were goods produced in America just distinctively American, but goods in each state could now be viewed (and therefore marketed as) as distinct to that particular state, allowing a drastic increase in the marketability for products in regions where there was a more suitable climate for them.

The final source investigated here will be a later part in Stevenson’s survey of American infrastructure in which he remarks on the staggering ease, affordability, and speed with which one can now traverse unbelievable distances hitherto undreamt by man. Stevenson remarks on page 187 how many of these railway lines and canals cut through forests that previously made travel impossible, acting as further proof of the fervor with which people were getting behind the expansion in infrastructure. The excitement with which Stevenson talks about the ground covered by and the space aboard the steamboats for both personnel and cargo coupled with the newspapers’ rave reviews of the prospects of using said new infrastructure to expand the southern economy provides overwhelming testament to the new vision that americans were conjuring for both themselves and for their country. As mentioned earlier, America is a much larger country than most, and with the advent of means of moving around it, Americans were finally starting to realize that their country spans a similar range and array of climates and resources as other continents, let alone other countries. Through their newfound ability to move about their young nation, they realized it was more like several countries in one, each with different advantages, than one homogenous land mass.

Stevenson, David, and Burndy Library. Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America: Comprising Remarks on the Harbours, River and Lake Navigation, Lighthouses, Steam-Navigation, Water-Works, Canals, Roads, Railways, Bridges, and Other Works in That Country: by David Stevenson. London: John Weale, Architectural Library, 1838. Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.

“Thoughts on Commerce and Agriculture.” Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina Weekly Advertiser [Raleigh, North Carolina] 15 July 1800: n.p. 19th Century U.S. Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.

“National Industry.” Daily National Intelligencer [Washington, District Of Columbia] 8 Feb. 1817: n.p. 19th Century U.S. Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.

      

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By admin

For my final project, I am investigating how cookbooks in the antebellum period reflect the socially prescribed roles for women, and how writing by women reflects their beliefs about their positions in society. Cookbooks, like commonplace books, were a place where women could compile pieces of information (in this case, mainly recipes) of personal value to them. In these books, they also give advice to other women intended to improve their lives, which makes cookbooks a prime point of entry for my investigation of women’s expectations for their lives and the lives of other women.

My first primary source that I chose to analyze is a cookbook by Mary Hooker Cornelius called The Young Housekeeper’s Friend. Published in 1859, it aims to provide young women who find themselves in unfamiliar territory after marriage with information on how to manage a household. The book has a very simple structure, with no table of contents to provide a reference point for the chapters Mrs. Cornelius has written. Her first chapter, titled “Counsels and Suggestions,” describes the role of the housewife and the personality characteristics she is expected to have in order to run a successful household.

In this chapter, Cornelius describes housewives as the necessary base on which society is built and depends. On the surface, this appears to both praise women. However, upon closer examination I realized that this justifies blaming women for the failures of men. Cornelius writes that the “every woman is invested with a great degree of power over the happiness and virtue of others,” a power which “when rightly directed, [is] unsurpassed by any human instrumentality in its purifying and restoring efficacy” (9). One may read this as evidence that antebellum society valued women highly for their balancing, purifying power. However, Cornelius refers to the Bible for a definition of what personality traits and work habits define a virtuous woman, and the list takes up an entire page. Therefore, with expectations so high, it would not be hard for the average woman to fall short. The consequences of this failure, Cornelius writes, are disastrous. “Many a day-laborer, on his return at evening from his hard toil, is repelled by the sight of a disorderly house . . . and perhaps is met by a cold eye instead of ‘the thrifty wifie’s smile.’” As a result, Cornelius concludes, “he makes his escape to the grog-shop or the underground gambling room” (9). Here we see the woman’s shortcomings being identified as the cause of man’s vices and moral shortcomings.

In my final project, I intend to investigate other sources like The Young Housekeeper’s Friend to see how other women have written about the role of women in the home as well as its impact on society. Hopefully I can find sources in which women (or men) have disagreed with Mrs. Cornelius or presented other roles for women, and put these opposing arguments into conversation.

Works Cited:

      

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By Cordelia

My final project will consist of a comparison of British and American documents that showcase the differing uses of “framing” or bias to impact the general societal opinion towards the issues impacting the American continent in the colonial era. I began with a newspaper article from the Stamford Mercury of Stamford, England published on December 5, 1770. The article is entitled, “An Account of the Rise and Progress of the present unhappy War between Great-Britain and the American Colonies” and discusses, in depth, the reasons behind the current conflict.

The article, in and of itself, reads more as an editorial and, although it provides information and (as the title states) an account of the American cause, it provides a pro-British counterargument for every statement made. The author questions the reasons colonists have for complaining of taxation – the article making clear that taxation is truly the sole cause of the conflict – and addresses all possible conclusions. As possible reasons for wishing for the repeal of the acts passed by the British parliament, the author lists clauses of some of the colony’s charters referring to an exemption of taxes, the argument of taxation without representation, and a general attitude to go against the crown and create illegal bodies of government.

As an argument against the charters, the article states that the clauses exempting certain colonies from taxation were time stamped and are therefore void and should not be used in a case against taxation. In regards to taxation without representation, the author points out that there is a lack of parliamentary representation in many social areas of mainland England and that the colonists are selectively complaining about taxes. For example, the author points out, parliament makes laws about punishment for crimes and the colonies are not represented in those lawmaking sessions but they are still subject to punishment for crimes, yet this is not a reason they are using for independence. Therefore, the article argues, this argument is invalid. The final statement of the newspaper article pertains to the idea of the author that the colonists are not prepared to govern a vast land of people who do not fully comprehend the concept of representation and that they are simply disobeying parliament in creating illegal governing bodies.

This source will aid my project in creating a contrast of bias from colonial sources.

Work Cited

“An Account of the Rise and Progress of the present unhappy War between Great-Britain and the American Colonies.” Stamford Mercury [Stamford, England] 5 Dec. 1776: 4. 19th Century British Newspapers. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.

      

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By Eleanor

Introduction:

Lehigh University’s digital archive I Remain: A Digital Archive of Letters, Manuscripts, and Ephemera presents over seven hundred primary sources possessed by the college. The archive’s contents date as far back as the 15th century and as recently as the 20th, and are penned primarily by Americans – famous ones in particular. That said, the archive prides itself in representing a “range of lives … from ordinary citizens to Presidents” and “writers in Europe and the United States.” Though it acts more as a showcase of Lehigh’s collection than as a coherent historical narrative, we still found the “I Remain” to be, on the whole, a perfectly functional and impressive digital archive. We will organize our assessment of the collection on three distinct criteria: 1) user interface and functionality, 2) the types and quality of the content, and 3) its intended audience and potential uses.

Functionality and Interface:

In terms of visual appeal, I Remain‘s user interface is nothing to write home about. There are no drop-down menus, no slick animations, no spiffy photo galleries – and for the most part, this is a good thing. Lack of visual bloat means that navigation is quick and straightforward, with only two real “modes” of operation. The first is “Browse”, which presents a list of the available categories and a short description of each. Clicking on a category directs to a filtered list containing only items in that category. The only discernible issue with this organization is that users are bound to the dozen pre-curated collections which, while interesting, may be too narrow in focus for many users. There is an “Honor” category but not a “Letters” category; a “Lehigh History” but no “American History”. Perhaps most concerning is the omission of a “View All” button – to see everything in the archive at once, users must head over to the “Search” page and perform an empty query.

Thankfully, said search feature offers a more advanced and research-oriented way of navigating the archive’s content. There are plenty of fields to tweak and tune, allowing users to fashion a highly selective search term. Of course, a search engine is as only as good as the body through which it searches – and in I Remain‘s case, the lack of transcribed sources presents a substantial obstacle for any interested in finding items containing specific words or phrases. The detailed item descriptions are considered by the search engine and help to counteract this shortcoming to some degree, but this still is not nearly as precise as a full-text search. Hopefully the archive’s creators realize the importance of a fully-featured mechanism for locating items, and choose to update the “Browse” and “Search” functionalities before refreshing the site’s ancient design.

Content:

I Remain contains 726 digital copies of historical media artifacts located in Lehigh University’s Special Collections library: a mixture of letters, manuscripts, and ephemera spanning the 15th to 20th centuries.Despite claiming such a wide span of temporal coverage, the archive focuses primarily on the 19th century. Almost two thirds of I Remain‘s content is from the the 1800s and only six items are dated before 1700. I think that the description of the archive should perhaps be altered to reflect this emphasis. That way, researchers looking for 19th century works could find this more easily and those looking for earlier works would know that they would be better off looking elsewhere.

On the introductory home page, the archive states that its purpose is to “study the evolution of communication, trace the development of social networks, examine material culture, and gain insight into the way working writers and scientists shaped their ideas and shared their thoughts”. The vast majority of the sources, 655 of the 726 items, are letters. That ties in well with the stated goal of the archive. Personal letters are a great way to gain insight into how people thought and to track historical social networks. Additionally, I Remain‘s content is broken up into eleven thematic categories in order to streamline browsing research. Looking at a bar chart breakdown of how many sources fall into the different categories, we can see that the areas that this archive seems to specialize in are “War and Politics”, specifically “Networking”, and the concept of the “Working Writer”, a category that they define as sources that speak about the process of writing and communicating information. This emphasis also supports the purpose of the archive. Political networking is an undeniably important historical social network and the “Working Writer” category clearly speaks to the second part of the archive’s goal.

The digital representations of the sources contained in I Remain are almost entirely very high quality and are accompanied with detailed content descriptions and metadata. However there are no text transcriptions of the handwritten letters and manuscripts. The old handwriting style and irregular spelling can make these documents very difficult to read. As the archive’s developers move forward, I would suggest working towards adding more transcriptions to make their content more accessible.

Utility and Audience:

As the archive was created by Lehigh University, there is an implied audience of the members of that specific school. This is further implied by the way that the site puts Lehigh history at the same level of importance as the Revolutionary War and other more global events. With this exists the implication that the university will be considered important to those who view the archive. This could be students or it could be faculty. However, the website is not private in any way and therefore, can be accessed by anybody with an internet connection. With this in mind, I Remain appears to be best suited for research purposes by college students looking for primary sources. The accessibility and navigational ease allow all age groups the chance to conduct research but the need for primary sources and a digital archive specializing in them really only presents itself for those in college and beyond. This, therefore, appears to be the intended audience and use of the digital archive.