The Bonds of Union: Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and Defining the Nation in the Early Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-408
Author(s):  
Benjamin Park
Keyword(s):  
Early Republic ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
Noah Webster

Contested Identities: Nationalism, Regionalism, and Patriotism in Early American Textbooks

2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Nash
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
Early American ◽  
Common Schools ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
New Republic ◽  
Noah Webster

Immediately after the American Revolution, the founders set about the task of ensuring the continued existence of the fledgling republic. Facing a host of problems—economic, social, and governmental—some founders promoted a concept of schooling that would inculcate patriotism and forge a uniquely American identity. Noah Webster wanted to create an American language, and Benjamin Rush wanted schools to “convert men into republican machines.” Webster, Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and others all wanted to use some version of common schooling to instill in children a sense of nationalism. Textbooks used in these common schools would be a likely way to further promote a sense of American identity. What that identity should be, though, and what the “good citizen” of the new republic should look like, was sharply contested, and textbooks of this period reflect many of the fissures in the work of nation building.

Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 270
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cray ◽  
K. Alan Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Early Republic ◽  
Noah Webster

Alexander Hamilton and the Early Republic in Edwardian Imperial Thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick M. Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
George Washington ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
The Federalist Papers

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used the figures of Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of (modern) self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the US while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts were publicly presented as Washington and Hamilton reborn.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

Building America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean H. Baker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Water System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Early American ◽  
Transatlantic Exchange ◽  
The Us ◽  
Private Homes

Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe is a biography of America’s first professionally trained architect and engineer. Born in 1764, Latrobe was raised in Moravian communities in England and Germany. His parents expected him to follow his father and brother into the ministry, but he rebelled against the church. Moved to London, he studied architecture and engineering. In 1795 he emigrated to the United States and became part of the period’s Transatlantic Exchange. Latrobe soon was famous for his neoclassical architecture, designing important buildings, including the US Capitol and Baltimore Basilica as well as private homes. Carpenters and millwrights who built structures more cheaply and less permanently than Latrobe challenged his efforts to establish architecture as a profession. Rarely during his twenty-five years in the United States was he financially secure, and when he was, he speculated on risky ventures that lost money. He declared bankruptcy in 1817 and moved to New Orleans, the sixth American city that he lived in, hoping to recoup his finances by installing a municipal water system. He died there of yellow fever in 1820. The themes that emerge in this biography are the critical role Latrobe played in the culture of the early republic through his buildings and his genius in neoclassical design. Like the nation’s political founders, Latrobe was committed to creating an exceptional nation, expressed in his case by buildings and internal improvements. Additionally, given the extensive primary sources available for this biography, an examination of his life reveals early American attitudes toward class, family, and religion.

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