Search results

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison's advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington's prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation. Together, Stuart Le...

Strategically located at the western edge of the Atlantic World, the French post of Natchitoches thrived during the eighteenth century as a trade hub between the well-supplied settlers and the isolated Spaniards and Indians of Texas. Its critical economic and diplomatic role made it the most important community on the Louisiana-Texas frontier during the colonial era.Despite the community's critical role under French and then Spanish rule, "Colonial Natchitoches" is the first thorough study of it...

This book examines the first military encounters of the Seven Years' War. When the French built forts along the Ohio River valley to support their claims to the area, a clash with the British became inevitable, and when in 1753 they refused to evacuate the region, British thoughts turned to eviction. Tensions rose further when a party of French negotiators were killed by Washington, and in retaliation, French troops besieged Washington at Fort Necessity. Despite Washington's eventual release, an...

James Adair was an Englishman who lived and traded among the southeastern Indians for more than 30 years, from 1735 to 1768. During that time he covered the territory from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. He encountered and lived among Indians, advised governors, spent time with settlers, and worked tirelessly for the expansion of British interests against the French and the Spanish. Adair's acceptance by the Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, and Chickasaws provided him the opportu...

This absorbing appraisal of colonial South Carolina political history is developed in three parts: The Age of the Goose Creek Men,"" covering 1670-1712; ""Breakdown and Recovery--in which the central dispute was over local currency--1712-43; and ""The Rise of the Commons House of Assembly, 1743-63."" Originally published in 1966. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that we...

In this volume, scholars from various disciplines show how physical objects can expand our comprehension of how people lived, worked, and thought during the colonial and early national periods. Inspired by the "material turn" that introduced the legibility of objects across humanities disciplines, the essays in this collection show how "reading" material objects from sites such as Monticello, Salem, and the Connecticut River Valley brings to light significant dimensions of social experience an...

"The table constitutes a kind of tie between the bargainer and the bargained-with, and makes the diners more willing to receive certain impressions, to submit to certain influences: from this is born political gastronomy. Meals have become a means of governing, and the fate of whole peoples is decided at a banquet."-Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy The first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 was a powerfully symbolic event and no...

'What a scene!' wrote Horace Walpole. 'An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly entrenched and double in numbers!' It was indeed a drama, as Major-General James Wolfe's army scaled the cliffs above St. Lawrence to stand with the French Canadian capital before them; and in one short sharp exchange of fire, tumble the Marquis de Montcalm's French army into bloody ruin. Sir John Fortescue famously described it as the 'most...

Writers abounded in seventeenth-century New England. From the moment of colonization and constantly thereafter, hundreds of people set pen to paper in the course of their lives, some to write letters that others recopied, some to compose sermons as part of their life work as ministers, dozens to attempt verse, and many more to narrate a remarkable experience, provide written testimony to a civil court, participate in a controversy, or keep some sort of records—and of these everyday forms of writ...

Reveals the personal experiences and ancestral histories of colonial Anglo-Americans.