Bøger udgivet af Mercer University Press

An examination of an entrepreneur who saw his personal wealth as a divine trust.

In Faithful, Firm, and True: African-American Education in the South, Titus Brown traces the dual roles of the northern American Missionary Association (AMA) and the African American community of Macon, Georgia in their joint effort to provide education to blacks in central Georgia. These education pioneers faced many formidable obstacles, including poverty, disease, white hostility, low funds, and a paucity of qualified teachers. Nevertheless, they were able to establish the Ballard Normal School which served the African-American community for almost 100 years, emphasizing such moral virtues as religion, patriotism, morality, and industriousness. These qualities mirrored those advocated by Booker T. Washington in his campaign for industrial education for blacks, but Ballard did not follow Washington's overall plan. Brown places this history of African-American education in Macon in the context of the national debate over what kind of education best served the black community, and what role blacks should play in the nation's social, political, and economic life. In doing so, Brown addresses the heated ideological conflict between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois. Faithful, Firm, and True: African-American Education in the South provides a thorough analysis of the important contributions made by early champions of black education in central Georgia and the central role played by Ballard Normal School. It is essential reading for scholars of African-American history, education, and Georgia history.

Encouraged by the Bible, Puritans banished a variety of radicals from the Puritan colonies including Baptists. Among those banished was Roger Williams, the advocate of religious liberty who established the first Baptist church in America. Williams posed a serious challenge to a colonial society in which the Bible was the paramount guide in every aspect of life, both public and private.

After considerable scouring of musty and dusty files in courtroom storage cellars, the research project in Springfield, Illinois discovered more than 70,000 documents directly linked to Abraham Lincoln's twenty-four years as a practicing lawyer. Having access to that wealth of information, A. Lincoln Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Litigator presents unique insight into Lincoln's legal career in a distinctive book that presents detailed stories about Lincoln's cases using actual trial document, uses Lincoln's cases to examine the social and political climate of the time, shows how relationships between Lincoln and his clients changed over time, and is the first book to use the newly discovered Lincoln Legal Papers primary source data.In contrast to the mythical image of Lincoln as a country lawyer, he was actually among the top leaders of the Illinois bar. This book details more than fifty of Lincoln's legal cases and activities such as assault and battery, bestiality, a wrongful dismissal, medical malpractice uncollected debts, the insanity plea in a murder case, divorce, the selection of expert witnesses, patent infringement, sexual slander, personal damages, corporate clients, and the first use of the temporary insanity plea in a US courtroom, and set the precedent for using expert witnesses. Lincoln even defended an Illinois Supreme Court justice against an impeachment charge.

William Rhadamanthus Montgomery (1839-1906) was present at some of the most memorable battles of the Civil War. Among them were Chickahominy, Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredricksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Wounded seven or eight times, Montgomery remained in service throughout the entire war. After the war, he returned to Marietta where he lived out the rest of his days. The diary and the letters contained herein is a testament to his time as a soldier during the Civil War. But as the diary and letters indicate, the war was not the end all of his life. His loyalty for the South was surpassed only by his loyalty for and to his family.

In examining the course of the debate between the philosophies of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft in the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, several important conclusions have been reached. First, a much more diverse spectrum of women's exercise existed in the antebellum era than is currently described in modern historical texts. Second, several exercise systems had significant links to an ideal of womanhood - called in this text Majestic Womanhood - which directly competed with the prevailing construct of the ideology of True Womanhood articulated by historian Barbara Welter. Third, purposive training mattered in the lives of American women influencing them physically, intellectually, and emotionally. In many instances this training empowered women to step beyond the confines of their separate sphere of domestic duty and involve themselves in the world outside their homes.

The Forgotten "Stonewall of the West" for the first time rightly places Major General John Stevens Bowen into top ranking as one of the best division commanders who fought for the Confederacy. The case is made repeatedly throughout this book that Bowen, even more than General Pat Cleburne, was entitled to a lofty reputation - more indeed than any other Confederate general in the West. This book parallels the lives of Bowen and General Ulysses S. Grant. Bowen and Grant were West Pointers and St. Louis neighbors who faced each other both before the war and on some of the great battlefields during the war. Because General Bowen died of disease in July 1863 immediately after the fall of Vicksburg, his story, until now, has been almost forgotten. From Shiloh to Vicksburg, General Bowen was the type of bold commander - whether commanding a regiment, brigade, or division - who led his men at the head of the charge. In his first battle, for example, Bowen's closest brush with death came when he led his brigade's charge at Shiloh. And, like General Grant, Bowen's aggressive, hard-hitting style continued as he rose in rank, reaching a climax during the decisive Vicksburg campaign. While the legend of General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson made the Stonewall Brigade famous, Bowen played a key role in molding the First Missouri Confederate Brigade into a lethal fighting machine, which had a better combat record than the immortalized Virginians. But because the Missouri Brigade has for so long been ignored by historians, Bowen's reputation has likewise suffered in the historical memory.