Search results for ""author rosemarie zagarri""

After the Revolution, Americans faced the challenge of expanding representative government throughout an extensive territory. The complex process of adapting republicanism to a vast area generated many conflicts over representation in both states and the nation—conflicts that produced a division between the large states and the small states. Using concepts of historical geography, Rosemarie Zagarri examines how Americans' notions about space influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution and the shaping of the nation's political institutions. In The Politics of Size, Zagarri offers a bold explanation of political alignments in the early republic. The split between large and small states emerged, she asserts, not at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 but in the years before, during debates over the relocation of state capitals and the reapportionment of state legislatures. The local conflicts culminated in the fierce struggle between the two factions at the federal convention. Far from ending there, the division persisted well into the nineteenth century, resurfacing when Congress discussed such controversial issues as congressional redistricting, the selection of presidential electors, and the reapportionment of the House of Representatives. Only in 1850 did the conflict based on state size merge with, and become subsumed by, the growing controversy between North and South.

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The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson. Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men. Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. By 1828, women's politicization was seen more as a liability than as a strength, contributing to a divisive political climate that repeatedly brought the country to the brink of civil war. The increasing sophistication of party organizations and triumph of universal suffrage for white males marginalized those who could not vote, especially women. Yet all was not lost. Women had already begun to participate in charitable movements, benevolent societies, and social reform organizations. Through these organizations, women found another way to practice politics.

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The second edition of A Woman's Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution updates Rosemarie Zagarri's biography of one of the most accomplished women of the Revolutionary era. The work places Warren into the social and political context in which she lived and examines the impact of Warren's writings on Revolutionary politics and the status of women in early America. Presents readers with an engaging and accessible historical biography of an accomplished literary and political figure of the Revolutionary era Provides an incisive narrative of the social and intellectual forces that contributed to the coming of the American Revolution Features a variety of updates, including an in-depth Bibliographical Essay, multiple illustrations, a timeline of Warren's life, and chapter-end study questions Includes expanded coverage of women during the Revolutionary Era and the Early American Republic

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In 1957, the University of Chicago Press asked acclaimed best-selling historian Daniel J. Boorstin to oversee a series of accessible yet authoritative books that, together, would tell the whole history of the American people. The result, published over the course of nearly half a century, is the "Chicago History of American Civilization" series, which provides a nuanced and vibrant portrait of the United States from its inception through the twentieth century. Scholars across many disciplines contributed, and the series covers a broad range of topics, as disparate as the War of 1812, immigration, and American folklore. While the series is certainly eclectic, the books share both ambition and authority - they have been staples for teachers and general readers alike. The authors included in this series represent some of the greatest academic talents ever to turn their mind to the American past. Thus the University of Chicago Press is excited to offer new editions of three of the series' best-known books. In "The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89", Edmund S. Morgan shows how the challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the founding fathers' political philosophy was not grounded in theory, but rather grew out of their own immediate needs, Morgan paints a vivid portrait of how the founders' own experiences shaped their passionate convictions, and these in turn were incorporated into the Constitution and other governmental documents. "The Birth of the Republic" is the classic account of the beginnings of the American government, and in this fourth edition the original text is supplemented with a new foreword by Joseph J. Ellis and a historiographic essay by Rosemarie Zagarri.

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