Forgotten Americans : footnote figures who changed American history

Willard Sterne Randall, Nancy Nahra

In 1779 a Philadelphia belle, Margaret Shippen, married a hero of the ongoing Revolution, General Benedict Arnold. Within months Peggy was sending coded messages to an old suitor from England, conveying Arnold's promise to defect. When their plot was discovered, the general fled. Peggy distracted George Washington with hysterics before following her husband. The British government eventually paid Peggy far more than Benedict Arnold ever received.A generation later, the Philadelphia neighborhood where Margaret Shippen had grown up was home to a businessman named James Forten. Due to his invention for rigging sails, Forten was rich enough to build large public halls and bankroll political causes. At the same time, this veteran of the Revolution was losing his political voice because he was black.Margaret Shippen Arnold and James Forten are just two of the fifteen fascinating but little-known lives told in Forgotten Americans. Weitten by an honored biographer and an award-winning poet, this entertaining book shines a light on overlooked figures. Traditional histories have often neglected these people, for many reasons. Some were on the losing side of a conflict, such as Tecumeseh, who spent years trying to unite Indian nations against white settlers. Others worked behind the scenes, like Annie Turner Wittenmyer, who took charge of supplying Union hospitals in the West during the Civil War. And some we disregard because their actions now seem unsavory, as with the once-celebrated "Indian-slayer" Tom Quick.From these fascinating threads, Will Randall and Nancy Nahra weave a rich tapestry of American life. In it we witness the power of religious revival and the lure of mass entertainment. We watch philosophical differences split the nation. We see the shift in Native American's lives from Teedyuscung, a Delaware murdered despite his conversion to Christianity, to Louis Sockalexis, the baseball prodigy. These lively stories also reveal little-known facets of the famous: Benjamin Franklin's disinherited son, Thomas Jefferson's secret politicking, and how Mary Todd Lincoln's confinement to a mental hospital became a public issue. From early settlements to the close of the nineteenth century, the brief biographies in Forgotten Americans engagingly fill out our knowledge of the nation's past.

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[目次]

  • * Introduction * Anne Marbury Hutchinson: This Great and Sore Affliction * Teedyuscung, or Brother Gideon * Tom Quick the Indian Slayer * Governor William Franklin, Loyal Son * Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Immigrant Army * Margaret Shippen Arnold: For Services Rendered * A Virgina Gentleman in the Lake Country * Tecumseh and the Indian Nation * The New Measures of Charles Grandison Finney * James Forten, Disfranchised Gentleman * Annie Turner Wittenmyer, Frontier Reformer * The Civil War Mission of Charlotte Forten * Sitting Bull and the Closing Frontier * Myra Colby Bradwell, Esq. * Louis Sockalexis, The Original Cleveland Indian

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この本の情報

書名 Forgotten Americans : footnote figures who changed American history
著作者等 Nahra, Nancy Ann
Randall, Willard Sterne
Nahra Nancy
出版元 Perseus books
刊行年月 1999
版表示 New ed
ページ数 xvii, 257 p.
大きさ 21 cm
ISBN 0738201502
NCID BA50696432
※クリックでCiNii Booksを表示
言語 英語
出版国 アメリカ合衆国
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