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19th Century America

The 19th was the United States' first full century as a nation. It was full of birth pangs, moments of triumph, and things that made everyone shake their head and wonder what was going on. One of the most interesting of the latter bits was when British ex-pat Joshua Norton crowned himself Emperor of the United States, "reigning" from San Francisco.

Most people remember the 19th century for the Civil War. While it certainly was a significant event, one of the most important events in American history even, there were a number of surrounding factors that were just as important, and without which the War Between the States would never have developed.

Arguably the most significant of these was Western Expansion. The idea that Americans were fulfilling some kind of national destiny by claiming the Western part of the continent was called Manifest Destiny, and its origins can be found in the writings of some of the most prominent Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Their dedication to the Enlightenment ideal of human progress (that mankind controlled its own destiny, and that that destiny was to move ever forward) translated into a need to expand their country as far as possible.

As with anything else, God used that humanist doctrine to advance His own truth. While politicians and opportunists went West to obtain land, gold, and freedom, Christian missionaries went to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People like Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and Jason Lee braved the Oregon Trail simply to share their faith with the Native Americans in the Western Territories; the Whitmans even gave their lives, becoming the Pacific Northwest's most famous martyrs.

Meanwhile, back in the East the bigwigs were conspiring to breach the 3,000 mile gap between the East and West coasts with a recently improved invention: the steam engine train. The First Transcontinental Railroad wasn't completed till 1869 (four years after the Civil War had ended), but it's origins reach back to the 1840s when it was first envisioned by Asa Whitney.

In fact, the transcontinental railroad was a significant element of Abraham Lincoln's presidential campaign and administration. This was the problem: the North wanted the Trans to go through their territory because they had so much industrial product to move, while the South wanted it to run through the bottom half of the States so they could transport cotton, sorghum, and other agricultural goods.

The reality was a bit of a compromise, but the violent debates that stirred Congress had no small part in fomenting the division that would ultimately erupt in full-blown war. Slavery was the main issue, but it affected so many other factors that to reduce the origins of the Civil War to slavery alone is a bit revisionist and narrow-sighted.

For a lot of the 19th century, it seemed that the United States led a charmed existence, that Progress was a sure thing and there was nothing really to fear, certainly no problem that couldn't be overcome. The last two decades were exceedingly prosperous, leading to a sense of smug optimism that only the terror of World War I, the moral chaos of the Jazz Age, and the sudden insecurity of the Great Depression could effectively end.

Not everyone was man-centered and materialistic, however. The 19th century saw a surge in evangelism unlike anything the fledgling nation had seen, so pervasive and productive that it was called the Second Great Awakening. Unfortunately, a lot of doctrinal dilution came with the new preaching, but there were plenty of genuine conversions, and much good came of them.

It's difficult to reduce a one hundred year span to a few paragraphs, and there are certainly things we could have mentioned. Comprehensive treatments aren't always the best way to study history, though; each era has its own spirit and attitudes (its own zeitgeist, if you want to get all technical and German) that best represent it. We hope you'll bear that in mind in your study of the 19th century in America, and indeed throughout your study of history here and around the globe.

Topics of Interest from the 19th Century:

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he is a husband and father, teaches adult Sunday school in his Presbyterian congregation, and likes weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur.Read more of his reviews here.
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Abe Lincoln Grows Up
by Carl Sandburg, illustrated by James Daugherty
from Harcourt, Brace & Company
for 5th-8th grade
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Album of the Civil War
by William Loren Katz
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American Heritage History of the Indian Wars
by Robert M. Utley, Wilcomb E. Washburn
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Big Annie of Calumet
by Jerry Stanley
1st edition
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Black Falcon
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Black Man in America
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Bull Run
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Chariot in the Sky
Land of the Free Series
by Arna Bontemps, illustrated by Cyrus Le Roy Baldridge
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Historical fiction for 6th-10th grade
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Children of the Wild West
by Russell Freedman
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Civil War Battles
by Curt Johnson
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Early Days of a Cowboy on the Pecos
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Emancipation Proclomation
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Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
by Jacqueline Kelly
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Explorers, Missionaries, and Trappers
by Kieran Doherty
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Facing West
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Fields of Fury
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First Four Years
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
from HarperCollins
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First Four Years (Pictorial Cover)
by Laura Ingalls Wilder; illustrated by Garth Williams
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Fortune's Bones
by Marilyn Nelson, notes and annotations by Pamela Espeland
from Front Street
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2005 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
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From Log Cabin to White House with Abraham Lincoln - Set
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Good Ol' Cowboy Stories
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
by Suzanne M. Coil
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
by Rachel Field, illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop
1969 printing from Macmillan
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1930 Newbery Medal Winner
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James Fenimore Cooper
by Donald A. Ringe
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January's Sparrow
by Patricia Polacco
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$16.00 (1 in stock)
John James Audubon: Painting America's Wildlife
by Janet Stevenson, illustrated by Robert Boehmer
from Encyclopedia Britannica
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Kathleen: A Yankee Girl at Gettysburg
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Kit Carson: Folk Hero and Man
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Lady of Arlington
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Legends of the Wild West
by James A. Crutchfield, Bill O'Neal, Dale L. Walker
from Publications International
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in Western Expansion (1800-1898) (Location: HISA-19WES)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Lincoln: A Photobiography
by Russell Freedman
from Houghton Mifflin
Biography for 5th-9th grade
1988 Newbery Medal winner
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$8.00 (3 in stock)
Little Women
Illustrated Junior Library Series 4
by Louisa May Alcott, illustrated by Louis Jambor
from Grosset & Dunlap
Romantic Realistic Fiction for 4th-9th grade
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Little Women
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Reprint from Breslich & Foss
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in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
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Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
by Gary D. Schmidt
from Scholastic Inc.
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2005 Newbery Honor Book
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Mr. Lincoln's Army
by Bruce Catton
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
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Nation Torn
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Nation Torn
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Old West: Miners
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Oregon Trail
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Orphan for Nebraska
A Guild Book
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Photographic History of the Civil War: Armies & Leaders
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Prairie Star
by Nina Hermanna Morgan
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Real Book about Buffalo Bill
by Adolph Regli, illustrated by Robert J. Lee
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Rebuilding a Nation
from Cobblestone Publishing
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Savage Thunder
by Jim Murphy
1st edition from Margaret K. McElderry Books
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in American Civil War (1860-1865) (Location: HISA-19CW)
$9.50 (1 in stock)
Secrets of a Civil War Submarine
by Sally M. Walker
from Carolrhoda Books, Inc.
for 4th-8th grade
2006 Robert F. Sibert Medal winner
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$10.50 (1 in stock)
Separate Battle
by Ina Chang
1st edition from Dutton Juvenile
for 5th-8th grade
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Slave Dancer
by Paula Fox
from Simon and Schuster
Historical Fiction for 6th-10th grade
1974 Newbery Medal winner
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Slave Dancer
by Paula Fox
from Simon and Schuster
Historical Fiction for 6th-10th grade
1974 Newbery Medal winner
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$8.00 (1 in stock)
Slave Dancer
by Paula Fox, illustrated by Eros Keith
from Bradbury Press
Historical Fiction for 6th-10th grade
1974 Newbery Medal winner
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$12.00 (1 in stock)
Smoky the Cow Horse
by Will James
August 1928 printing from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 4th-7th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Smoky the Cow Horse
by Will James
1930 printing from Charles Scribner's Sons
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1927 Newbery Book
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$9.00 (1 in stock)
Standing Like a Stone Wall
by James I. Robertson Jr.
from Atheneum
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$12.00 (1 in stock)
Streams to the River, River to the Sea
by Scott O'Dell
from Houghton Mifflin
Historical Fiction for 7th-9th grade
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Thaddeus Lowe: America's One-Man Air Corps
by Mary Hoehling
from Kingston House
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$7.00 (1 in stock)
Theodore Roosevelt: Rallying a Free People
by Fred J. Cook, illustrated by Robert Boehmer
from Kingston House
for 5th-8th grade
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$12.00 (1 in stock)
They Met at Gettysburg
by Edward J. Stackpole
from Bonanza Books
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$3.00 (1 in stock)
Trails Plowed Under
by Charles M. Russell
from Doubleday & Company
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$6.50 (1 in stock)
True Tales of the Wild West
by Paul Robert Walker
from National Geographic
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in Western Expansion (1800-1898) (Location: HISA-19WES)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Union Generals
1st edition from Blackbirch Press
for 5th-8th grade
in Clearance: History & Geography (Location: ZCLE-HIS)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Vanishing America
by Everett B. Wilson
for 4th-8th grade
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Walter Reed: Vanquishing Yellow Fever
by Edward F. Dolan, illustrated by Dan Siculan
from Encyclopedia Britannica
for 6th-10th grade
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$10.00 (1 in stock)
We Shall Overcome - Book with CD
by Stuart Stotts, foreword by Pete Seeger, illustrated by Terrance Cummings
from Clarion Books
for 6th-12th grade
in Music History (Location: ELE-MUSHIS)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
What's the Deal?
by Rhoda Blumberg
from National Geographic
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Which Way Freedom?
by Joyce Hansen
from Walker and Company
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$4.00 (2 in stock)
White House is Burning
by Jane Sutcliffe
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Wide Open Spaces
by Jack Terry
from Harvest House
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$4.00 (1 in stock)
Wild West
Book Club from Time-Life Books
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$6.00 (1 in stock)
Willie Jasper's Golden Eagle
by F. N. Monjo
from Doubleday & Company
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in 19th Century America (Location: HISA-19C)
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Willie Jasper's Golden Eagle
by F. N. Monjo
from Doubleday & Company
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