Placed within a comprehensive contextual historical narrative, The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 offers a compelling portrait of one brilliant but compromised man’s perspective of his changing times. Daniel Waldo Lincoln, the second son of Levi Lincoln, a prominent Massachusetts Democratic-Republican, was destined to become a man of influence. Born in 1784, equipped with wealth, prestige, a Harvard education, powerful friends, and a distinguished family name, Lincoln ranked high among the inheritors of the Revolution whose purpose was to protect the ideals of the nation’s founders. In over 250 private letters, essays, and poems beginning with his first day at Harvard in 1801 and ending just weeks before his death in 1815, Lincoln brings to readers a portrait of privilege as it careened into disappointment. A young man active in Republican circles, an orator and attorney in Worcester, Portland, Maine, and Boston, Lincoln comments on the politics, honor, religion, the War of 1812, and his struggles with romance and alcohol. Written for private eyes, his letters are an unusually candid eyewitness account of early-nineteenth-century Massachusetts interwoven with his personal agonies. This volume is of great use for students and scholars interested in life, society, and politics in nineteenth-century America.

Placed within a comprehensive contextual historical narrative, The Life of Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784–1815 offers a compelling portrait of one brilliant but compromised man’s perspective of his changing times. Daniel Waldo Lincoln, the second son of Levi Lincoln, a prominent Massachusetts Democratic-Republican, was destined to become a man of influence. Born in 1784, equipped with wealth, prestige, a Harvard education, powerful friends, and a distinguished family name, Lincoln ranked high among the inheritors of the Revolution whose purpose was to protect the ideals of the nation’s founders. In over 250 private letters, essays, and poems beginning with his first day at Harvard in 1801 and ending just weeks before his death in 1815, Lincoln brings to readers a portrait of privilege as it careened into disappointment. A young man active in Republican circles, an orator and attorney in Worcester, Portland, Maine, and Boston, Lincoln comments on the politics, honor, religion, the War of 1812, and his struggles with romance and alcohol. Written for private eyes, his letters are an unusually candid eyewitness account of early-nineteenth-century Massachusetts interwoven with his personal agonies. This volume is of great use for students and scholars interested in life, society, and politics in nineteenth-century America.

The Louisiana Purchase dominates the months covered in this volume. Jefferson departs for Monticello to enjoy a needed respite after the busy three and a half months he has just spent in the nation's capital. Shortly before leaving Washington, he has a last meeting with his cabinet, after which he issues a proclamation to reconvene Congress on 17 October, three weeks early. It is the "great and weighty" business of the French government’s stunning offer to transfer all of the Louisiana Territory to the United States that necessitates this important gathering. The event brings Jefferson enthusiastic congratulations from his friends and fellow Republicans. With Jefferson’s great success, however, comes the reality of getting the agreement with France approved and implemented. The boundaries of the territory ceded are not even clear. In private letters to his trusted advisers, Jefferson discusses the proper course of action. Should both houses of Congress be called to consider the French offer? Is it prudent to make the substance of a treaty public? And perhaps most vexing, does this executive action require an amendment to the Constitution? Some Federalists criticize the plan, but an expansion of the nation’s territory, proponents argue, will raise America’s stature in the eyes of the world. With the widening of the country’s borders, Jefferson’s project to send an exploratory party westward seems even timelier. William Clark accepts Meriwether Lewis’s invitation to join the expedition, and on the last day of August Lewis begins his journey down the Ohio River, the building of his boat finally complete.

Conscience as a Historical Force is the first true analysis of the life and thought of the radically democratic eighteenth-century backcountry figure of Herman Husband (1724–1795) and his heavily metaphorical political and religious writings during the “Age of Revolution.” This book addresses the influence of religion in the American revolutionary period and locates the events of Herman Husband’s life in the broader Atlantic context of the social, economic, and political transition from feudalism to capitalism. Husband’s metaphorical reading of the Bible reveals the timeless nature of his message and its relevance today. Other studies of Herman Husband fail in this regard even though, this book argues, this is the most valuable lesson of his life. The debate over the importance of religion in the American Revolution has neglected its connection with both the English radicals of the seventeenth century and continental religious radicals dating back further still. Essentially, the “antinomian” movement, where individuals refused to acknowledge any power greater than that of their own conscience, was Atlantic in scope and dates to the origins of Christianity itself. With a chronological approach, this study is of great use to students and scholars interested in the politics and religion of eighteenth-century America.