Tracking Down “The Public Man”

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-517
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Crofts
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The Public ◽  
Popular Magazine ◽  
Real Person

What, one might ask, is The Diary of a Public Man, and why should subscribers to The Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era want to know about it? The diary purportedly dates from the tension-filled weeks preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, but it was first published in a popular magazine in 1879. Its appearance then suggested that somebody thought it would attract an audience of Gilded Age readers, which indeed happened. Their curiosity was intensified because the diary's publisher concealed the identity of its author. We now know why the alleged diarist had to be cloaked in anonymity—the supposed prewar diary actually was written shortly before its publication, long into the postwar era. Most outrageously, the diarist proves to have been an imaginary construct—not a real person.

scholarly journals Book Review: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Historical Exploration of Literature

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Civil War Era

One of the latest volumes in ABC-CLIO/Greenwood’s “Historical Explorations of Literature” series, The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a useful and interesting introduction to framing key literary works of this time period in their historical context. Each volume in the series presents a discussion of four or five representative works of a historical era, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicano Movement, the Jazz Age, and the Civil War Era.

Writing African American Migrations

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Jack S. Blocker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Future Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The Philadelphia Negro

Efforts to write the history of the African American migrations of the Civil War era, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era began soon after the start of these historically significant movements. Early scholarship labored to surmount the same methodological obstacles faced by modern scholars, notably scarce documentation, but still produced pathbreaking studies such as W. E. B. Du Bois'sThe Philadelphia Negro, Carter Woodson'sA Century of Negro Migration, and Clyde Kiser'sSea Island to City. Modern scholarship since the 1950s falls into eight distinct genres. An assessment of representative works in each genre reveals a variety of configurations of strengths and weaknesses, while offering guidelines for future research.

The Itinerant Passions of Protestant Pastors: Ministerial Elopement Scandals in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Press

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Suzanna Krivulskaya
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sex Scandals ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The Press

AbstractBetween 1870 and 1914, at least 266 Protestant ministers abandoned their posts, left their homes and families, and eloped with women who were not their wives. As critics of religion used these elopement scandals to discredit American Protestantism, those sympathetic to religion's hold on American morality attempted to dissuade the press from indulging in the sensational. Though initially hesitant to report on Protestant pastors' immoralities in this period, the press eventually came to an almost universal acceptance of scandal as a legitimate journalistic genre. As the public wondered what the proliferation of sex scandals among the Protestant elites might mean for religion in America, the press used the genre of ministerial elopement as an entrée into larger cultural debates about religion, marriage, and romantic love in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Reimagining the “Lost Men” of the Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Late Nineteenth Century Presidents

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Bright Light ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Late Nineteenth

For much of the twentieth century, scholars treated the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era as starkly contrasting phases in the unfolding of the American story: the post-Civil War dark ages followed by the bright light of the early twentieth century. More recently, historians have recognized the oversimplification if not downright wrongheadedness of that dichotomy. The past few decades have witnessed an explosion of studies on a variety of topics with coverage dates roughly from the 1870s to the 1920s. Most of these newer works underscore the continuities between the two periods and the relatively seamless evolution of forces and institutions.

American Environmentalism And The Visage Of A Second Gilded Age

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-252
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Workplace Safety ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Corporate Power ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Thomas Piketty

The moniker “Gilded Age” invokes questions of wealth, class, and political economy. When paired with a subsequent “Progressive Era,” as in the name of this journal and the society that sponsors it, the implication is that economic developments after the Civil War gave rise to pressing questions of workplace safety, income distribution, monopoly, and the like, which reform and protest movements rightly sought to rectify. Whether to invoke the Gilded Age to describe the current era of U.S. history also centers on such questions: it makes sense to say that we are living in a Second Gilded Age, Thomas Piketty and others have argued, because inequalities of wealth and the rise of corporate power echo those of the 1880s and 1890s; or, respond skeptics like Heath Carter, it is not a helpful comparison because the cultural and organizational forces contesting inequality are so much weaker now.

A Progressive Era Idea for Reforming Government that Didn’t Make It: Recall of Judicial Decisions

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Mordecai Lee
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Public Reporting ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Progressive Reforms ◽  
Original Concept

As a reform movement and an academic discipline, American public administrationgenerally coalesced during the Progressive era (1890-1920). Progressive reforms for the public sector seeped deeply into the DNA of the field, including separation of civil servants from politics, reliance on expertise, fewer elected offices, and public reporting of agency activities. However, not all of the governmental reforms proposed during this era were enacted. One of the most controversial and least known was Theodore Roosevelt’s proposal in 1912 that the voters be able to have a referendum on major court decisions, permitting them to overturn those decisions. His idea was only enacted in Colorado, where it remained on the books until 1921. This article reviews the original concept and its history in Colorado.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
The Future

This conclusion explains how American temporalities changed after the war and sketches how expectations and anticipations of the future have alternated as the dominant view in American culture through the twentieth century to today. This chapter also shows how the short war myth, the story that Civil War Americans expected a short, glorious war at the outset, gained currency with the public and consensus among scholars during the postwar period. It contrasts the wartime expectations of individuals with their postwar memories of the war’s beginning to show how the short war myth worked as a tool for sectional reconciliation and a narrative device that dramatized the war by creating an innocent antebellum era or golden age before the cataclysm. It considers why historians still accept the myth and showcases three postwar voices that challenged it.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Maria Monk ◽  
People Today

Nuns in popular media today are a staple of kitsch culture, evident in the common appearance of bobble-head nuns, nun costumes, and nun caricatures on TV, movies, and the stage. Nun stereotypes include the sexy vixen, the naïve innocent, and the scary nun. These types were forged in nineteenth-century convent narratives. While people today may not recognize the name “Maria Monk,” her legacy lives on in the public imagination. There may be no demands to search convents, but nuns and monastic life are nevertheless generally not taken seriously. This epilogue traces opposition to nuns from the Civil War to the present, analyzing the various images of nuns in popular culture as they relate to the antebellum campaign against convents. It argues that the source of the misunderstanding about nuns is rooted in the inability to categorize these women either as traditional wives and mothers or as secular, career-driven singles.

Local Government, Passive Defense and Aerial Bombardment in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942199789
Author(s):  
David A. Messenger
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Civilian Defense ◽  
Regional Authorities

The bombardment of civilians from the air was a regular feature of the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. It is estimated some 15,000 Spaniards died as a result of air bombings during the Civil War, most civilians, and 11,000 were victims of bombing from the Francoist side that rebelled against the Republican government, supported by German and Italian aviation that joined the rebellion against the Republic. In Catalonia alone, some 1062 municipalities experienced aerial bombardments by the Francoist side of the civil war. In cities across Spain, municipal and regional authorities developed detailed plans for civilian defense in response to these air campaigns. In Barcelona, the municipality created the Junta Local de Defensa Passiva de Barcelona, to build bomb shelters, warn the public of bombings, and educate them on how to protect themselves against aerial bombardment. They mobilized civilians around the concept of ‘passive defense.’ This proactive response by civilians and local government to what they recognized as a war targeting them is an important and under-studied aspect of the Spanish Civil War.

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