History, Politics, and Health in Early American Thought: The Case of David Ramsay

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Friedman ◽  
Arthur H. Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Early American ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

In 1785 physician-politician David Ramsay of Charleston published The History of the Revolution of South Carolina. Contemporaries praised it highly. Four years later Ramsay produced a more ambitious work, The History of the American Revolution. It established his reputation both in America and abroad as the new nation's leading historian. Thus in a few short years Ramsay went from a locally prominent physician and State legislator to an important national cultural and literary figure. The American reading public found his approach to history to its tastes. He expressed a set of ideas about American history in general and the Revolution in particular that were common currency in the United States. But he expressed them for the first time in well-reasoned and documented historical narrative: in volumes that were suitably pro-American, yet judicious in their treatment of Britain, that made a strong case for American uniqueness while maintaining the ideal of the United States as a model for the world.Ramsay's histories alone would attract our interest as the first and most influential historical analysis of the American Revolution and the ratification of the Federal Constitution. But Ramsay's writings and his career as physician and politician are also significant because they launch us upon a journey into the mind of one of the new nation's most articulate spokesmen on historical, political, and medical issues. There is, to be sure, little in the general pattern of his life to distinguish him from a number of his contemporaries among the professions and political figures of second rank. Ramsay seldom formulated original ideas. His importance was not simply, or even primarily, that of a political or historical philosopher or medical innovator.

Reforms Under Czar Alexander I: French and American Influences

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Vernadsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

The two great revolutions of the eighteenth century—the American and the French had each in turn and in its own way a profound influence not only on the history of the United States and of France, but directly or indirectly on the history of the whole world.These two powerful currents had a common source in the French ideological movement before the Revolution. The development of American revolutionary thought was of course more closely linked to the English ideology, but there was much contact and cross influence between the English and the French philosophers. Further, the French political and philosophical literature was directly accessible to Americans without intermediary English works. We have only to mention Montesquieu and his principle of the separation of powers which serves as the basis of the Constitution of the United States. Also, the American Revolution influenced in turn political developments in France. One finds the roots of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen not only in France but in America as well.

A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
National Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines how protagonists of the Italian revolutions of 1848, including Giuseppe Montanelli and Carlo Cattaneo, engaged with American political institutions by looking at the cases of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Before discussing the role played by the United States of America in Italian political thought of 1848, the chapter considers Italian experience of the revolutions of 1820–1821 and 1830–1831, both of which marked a watershed for the peninsula's national movement. It shows that Italian revolutionaries addressed the United States with very different emphasis, illustrating how references to the United States could serve very different ideological purposes. With respect to Tuscany's long history of engagement with the United States, there were far fewer references to American political institutions than for instance in Sicily, where the revolutionaries adopted a monarchical constitution. The chapter also analyzes Cattaneo's involvement in the Revolution in Lombardy and his understanding of American democracy.

1. Drinking and temperance

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Heavy Drinking ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Viable System ◽  
The Revolution

‘Drinking and temperance’ describes the history of alcohol consumption in the United States and the introduction of the temperance movement. From the earliest European settlers to the fighters of the Revolution, Americans were among the world’s heartiest drinkers, producing their own corn beer and importing rum from the West Indies. The British blockades during the war meant access to rum was lost. Americans began to distill whiskey from corn instead, which became the country’s patriotic drink. Problems associated with heavy drinking resulted in reformers creating the temperance movement, a cause that was then taken up by Protestant preachers. In the 1850s, evangelicals lobbied for statewide prohibition laws, but there was no viable system of enforcement.

Presidential Address: The Lierature of the Last Half-century of the Constitutional History of the United States

1957 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
H. Hale Bellot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Separate Paper ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of

In order to render my subject manageable, I have excluded from it the literature dealing with legal history, with the general history of political ideas, and with the constitutional and political debates that preceded and accompanied the American Revolution. Each of these is a large subject in itself and would, require for its most summary treatment a separate paper. I limit myself to what has been written during the last fifty years or so about the constitutional history of the Union and of the states in their relation to the Union since the year 1783.

Jails in the Early American Republic

2016 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Tillotson ◽  
Jennifer A. Colanese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Populations ◽  
Early American Republic ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Penal Policy ◽  
Early American ◽  
A Site

Recent state-level penal policy reforms have the potential to shift the burden of incarceration to local jails. We argue that such transcarceration is not a new phenomenon, but rather, is a persistent aspect of incarceration in the United States. In this article, we provide an historical analysis of jails in the Early American Republic (1790-1850), including their role expansion to include felon and misdemeanant incarceration, their role contraction alongside the development of institutions for various special populations, and their enduring function as a site of “rabble” management.

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