Contingent Continent

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-49
Author(s):  
Rachel St. John
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Ideal

This article highlights how Americans used intertwined arguments about space and geography to justify and denounce different territorial configurations from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War. These arguments wove together ideas about geography (a set of physical, topographical features) and space (the human constructs that shape movement and human relations) in everything from theoretical arguments about the ideal size of republics to specific ideas about how rivers, mountains, oceans, and other features related to the proper shape of the nation. Americans evoked a variety of assumptions about how the physical landscape shaped human activity. They also made arguments about space and the ways that places were physically, and thus should be politically, connected. Highlighting an underappreciated current of manifest disunion, this article illustrates how different factions used geographic and spatial arguments not only to support and condemn varied expansionist visions, but also to justify disunion and secession.

Corpulent Cattle and Milk Machines: Nature, Art and the Ideal Type

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Moving Targets ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Century Development ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThe concept of a "breed" of domestic cattle is predominantly a social construct. The late eighteenth century development of intensive selective (in)breeding of livestock produced breeds that were visually distinguishable from each other. The adoption of breed standards was facilitated in part through paintings and drawings of idealized animals. These "ideal types" or "standards of perfection" further served as targets for breeders who attempted to achieve the artist's conception of the perfect animal. However, concepts of perfection change with fashion and thus ideal types constitute moving targets.

5. The abolitionist renaissance and the coming of the Civil War

Abolitionism ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Richard S. Newman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fugitive Slave Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
American Society

Although abolitionists never enjoyed widespread popularity in the United States, they found that northerners were more interested in their critiques of slavery during the 1850s. “The abolitionist renaissance and the coming of the Civil War” explains how the passage of a stronger fugitive slave law, which turned white citizens into would-be slave catchers, raised new questions about the slave power and allowed abolitionist arguments to resonate more deeply, resulting in an abolitionist renaissance. From politics to pop culture, abolitionist ideas were diffused widely through American society. Even if most northerners did not join antislavery societies, the abolitionist struggle seemed ascendant in ways not seen since the late eighteenth century, a development that had profound consequences for sectionalism, disunion, and civil war.

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