Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120238
Lewis Kimberley
emancipation through the chronological progress of the war, all structured around detailed descriptions of individual battles, makes for an impressive, comprehensive and, above all, enjoyable read. It deservedly already has had an impact on its field, but in its approach and style, it will undoubtedly have a lasting impact beyond that. This is a very different kind of history of the Civil War, even if, in the end, the theme of deliverance raises the question of why the Union, having delivered the nation from the scourge of enslavement, failed to deliver it from the persistent inequalities of race. Varon recognizes as much in the conclusion, observing that the “story of Civil War-era deliverance politics is both bounded by a specific time and place and boundless, with modern echoes” (p. 434). The same might be said of histories of the Civil War. And Varon’s work is very much one that probes the past from new angles, incorporating the most recent research on the conflict, its nationalist implications, the experiences of the soldiers, the compromises made in the name of reconstruction. The Civil War, as a topic of study, is boundless. And Armies of Deliverance is undoubtedly the work for our times.
{"title":"The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction","authors":"Lewis Kimberley","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2120238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2120238","url":null,"abstract":"emancipation through the chronological progress of the war, all structured around detailed descriptions of individual battles, makes for an impressive, comprehensive and, above all, enjoyable read. It deservedly already has had an impact on its field, but in its approach and style, it will undoubtedly have a lasting impact beyond that. This is a very different kind of history of the Civil War, even if, in the end, the theme of deliverance raises the question of why the Union, having delivered the nation from the scourge of enslavement, failed to deliver it from the persistent inequalities of race. Varon recognizes as much in the conclusion, observing that the “story of Civil War-era deliverance politics is both bounded by a specific time and place and boundless, with modern echoes” (p. 434). The same might be said of histories of the Civil War. And Varon’s work is very much one that probes the past from new angles, incorporating the most recent research on the conflict, its nationalist implications, the experiences of the soldiers, the compromises made in the name of reconstruction. The Civil War, as a topic of study, is boundless. And Armies of Deliverance is undoubtedly the work for our times.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"216 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42784777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1137/s0040585x97t991106
E. Yarovaya
{"title":"Letter from the editors","authors":"E. Yarovaya","doi":"10.1137/s0040585x97t991106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1137/s0040585x97t991106","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"123 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42901680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120230
Beth R. Wilson
historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “ Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief ” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and to sketch as something of a conman. James Simeone ’ s The Saints and the State o ff ers a thought-provoking analysis of state formation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text o ff ers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.
{"title":"Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States","authors":"Beth R. Wilson","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2120230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2120230","url":null,"abstract":"historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “ Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief ” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and to sketch as something of a conman. James Simeone ’ s The Saints and the State o ff ers a thought-provoking analysis of state formation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text o ff ers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"209 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48562081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2131243
Abbi E. Smithmyer
ABSTRACT This study shows how Irish Catholic temperance groups challenged nativist stereotypes towards Irish immigrants. Irish Americans used abstinence to achieve a respectable reputation among native-born Americans in the Civil War era. By linking Civil War service with the temperance efforts of Irishmen who fought for the Union Army, prominent members of the ethnic group demonstrated that Irish Americans were respectable and virtuous citizens of the United States throughout the Civil War era.
{"title":"“In sober dignity”: the Irish Brigade, ethnicity, and the Irish Catholic temperance movement in the Civil War era","authors":"Abbi E. Smithmyer","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2131243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2131243","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study shows how Irish Catholic temperance groups challenged nativist stereotypes towards Irish immigrants. Irish Americans used abstinence to achieve a respectable reputation among native-born Americans in the Civil War era. By linking Civil War service with the temperance efforts of Irishmen who fought for the Union Army, prominent members of the ethnic group demonstrated that Irish Americans were respectable and virtuous citizens of the United States throughout the Civil War era.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"125 - 141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48502155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120228
Lily Santoro
historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “ Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief ” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and to sketch as something of a conman. James Simeone ’ s The Saints and the State o ff ers a thought-provoking analysis of state for-mation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text o ff ers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.
{"title":"The Saints and the State: The Mormon Troubles in Illinois","authors":"Lily Santoro","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2120228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2120228","url":null,"abstract":"historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “ Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief ” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and to sketch as something of a conman. James Simeone ’ s The Saints and the State o ff ers a thought-provoking analysis of state for-mation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text o ff ers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"206 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47663010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120237
S. Grant
Destiny and settler colonialism are often linked together by historians. If Manifest Destiny needs re-evaluation, as Burge and others such as Thomas Richards have demonstrated, then perhaps settler colonialism does as well. If Manifest Destiny was ever to be popular and successful, it might be expected that the years immediately following the United States’ defeat of the Confederacy and slavery would be such a time. Instead, Burge shows this was not the case. Republicans successfully annexed Alaska in 1867, but all other efforts toward territorial expansion were thwarted, often by less bellicose Republicans. Nonetheless, as Burge emphasizes, nineteenth-century proponents of Manifest Destiny did not believe it had been achieved even after the United States reached the Pacific Ocean or subdued the Confederacy or Native American nations. They kept pushing for further North American annexations throughout Reconstruction, but most American political leaders, as well as the American people themselves, had little desire to see Manifest Destiny – as defined in the nineteenth century – succeed. One minor critique of A Failed Vision of Empire is relevant to the book’s epilogue, where Burge writes that “policymakers were not successful at implementing their grandiose dreams of empire” (p. 177). While Burge ably demonstrates that nineteenth-century American leaders failed to annex all of North America and Cuba as they desired, this does not mean that their dreams of empire failed. First, the U.S. did successfully create a huge continental empire during the nineteenth century, even if not as grandiose as they might have hoped. And second, the vision of empire itself changed in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Burge acknowledges this shift, from continental to commercial empire, but draws too hard a line of separation between the two. That said, A Failed Vision of Empire is a valuable part of a growing literature seeking to place Manifest Destiny in its proper historical and historiographical position. No longer can historians sensitive to contingency and context blithely refer to an “Era of Manifest Destiny.” Metanarratives make for easy lessons and good stories, but also for bad history.
{"title":"Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War","authors":"S. Grant","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2120237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2120237","url":null,"abstract":"Destiny and settler colonialism are often linked together by historians. If Manifest Destiny needs re-evaluation, as Burge and others such as Thomas Richards have demonstrated, then perhaps settler colonialism does as well. If Manifest Destiny was ever to be popular and successful, it might be expected that the years immediately following the United States’ defeat of the Confederacy and slavery would be such a time. Instead, Burge shows this was not the case. Republicans successfully annexed Alaska in 1867, but all other efforts toward territorial expansion were thwarted, often by less bellicose Republicans. Nonetheless, as Burge emphasizes, nineteenth-century proponents of Manifest Destiny did not believe it had been achieved even after the United States reached the Pacific Ocean or subdued the Confederacy or Native American nations. They kept pushing for further North American annexations throughout Reconstruction, but most American political leaders, as well as the American people themselves, had little desire to see Manifest Destiny – as defined in the nineteenth century – succeed. One minor critique of A Failed Vision of Empire is relevant to the book’s epilogue, where Burge writes that “policymakers were not successful at implementing their grandiose dreams of empire” (p. 177). While Burge ably demonstrates that nineteenth-century American leaders failed to annex all of North America and Cuba as they desired, this does not mean that their dreams of empire failed. First, the U.S. did successfully create a huge continental empire during the nineteenth century, even if not as grandiose as they might have hoped. And second, the vision of empire itself changed in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Burge acknowledges this shift, from continental to commercial empire, but draws too hard a line of separation between the two. That said, A Failed Vision of Empire is a valuable part of a growing literature seeking to place Manifest Destiny in its proper historical and historiographical position. No longer can historians sensitive to contingency and context blithely refer to an “Era of Manifest Destiny.” Metanarratives make for easy lessons and good stories, but also for bad history.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"214 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48868093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2133762
M. Pierson
ABSTRACT This article studies how the national media reacted to four feral woman episodes between 1843 and 1857. In 1843 and 1848, newspapers reprinted stories about two feral women without sectional variations in coverage. This national consensus collapsed after a feral woman in Texas was identified as African. Northern newspapers then broke from the consensus. Dramatic sectional differences in coverage also appear after the Wild Woman of Cincinnati show in 1856 and during an Alabama Wild Woman incident in 1857. We can see gender and racial ideologies driving the North and South apart when we study antebellum feral woman episodes.
{"title":"Four feral women and the rise of sectionalism in the 1850s","authors":"M. Pierson","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2133762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2133762","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article studies how the national media reacted to four feral woman episodes between 1843 and 1857. In 1843 and 1848, newspapers reprinted stories about two feral women without sectional variations in coverage. This national consensus collapsed after a feral woman in Texas was identified as African. Northern newspapers then broke from the consensus. Dramatic sectional differences in coverage also appear after the Wild Woman of Cincinnati show in 1856 and during an Alabama Wild Woman incident in 1857. We can see gender and racial ideologies driving the North and South apart when we study antebellum feral woman episodes.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"165 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45994707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2131245
Andrew Porwancher, Austin Coffey
ABSTRACT James Bradley Thayer emerged from humble origins to become a Harvard professor and bona fide member of the Boston Brahmins. His unlikely rise into the Boston elite suggests that the conventional depiction of Brahmin exclusivity requires greater nuance; upward mobility was a real possibility. Just the same, Thayer’s success tacitly gestures toward the limitations on that mobility. His Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, Unitarian affiliation, and male gender all facilitated his entry into rarefied circles. Gatekeepers of the Brahmin caste were amenable to newcomers whose identities sufficiently matched their own. Given the outsized influence that Brahmins enjoyed in nineteenth-century America, the stakes of that gatekeeping were national in character.
{"title":"Becoming Brahmin: a country boy’s journey to Harvard Yard","authors":"Andrew Porwancher, Austin Coffey","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2131245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2131245","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT James Bradley Thayer emerged from humble origins to become a Harvard professor and bona fide member of the Boston Brahmins. His unlikely rise into the Boston elite suggests that the conventional depiction of Brahmin exclusivity requires greater nuance; upward mobility was a real possibility. Just the same, Thayer’s success tacitly gestures toward the limitations on that mobility. His Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, Unitarian affiliation, and male gender all facilitated his entry into rarefied circles. Gatekeepers of the Brahmin caste were amenable to newcomers whose identities sufficiently matched their own. Given the outsized influence that Brahmins enjoyed in nineteenth-century America, the stakes of that gatekeeping were national in character.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"143 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46027654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120250
Benjamen W. Douglas
ists” had been “well established” in the preceding decades (pp. 198–199). But in attempting to debunk the common myth that the U.S. has always been an anti-imperialist nation, the country’s anti-imperialists themselves have largely been written out, as have many of the prodigious studies of them and their ideological motivations. More engagement with how European imperial projects and ideas intimately informed the U.S. anti-imperialist mind would have gone a long way, especially considering that the anti-imperialist movement was comprised of the foreign policy elite’s leading liberal thinkers. Granted, some do feature here, like Charles Sumner, William Graham Sumner, Edward Atkinson, William Cullen Bryant, and William Lloyd Garrison, but with little, if any, acknowledgement of how their Europeaninspired economic ideologies shaped their responses to European and American imperialism. The connections between U.S. anti-imperialists and European liberal radicals were strong indeed during this period, evolving into a vast network of cosmopolitan elites – journalists, academics, politicians, theologians – opposed to Euro-American colonialism. Designs on Empire is a welcome addition to the study of nineteenth-century ideology and U.S. foreign relations. Priest’s innovative ideological approach, chronology, and case studies provide a fresh vantage point for exploring the transimperial ties that bound the U.S. Empire with those of Europe. It demonstrates that, as important as the British Empire was in the growth of the Gilded Age American Empire, other European empires also played pivotal roles in shaping elite thought about U.S. expansionism.
{"title":"Performing Racial Uplift: E. Azalia Hackley and African American Activism in the Postbellum to Pre-Harlem Era","authors":"Benjamen W. Douglas","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2120250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2120250","url":null,"abstract":"ists” had been “well established” in the preceding decades (pp. 198–199). But in attempting to debunk the common myth that the U.S. has always been an anti-imperialist nation, the country’s anti-imperialists themselves have largely been written out, as have many of the prodigious studies of them and their ideological motivations. More engagement with how European imperial projects and ideas intimately informed the U.S. anti-imperialist mind would have gone a long way, especially considering that the anti-imperialist movement was comprised of the foreign policy elite’s leading liberal thinkers. Granted, some do feature here, like Charles Sumner, William Graham Sumner, Edward Atkinson, William Cullen Bryant, and William Lloyd Garrison, but with little, if any, acknowledgement of how their Europeaninspired economic ideologies shaped their responses to European and American imperialism. The connections between U.S. anti-imperialists and European liberal radicals were strong indeed during this period, evolving into a vast network of cosmopolitan elites – journalists, academics, politicians, theologians – opposed to Euro-American colonialism. Designs on Empire is a welcome addition to the study of nineteenth-century ideology and U.S. foreign relations. Priest’s innovative ideological approach, chronology, and case studies provide a fresh vantage point for exploring the transimperial ties that bound the U.S. Empire with those of Europe. It demonstrates that, as important as the British Empire was in the growth of the Gilded Age American Empire, other European empires also played pivotal roles in shaping elite thought about U.S. expansionism.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"221 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47718577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2120229
Libra R. Hilde
“worthy” independent producer. In succeeding chapters, as Smith’s power in Nauvoo solidified and the Mormons came to be considered a particularist group that voted and consolidated power in the interests of their community at the expense of their neighbors, Simeone argues that the old settlers of Hancock County considered the Saints a threat to their individualist societal culture and utilized their own informal state when the governor would not use state resources to check them. The greatest strength of this book is Simeone’s encyclopedic knowledge of the political landscape of Illinois in the 1830s–1840s. Set against the backdrop of the larger national political story of Jacksonian America, Simeone’s detailing of the political machinations at the state and local level demonstrates a depth of research in the state archives that brings to life those engaged in debates over the freedom of the press, town charters, religious tolerance, and abolition. Governor Thomas Ford, Stephen A. Douglas, Thomas Sharp, and many other minor characters in this drama appear with nuanced analysis. Even as Simeone connects Illinois state politics to national issues, he makes clear that each political party shaped their platforms in accordance with local concerns in recognition of how much power really rested at the local level in the young state. For all of its analytical punch, the narrative arc of The Saints and the State can be a bit daunting for readers unfamiliar with the Mormon troubles in Missouri and Illinois. With a thematic structure focused on highlighting different aspects of the competing societal cultures that created tensions, events are describedmultiple times throughout the text, and not always in chronological order. While this approach is often effective in demonstrating how the actions or statements of one character had competing meanings and uses for the multiple groups involved, it can give the less-informed reader a bit of whiplash as the narrative jumps from 1839 to 1844 and back again. It is also important to note that Simeone considers this a story of “institutional breakdown and concomitant group polarization, not religious intolerance” (p. 268). Put another way, Simeone is not attempting to write a history of religion. Thus, his engagement with the current historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there has been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and tends to sketch him as something of a conman. James Simeone’s The Saints and the State offers a thought-provoking analysis of state formation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text offers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.
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