Nineteenth Century America
From the Archives–Word with a Past: Gerrymander
This post originally ran in 2018. Unfortunately, some stories never go out of date. If Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) had played his cards right, he could have been a minor but respected figure in American history. He signed the Declaration of Independence, helped draft the Bill of Rights, served two terms in Congress, and was the…
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Word with a Past: Muckrakers
While I was writing about Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910), I started off thinking of her as a proto-muckraker, working a generation before people like Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946),* Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936), Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) and Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). But the closer I looked, the more I realized that the realism for which she was…
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Rebecca Harding Davis: Making Things Real
One of the joys of writing this blog is that when things are going well one post leads to another idea, another story, another question. It feels like my list of possible topics bubbles and fizzes* and I can hardly decide which story to tell you next.** This is one of the times when the…
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