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Daniel walker howe what hath god wrought5/11/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay, index. Supported by engaging prose, Howe’s achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a “market revolution” because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who “helped create the romantic image of the Old South,” but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. A panoramic narrative, What Hath God Wrought portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York’s gradual emancipation of slaves the growth of higher education the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). history-a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. ![]() ), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA ( The Political Culture of the American Whigs ![]()
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