The Diary of William Bentley, D. D. Vol 1


Book Description

With our American Philosophy and Religion series, Applewood reissues many primary sources published throughout American history. Through these books, scholars, interpreters, students, and non-academics alike can see the thoughts and beliefs of Americans who came before us.






















Endowed by Our Creator


Book Description

The debate over the framers' concept of freedom of religion has become heated and divisive. This scrupulously researched book sets aside the half-truths, omissions, and partisan arguments, and instead focuses on the actual writings and actions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and others. Legal scholar Michael I. Meyerson investigates how the framers of the Constitution envisioned religious freedom and how they intended it to operate in the new republic. Endowed by Our Creator shows that the framers understood that the American government should not acknowledge religion in a way that favors any particular creed or denomination. Nevertheless, the framers believed that religion could instill virtue and help to unify a diverse nation. They created a spiritual public vocabulary, one that could communicate to all—including agnostics and atheists—that they were valued members of the political community. Through their writings and their decisions, the framers affirmed that respect for religious differences is a fundamental American value, Meyerson concludes. Now it is for us to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.




Rites of Execution : Capital Punishment and the Transformation of American Culture, 1776-1865


Book Description

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Western societies abandoned public executions in favor of private punishments, primarily confinement in penitentiaries and private executions. The transition, guided by a reconceptualization of the causes of crime, the nature of authority, and the purposes of punishment, embodied the triumph of new sensibilities and the reconstitution of cultural values throughout the Western world. This study examines the conflict over capital punishment in the United States and the way it transformed American culture between the Revolution and the Civil War. Relating the gradual shift in rituals of punishment and attitudes toward discipline to the emergence of a middle class culture that valued internal restraints and private punishments, Masur traces the changing configuration of American criminal justice. He examines the design of execution day in the Revolutionary era as a spectacle of civil and religious order, the origins of organized opposition to the death penalty and the invention of the penitentiary, the creation of private executions, reform organizations' commitment to social activism, and the competing visions of humanity and society lodged at the core of the debate over capital punishment. A fascinating and thoughtful look at a topic that remains of burning interest today, Rites of Execution will attract a wide range of scholarly and general readers.




Two Brides for Apollo


Book Description

Samuel Williams (1743-1817) was a minister, astronomer, newspaper editor, surveyor, social historian, and philosopher. While a student at Harvard, he assisted John Winthrop on an expedition to Newfoundland to observe the 1761 transit of Venus. Following Winthrop as Hollis Professor of Natural Philosophy, Williams modernized the teaching of science at Harvard, taught such illustrious students as John Quincy Adams, and led a Harvard expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 1780. He was a major force in the founding of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, contributing many of its first scientific papers. To escape a charge of forgery Williams fled to Vermont by night on horseback. There he preached the Enlightenment view that mankind could achieve the greatest happiness in a life based on the God-given power of reason. Williams founded and edited the Rutland Herald, wrote one of the first histories of the American Revolution, and one of the first state histories, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont. He was co-founder of the University of Vermont and taught astronomy there. Superior surveying skills enabled him in 1806 to add 600 square miles of Canadian-claimed territory to the state of Vermont. In 1970, the American Philosophical Society published Williams's Philosophic Lectures, yet Williams has remained little known. The author hopes this book will correct this.




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