The Gods Of Prophetstown

Download or read book The Gods of Prophetstown written by Adam Jortner and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original, readable narrative of the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe and the role of religion in the history of the American West

Download or read book The Gods of Prophetstown written by Adam Jortner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It began with an eclipse. In 1806, the Shawnee leader Tenskwatawa ("The Open Door") declared himself to be in direct contact with the Master of Life, and therefore, the supreme religious authority for all Native Americans. Those who disbelieved him, he warned, "would see darkness come over the sun." William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory and future American president, scoffed at Tenskwatawa. If he was truly a prophet, Harrison taunted, let him perform a miracle. And Tenskwatawa did just that, making the sun go dark at midday. In The Gods of Prophetstown, Adam Jortner provides a gripping account of the conflict between Tenskwatawa and Harrison, who finally collided in 1811 at a place called Tippecanoe. Though largely forgotten today, their rivalry determined the future of westward expansion and shaped the War of 1812. Jortner weaves together dual biographies of the opposing leaders. In the five years between the eclipse and the battle, Tenskwatawa used his spiritual leadership to forge a political pseudo-state with his brother Tecumseh. Harrison, meanwhile, built a power base in Indiana, rigging elections and maneuvering for higher position. Rejecting received wisdom, Jortner sees nothing as preordained-Native Americans were not inexorably falling toward dispossession and destruction. Deeply rooting his account in a generation of scholarship that has revolutionized Indian history, Jortner places the religious dimension of the struggle at the fore, recreating the spiritual landscapes trod by each side. The climactic battle, he writes, was as much a clash of gods as of men. Written with profound insight and narrative verve, The Gods of Prophetstown recaptures a forgotten turning point in American history in time for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Download or read book No Place for Saints written by Adam Jortner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of the Mormon church is arguably the most radical event in American religious history. How and why did so many Americans flock to this new religion, and why did so many other Americans seek to silence or even destroy that movement? Winner of the MHA Best Book Award by the Mormon History Association Mormonism exploded across America in 1830, and America exploded right back. By 1834, the new religion had been mocked, harassed, and finally expelled from its new settlements in Missouri. Why did this religion generate such anger? And what do these early conflicts say about our struggles with religious liberty today? In No Place for Saints, the first stand-alone history of the Mormon expulsion from Jackson County and the genesis of Mormonism, Adam Jortner chronicles how Latter-day Saints emerged and spread their faith—and how anti-Mormons tried to stop them. Early on, Jortner explains, anti-Mormonism thrived on gossip, conspiracies, and outright fables about what Mormons were up to. Anti-Mormons came to believe Mormons were a threat to democracy, and anyone who claimed revelation from God was an enemy of the people with no rights to citizenship. By 1833, Jackson County's anti-Mormons demanded all Saints leave the county. When Mormons refused—citing the First Amendment—the anti-Mormons attacked their homes, held their leaders at gunpoint, and performed one of America's most egregious acts of religious cleansing. From the beginnings of Mormonism in the 1820s to their expansion and expulsion in 1834, Jortner discusses many of the most prominent issues and events in Mormon history. He touches on the process of revelation, the relationship between magic and LDS practice, the rise of the priesthood, the questions surrounding Mormonism and African Americans, the internal struggles for leadership of the young church, and how American law shaped this American religion. Throughout, No Place for Saints shows how Mormonism—and the violent backlash against it—fundamentally reshaped the American religious and legal landscape. Ultimately, the book is a story of Jacksonian America, of how democracy can fail religious freedom, and a case study in popular politics as America entered a great age of religion and violence.

Download or read book Prophets of the Great Spirit written by Alfred A. Cave and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophets of the Great Spirit offers an in-depth look at the work of a diverse group of Native American visionaries who forged new, syncretic religious movements that provided their peoples with the ideological means to resist white domination. By blending ideas borrowed from Christianity with traditional beliefs, they transformed ?high? gods or a distant and aloof creator into a powerful, activist deity that came to be called the Great Spirit. These revitalization leaders sought to regain the favor of the Great Spirit through reforms within their societies and the inauguration of new ritual practices. Among the prophets included in this study are the Delaware Neolin, the Shawnee Tenkswatawa, the Creek ?Red Stick? prophets, the Seneca Handsome Lake, and the Kickapoo Kenekuk. Covering more than a century, from the early 1700s through the Kickapoo Indian removal of the Jacksonian Era, the prophets of the Great Spirit sometimes preached armed resistance but more often used nonviolent strategies to resist white cultural domination. Some prophets rejected virtually all aspects of Euro-American culture. Others sought to assure the survival of their culture through selective adaptation. Alfred A. Cave explains the conditions giving rise to the millenarian movements in detail and skillfully illuminates the key histories, personalities, and legacies of the movement. Weaving an array of sources into a compelling narrative, he captures the diversity of these prophets and their commitment to the common goal of Native American survival.

Download or read book Blood from the Sky written by Adam Jortner and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades following the Revolution, the supernatural exploded across the American landscape—fabulous reports of healings, exorcisms, magic, and angels crossed the nation. Under First Amendment protections, new sects based on such miracles proliferated. At the same time, Enlightenment philosophers and American founders explicitly denied the possibility of supernatural events, dismissing them as deliberate falsehoods—and, therefore, efforts to suborn the state. Many feared that belief in the supernatural itself was a danger to democracy. In this way, miracles became a political problem and prompted violent responses in the religious communities of Prophetstown, Turtle Creek, and Nauvoo. In Blood from the Sky, Adam Jortner argues that the astonishing breadth and extent of American miracles and supernaturalism following independence derived from Enlightenment ideas about proof and sensory evidence, offering a chance at certain belief in an uncertain religious climate. Jortner breaks new ground in explaining the rise of radical religion in antebellum America, revisiting questions of disenchantment, modernity, and religious belief in a history of astounding events that—as early Americans would have said—needed to be seen to be believed.

Download or read book Serpent in Eden written by Tyson Reeder and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story of espionage, shadow diplomacy, foreign scheming, and domestic backstabbing in the formative years of the American republic. Tyson Reeder's book traces early America's rocky beginnings, when foreign interference and political conflict threatened to undermine its aspirations and ideals, even its very existence. Spanning the period from the Revolution to the War of 1812, and focusing particularly on the presidency of James Madison, it reveals a nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media. Foreign powers, mainly Great Britain and Napoleonic France, exploited these conditions to advance their own agendas, interfering in U.S. elections to promote the outcome they favored. Dissent and disloyalty became dangerously interdigitated, nearly bringing the new republic to the brink of collapse. No figure was more in the center of it all than James Madison. As a leading delegate at the Constitutional Convention, Republican congressional leader, secretary of state, and president, Madison grappled with foreign meddling for over three decades. At the same time, he emerged as a political leader, feeding the very partisanship that bred foreign intrigues. As chief executive, he presided over the calamitous barrage of accusations and counteraccusations of foreign collusion that culminated in the War of 1812. Madison left a mixed but indelible legacy: as a fierce adversary of foreign interference, a fiery champion of political debate, and a partisan operative who facilitated the former by inflaming the latter. Forged in partisan conflict, the United States remains vulnerable to forces that test whether the constitutional system Madison was so central in implementing can withstand outside meddling while accommodating partisan conflict. Madison's successes and failures, along with his original vision of the Constitution and party politics, illuminate the ongoing struggle between domestic polarization and foreign interference.

Download or read book Bind Us Apart written by Nicholas Guyatt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of USA's on-going failure to achieve true racial integration, Bind Us Apart shows how, from the Revolution through to the Civil War, white American anti-slavery reformers failed to forge a colour-blind society.