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19th Century eBooks

If you like 19th Century eBooks, then you'll love these top picks.
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  • In Search of Canaan

    Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80

    Word spread across the southern farm country, and into the minds of those who labored over cotton or sugar crops, that the day of reckoning was near at hand, that the Lord had answered black prayers with the offer of deliverance in a western Eden. In this vast state where Brown had caused blood to flow in his righteous wrath, there was said to be land for all, and land especially for poor blacks ... Read more

    Free

  • The Midas of the Wabash

    A Biography of John Purdue

    Series series The Founders Series
    The Midas of the Wabash is a biography of noted businessman John Purdue (1802-1876), whose donations of time and money led to the founding of Indiana's land grant university, Purdue University, in 1869. Purdue also contributed to economically important bridge, railroad, and cemetery construction, the existence of Lafayette Savings Bank and the Battle Ground Collegiate Institute, cattle farming, ... Read more

    Free

  • Atlantic Bonds

    A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa

    Series series H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series
    A decade before the American Civil War, James Churchwill Vaughan (1828–1893) set out to fulfill his formerly enslaved father's dying wish that he should leave America to start a new life in Africa. Over the next forty years, Vaughan was taken captive, fought in African wars, built and rebuilt a livelihood, and led a revolt against white racism, finally becoming a successful merchant and the ... Read more

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  • Atlantic Bonds

    A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa

    Series series H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series
    A decade before the American Civil War, James Churchwill Vaughan (1828–1893) set out to fulfill his formerly enslaved father's dying wish that he should leave America to start a new life in Africa. Over the next forty years, Vaughan was taken captive, fought in African wars, built and rebuilt a livelihood, and led a revolt against white racism, finally becoming a successful merchant and the ... Read more

    Free

  • Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South

    Series series The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
    In the antebellum Natchez district, in the heart of slave country, black people sued white people in all-white courtrooms. They sued to enforce the terms of their contracts, recover unpaid debts, recuperate back wages, and claim damages for assault. They sued in conflicts over property and personal status. And they often won. Based on new research conducted in courthouse basements and storage ... Read more

    Free

  • The Urban West at the End of the Frontier

    Historians have largely ignored the western city; although a number of specialized studies have appeared in recent years, this volume is the first to assess the importance of the urban frontier in broad fashion. Lawrence H. Larsen studies the process of urbanization as it occurred in twenty-four major frontier towns. Cities examined are Kansas City, St. Joseph, Lincoln, Omaha, Atchison, Lawrence, ... Read more

    Free

  • American Abolitionism

    Its Direct Political Impact from Colonial Times into Reconstruction

    Series series A Nation Divided
    This ambitious book provides the only systematic examination of the American abolition movement’s direct impacts on antislavery politics from colonial times to the Civil War and after. As opposed to indirect methods such as propaganda, sermons, and speeches at protest meetings, Stanley Harrold focuses on abolitionists’ political tactics—petitioning, lobbying, establishing bonds with sympathetic ... Read more

    Free

  • Kansas Populism

    Ideas and Men

    Because Kansas has been called “the leading Midwestern Populist state,” and the Midwestern phrase was the principle one of this significant movement in American history, this first comprehensive history of the Kansas People’s party, its leaders, and their thoughts and actions is an important addition to Populist historiography. Through this study of the leadership, as well as a complete and ... Read more

    Free

  • The Donner Party

    from The Green Beret Guide to Great Disasters

    by Bob Mayer ...
    “I wish I could cry, but I cannot. If I could forget the tragedy, perhaps I would know how to cry again.” Mary Graves. Survivor, the ‘Donner Party’Every man-made disaster and catastrophe has at least six Cascade Events leading up to the final event, the catastrophe according to the Rule of Seven.This is a quick read of the Cascade Events that led up to Cannibalism while the ‘Donner Party’ ... Read more

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  • Wife No. 19

    The compelling memoir of the nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.In 1869, Ann Eliza Young married Brigham Young, becoming what she believed to be his nineteenth wife. She went on to file for divorce in 1873, alleging neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion. She was excommunicated from the church in 1874, and the divorce was granted ... Read more

    Free

  • The Sources of Anti-Slavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848

    This ambitious book examines the constitutional and legal doctrines of the antislavery movement from the eve of the American Revolution to the Wilmot Proviso and the 1848 national elections. Relating political activity to constitutional thought, William M. Wiecek surveys the antislavery societies, the ideas of their individual members, and the actions of those opposed to slavery and its expansion ... Read more

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  • Old Glory

    Sometime ago, while going through a little blue shoebox, left by my Grandmother Molly N. (Morgan) Chaney, I found a tract from the 1950s. Having read the bulletin sometime in the distant past, at the time it did not seem to be as important to me. At the top of the pamphlet on the front was a handwritten note, which read: This was written by a friend of ours. A wonderful man. He died last summer ... Read more

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  • The Star Spangled Banner

    by Tony Cross ...
    The national anthem of the United States of America is probably one of the most recognizable tunes in the world. Yet few people outside the United States know the words, even fewer know what they mean or why they were written, and almost no-one knows that the tune itself was written almost 50 years before the words and that it was written in Britain.The story of the creation of the anthem is a ... Read more

    Free

  • Louise Blanchard Bethune

    Every Woman Her Own Architect

    Series series SUNY Press Open Access
    Winner of the 2023 Arline Custer Memorial Award presented by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives ConferenceAs America's first professional female architect, Louise Blanchard Bethune broke barriers in a male-dominated profession that was emerging as a vital force in a rapidly growing nation during the Gilded Age. Yet, Bethune herself is an enigma. Due to scant information about her life and her firm ... Read more

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  • A Voice From the Past

    by W.H. Frank ...
    Experience the firsthand account of the founding of Richwood, Ohio in 1832. W.H. Frank was just 10 years old when the very first log cabin was built in Richwood. He recounts his experiences with vivid detail of the wilderness that eventually transforms into the bustling village we have today. Rewritten from Richwood Gazette articles circa 1900. ... Read more

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  • A Biographical Sketch of Michael Hileman

    Tucked away in an obscure attic of a stranger’s home, Michael Hileman’s biography was nearly lost to the ages. Through a miraculous discovery, his story reemerges to reach a new generation of readers. Michael’s story is a rich, vivid description of 19th century America, revealing the unwavering character of a frontier teacher forced to endure the extreme deprivations of the Civil War’s darkest ... Read more

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  • War of 1812: A History From Beginning to End

    by Henry Freeman ...
    The War of 1812 is often forgotten when we think about the history of the United States. Yet the effects of what seems a minor and insignificant conflict are far-reaching, even to today. The world settled into the roles it would play out for decades, and the boundaries of the United States and Canada would be set for the next two hundred years.Inside you will read about...✓ The Beginning of the ... Read more

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  • A Kentucky Cuckoo's Egg: The Clay-Randolph Duel of 1826

    by Kate Cooch ...
    A Kentucky Cuckoo’s Egg is a 2500 word history short about the duel between Secretary of State Henry Clay and Senator John Randolph in 1826. It also delves into the history of dueling generally and specifically in Virginia. Who died, who lived, and who showed up to duel in a white bathrobe? Find out by downloading now!(www.katecooch.com) ... Read more

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  • Walt Whitman's Western Jaunt

    In 1879, when Walt Whitman was sixty, he made a trip to the West—first to Kansas to attend the quarter-centennial celebration of Kansas settlement, then on to Denver and the Rockies. Biographers have only briefly reported this trip, if they have dealt with it at all; here for the first time is a thorough reconstruction of Whitman’s western experience. From his own extensive research in newspapers ... Read more

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  • When the Smoke Clears

    by Tom Rizzo ...
    Much of the legend and the lore of the Old West involve gunslingers and gunfights. Most of the people who populated the new American frontier in the 19th century owned guns and used them to hunt and to protect themselves and their families.Despite the general perception, gunfights didn’t occur on a regular basis. In fact, many communities implemented tough gun control laws. Tombstone, Dodge City, ... Read more

    Free

  • A Rain of Thorns

    A Western Romance: The Heart of the Savage, #1

    Series Book 1 - A Western Romance: The Heart of the Savage
    Mattie Collins, the daughter of a widower and rancher raised in the wilds of the Texas frontier, a child of the post Civil War era, a time of turbulent change and violent conflict. All Mattie knows of the world she lives in she’s gleaned from the tales of hard men; the cattle hands and tramps who work her father’s ranch. Mattie’s father, Jeb, loves Mattie above all things, and he’s taught her ... Read more

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  • Life at Four Corners

    Religion, Gender, and Education in a German-Lutheran Community, 1868-1945

    Defined less by geography than by demographic character, Block, Kansas, in many ways exemplifies the prevalent yet seldom-scrutinized ethnic, religion-based community of the rural midwest.Physically small, the town sprang up around four corners formed by crossroads. Spiritually strong and cohesive, it became the educational and cultural center for generations of German-Lutheran families.Block ... Read more

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  • Novels, Readers, and Reviewers

    Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America

    by Nina Baym ...
    This book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels—both American and European—that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840–1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain ... Read more

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  • Homicide in American Fiction, 1798–1860

    A Study in Social Values

    Homicide has many social and psychological implications that vary from culture to culture and which change as people accept new ideas concerning guilt, responsibility, and the causes of crime. A study of attitudes toward homicide is therefore a method of examining social values in a specific setting. Homicide in American Fiction, 1798–1860 is the first book to contrast psychological assumptions of ... Read more

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