Lindsey Apple
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813134109
- eISBN:
- 9780813135908
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813134109.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Known as the Great Compromiser, Kentuckian Henry Clay left a valuable legacy to his country by defining the role of Speaker of the House, envisioning a plan, the American System, that foretold the ...
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Known as the Great Compromiser, Kentuckian Henry Clay left a valuable legacy to his country by defining the role of Speaker of the House, envisioning a plan, the American System, that foretold the economic development of the nation, and fashioning compromises that postponed civil war until a southern victory was far less likely. He failed, however, to become president, and scholars have placed some blame on his family. This work investigates how his career affected his family and how the family impacted his career. While laboring to form a mature nation, Clay sought to establish a successful family. Accused of excessive ambition, he taught service to nation and loyalty to family. A man of high passions, he channeled a family intoxication with risk and spontaneity into business and service. Fearful of the military mind in politics, he created a family that served its nation at war from the Mexican War through Vietnam. After the Civil War, the patriarch's shadow became both blessing and burden. Inspiring confidence and civic spirit it led to service, but it also pressured each generation to attain his prominence, sometimes leading to reckless behavior and bad decision-making. Clay also bequeathed a susceptibility to illness; tuberculosis and mood disorders destroyed lives and caused fear in an age that did not understand the diseases. Tragedy challenged the family, but looking to the patriarch, they never quit. The Clay story reflects the strength and the struggle of the American family across the expanse of the nation's history.Less
Known as the Great Compromiser, Kentuckian Henry Clay left a valuable legacy to his country by defining the role of Speaker of the House, envisioning a plan, the American System, that foretold the economic development of the nation, and fashioning compromises that postponed civil war until a southern victory was far less likely. He failed, however, to become president, and scholars have placed some blame on his family. This work investigates how his career affected his family and how the family impacted his career. While laboring to form a mature nation, Clay sought to establish a successful family. Accused of excessive ambition, he taught service to nation and loyalty to family. A man of high passions, he channeled a family intoxication with risk and spontaneity into business and service. Fearful of the military mind in politics, he created a family that served its nation at war from the Mexican War through Vietnam. After the Civil War, the patriarch's shadow became both blessing and burden. Inspiring confidence and civic spirit it led to service, but it also pressured each generation to attain his prominence, sometimes leading to reckless behavior and bad decision-making. Clay also bequeathed a susceptibility to illness; tuberculosis and mood disorders destroyed lives and caused fear in an age that did not understand the diseases. Tragedy challenged the family, but looking to the patriarch, they never quit. The Clay story reflects the strength and the struggle of the American family across the expanse of the nation's history.
Richard Keogh and James McConnel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097317
- eISBN:
- 9781781708569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097317.003.0017
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Not all Irish Catholics were nationalists. Some made their adherence to the Union with Great Britain all too clear. The idea of Catholic unionism is explored through the experience of the Esmonde ...
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Not all Irish Catholics were nationalists. Some made their adherence to the Union with Great Britain all too clear. The idea of Catholic unionism is explored through the experience of the Esmonde family of Wexford. Their role in Victorian politics, military and imperial service, and loyalty to the crown are all carefully examined. This is set within the wider context of the position of the Catholic Church’s relations with the structure of the state in Ireland. Catholicism, after all, understood the idea of hierarchy and monarchical authority. From this study of the Esmondes the chapter extrapolates some general conclusions about the condition and extent of Catholic unionism in Ireland prior to the First World War.Less
Not all Irish Catholics were nationalists. Some made their adherence to the Union with Great Britain all too clear. The idea of Catholic unionism is explored through the experience of the Esmonde family of Wexford. Their role in Victorian politics, military and imperial service, and loyalty to the crown are all carefully examined. This is set within the wider context of the position of the Catholic Church’s relations with the structure of the state in Ireland. Catholicism, after all, understood the idea of hierarchy and monarchical authority. From this study of the Esmondes the chapter extrapolates some general conclusions about the condition and extent of Catholic unionism in Ireland prior to the First World War.
Ruth Perry
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199574803
- eISBN:
- 9780191869747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199574803.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter argues that the plots and characters of eighteenth-century English fiction can be illuminated by an awareness of property law and the customary disposition of property within families. ...
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This chapter argues that the plots and characters of eighteenth-century English fiction can be illuminated by an awareness of property law and the customary disposition of property within families. That material greed as well as rivalries and competitions springing from even more primitive sources should be represented as occurring within families in the fiction of the day should surprise no one who has ever lived in a family. What is noteworthy are the excesses of innocence on the one hand and of rapaciousness on the other. One finds good characters who seek nothing for themselves and are generous to a fault, and bad characters whom nothing can touch but their ruthless desire for material wealth. Ultimately, in the fiction from 1750 to 1820, one can still read the human responses to material inequities that tore families apart and made them accomplices of an economic system that put property before family loyalty.Less
This chapter argues that the plots and characters of eighteenth-century English fiction can be illuminated by an awareness of property law and the customary disposition of property within families. That material greed as well as rivalries and competitions springing from even more primitive sources should be represented as occurring within families in the fiction of the day should surprise no one who has ever lived in a family. What is noteworthy are the excesses of innocence on the one hand and of rapaciousness on the other. One finds good characters who seek nothing for themselves and are generous to a fault, and bad characters whom nothing can touch but their ruthless desire for material wealth. Ultimately, in the fiction from 1750 to 1820, one can still read the human responses to material inequities that tore families apart and made them accomplices of an economic system that put property before family loyalty.
Wendy Webster
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198735762
- eISBN:
- 9780191799747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198735762.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter focuses on people of enemy and neutral nationality in Britain—chiefly Germans, Italians, and Irish who served in the British armed forces and as war-workers and propagandists. Through ...
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This chapter focuses on people of enemy and neutral nationality in Britain—chiefly Germans, Italians, and Irish who served in the British armed forces and as war-workers and propagandists. Through these activities, many Germans and Italians who were in Britain at the outset of the war moved closer to the allied end of a spectrum running from enemy to ally. In the later stages of the war, their place at the enemy end of this spectrum was taken by Germans and Italians who arrived as prisoners of war. Nationality played a significant role in shaping the fate of Italians and Germans and their descendants—those who were British-born or naturalized Britons were treated differently. The chapter considers the complex questions of identity involved when people of enemy and neutral nationality contributed to the British war effort and their complex national and family allegiances.Less
This chapter focuses on people of enemy and neutral nationality in Britain—chiefly Germans, Italians, and Irish who served in the British armed forces and as war-workers and propagandists. Through these activities, many Germans and Italians who were in Britain at the outset of the war moved closer to the allied end of a spectrum running from enemy to ally. In the later stages of the war, their place at the enemy end of this spectrum was taken by Germans and Italians who arrived as prisoners of war. Nationality played a significant role in shaping the fate of Italians and Germans and their descendants—those who were British-born or naturalized Britons were treated differently. The chapter considers the complex questions of identity involved when people of enemy and neutral nationality contributed to the British war effort and their complex national and family allegiances.
Charles West
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199236428
- eISBN:
- 9780191863349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199236428.003.0025
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter studies dynastic historical writing and how diverse notions of family, with the full richness of meaning that concept bears, come to impose themselves upon, and are expressed by, written ...
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This chapter studies dynastic historical writing and how diverse notions of family, with the full richness of meaning that concept bears, come to impose themselves upon, and are expressed by, written accounts of the past. The importance of the underlying issue is self-evident, because the intersection of family and history writing touches on two fundamental means by which all people situate themselves in their world: through kinship and in relation to the past. Combining family loyalties with past sensitivities, dynastic historical writing represents the creation of a special, and specially revealing, form of knowledge, caught between the socially embedded and the detached. Examining the ways in which kinship and the past are combined in different times and places also has the potential to bring out differences and similarities in important fields of human experience.Less
This chapter studies dynastic historical writing and how diverse notions of family, with the full richness of meaning that concept bears, come to impose themselves upon, and are expressed by, written accounts of the past. The importance of the underlying issue is self-evident, because the intersection of family and history writing touches on two fundamental means by which all people situate themselves in their world: through kinship and in relation to the past. Combining family loyalties with past sensitivities, dynastic historical writing represents the creation of a special, and specially revealing, form of knowledge, caught between the socially embedded and the detached. Examining the ways in which kinship and the past are combined in different times and places also has the potential to bring out differences and similarities in important fields of human experience.
