Louis Wright's masterful telling of South Carolina's story will fascinate residents and non-residents alike. A land whose people knew the joy of great victories and the sadness of bitter defeats, South Carolina gave us the first Americans cowboys, the cotton gin, and a long list of colorful military and political figures, from Swamp-Fox Marion to Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Cotton Ed Smith. Louis Wright's masterful telling of the story will fascinate residents and non-residents alike.

Louis Wright's masterful telling of South Carolina's story will fascinate residents and non-residents alike. A land whose people knew the joy of great victories and the sadness of bitter defeats, South Carolina gave us the first Americans cowboys, the cotton gin, and a long list of colorful military and political figures, from Swamp-Fox Marion to Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Cotton Ed Smith. Louis Wright's masterful telling of the story will fascinate residents and non-residents alike.

The first documented discovery of gold in the United States was in 1799 at John Reed's farm in Cabarrus County. This book traces the history of gold mining in North Carolina from that discovery to the twentieth century. The authors present case histories of John Reed and his mine and of the Gold Hill mining district in Rowan County, along with material on other gold mining activity in the state.

What life has really been like for most Mississippians is the story told in this intriguing history. To many Americans, Mississippi means Natchez and Vicksburg, white columns and cotton. For the people who have lived there, however, Mississippi has been a decidedly different place. Depending on who you were, and where and when you lived, Mississippi could be a much worse or far better place than that portrayed by its romantic image.

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, millions of Americans engaged with the past in brand-new ways. They became absorbed by historical miniseries like Roots, visited museums with new exhibits that immersed them in the past, propelled works of historical fiction onto the bestseller list, and participated in living history events across the nation. While many of these activities were sparked by the Bicentennial, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows that, in fact, they were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in Americans' relationship to history during the 1960s and 1970s. For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level: to consider the feelings and motivations of historic individuals and, most importantly, to use this in reevaluating both the past and the present. This thought-provoking book charts the era's shifting feeling for history, and explores how it serves as a foundation for the experience and practice of history making today.

Historically, Ohio seems to have had everything--great physical beauty; rich resources of coal, oil, gas, and fertile soil; a central location with easy means of transportation by land and water; inventive and dynamic people; and the kind of national political influence that wealth and a large population can give a state. It was no accident that eight of the nation's presidents had an Ohio connection. In character, the first Ohioans exhibited qualities that seemed typical of Americans in general. "The spirit of the place was large, vigorous, and buoyant," Walter Havighurst writes of the colorful early days when settlers attached forests with ax and fire. "Keep the ball rolling" and "Give it a try" became Ohio slogans as boosterism surged, fields were planted, towns were founded, and canals were dug. Steamboats, steel plants, and the rubber industry brought growth to Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other major cities, making Ohio a commercial and industrial as well as an agricultural heartland.

The first gold discovery in the United States occurred in 1799 when young Conrad Reed went fishing in Little Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. The 17-pound nugget he found was used by his family as a doorstop until they figured out what the strange rock was. This chance discovery set off the first gold rush in the nation's history. For more than a century, men extracted gold from the rolling hills and valleys of the North Carolina piedmont, as well as from the high peaks and rugged mountains of the western part of the state. Prior to the California Gold Rush of 1849, North Carolina led the nation in production of this precious metal and was the largest gold-producing state in the South well into the 20th century.

This comprehensive survey of British colonial governors' houses and buildings used as state houses or capitols in the North American colonies begins with the founding of the Virginia Colony and ends with American independence. In addition to the 13 colonies that became the United States in 1783, the study includes three colonies in present-day Florida and Canada--East Florida, West Florida and the Province of Quebec--obtained by Great Britain after the French and Indian War.