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Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era.This oversight is being rectified by this definitive publication project that transcribes and carefully annotates the Office of Finance diary, correspondence, and other official papers written by Morris during his administration as superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784.

Boundaries—lines imposed on the landscape—shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In Creating the American West, historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American. Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history. A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines—in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. Creating the American West shows how the past continues to shape the present.

Providing the first full investigation of second U.S. president John Adams' attitudes toward slavery, blacks, and the Haitian Revolution, this iconoclastic study illuminates the inner and outer worlds of Adams for scholars and general readers. John Adams was a Founding Father of the United States who not only played a key role in laying the foundation of the nation but is also highly regarded as a great speaker, thinker, lawyer, revolutionary, diplomat, vice president, and president. But was Adams an opponent of slavery and a believer in racial equality? The historical evidence points to the contrary. This book is the first to discuss at any length John Adams's views on race, slavery, and slavery extension by examining his writings, politics, and diplomacy. Historian Arthur Scherr, an expert who is uniquely knowledgeable about Adams's views on slavery, race, and the Haitian Revolution, reveals Adams's attitudes toward slavery and race in and out of office, spotlighting his views on slavery during the American Revolution, his perspective regarding race as vice president and president of the United States, and his opinions in retirement. Readers will be able to form their opinions based on factual documentation of Adams's statements and actions regarding the key events involving slavery and race during this period: the gradual emancipation of slaves; U.S. aid to Haiti, the only black-governed nation in the world, and to its Governor-General Toussaint Louverture in gaining its independence; and the U.S. government's decision to permit slavery in new states and territories formed from public lands such as the Old Northwest and the Louisiana Purchase.