Establishing Congress: The Removal to Washington, D.C., and the Election of 1800 focuses on the end of the 1790s, when, in rapid succession, George Washington died, the federal government moved to Washington, D.C., and the election of 1800 put Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican party in charge of the federal government.Establishing Congress dispels the myths and misinformation that surround the federal government's move to Washington and demonstrates that the election of 1800 changed American party politics forever, established the success of the American experiment in government, and completed the founding of the Republic. It also contends that the lame-duck session of Congress had far-reaching implications for the governance of the District of Columbia. Later chapters examine aspects of the political iconography of the capitol---one illuminating Jefferson's role in turning the building into a temple for the legislature and an instrument for nation-building, another examining the fascinating decades-long debate over burying George Washington in the Capitol. The collection considers as well the political implications of social life in early Washington, examining the political lobbying by Washington women within a social context and detailing the social and political life in the city's homes, hotels, boardinghouses and eating messes. Establishing Congress is an invaluable reference work for anyone interested in these pivotal moments in American history.Kenneth R. Bowling is co-editor, with Donald R. Kennon, of Inventing Congress: Origins and Establishment of the First Federal Congress (Ohio, 1999), Neither Separate nor Equal: Congress in the 1790s (Ohio, 2000), and The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development (Ohio, 2002).Donald R. Kennon is chief historian of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He is general editor of the Ohio University Press series Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1789?1801, which contains the present volume, and the series Perspectives on the Art and Architectural History of the United States Capitol.

Big Bill Otter was one member of the early American working class not preoccupied with republican principles or the heritage of the Revolution. Big Bill Otter—apprentice, journeyman, master plasterer—was a thug. Otter's autobiography, first published in 1835, provides a rare and fascinating counterpoint to romantic notions of virtuous, respectable craftsmen in the early republic. His Life and Adventures offer an inside account of the brawling racism common in the early nineteenth century and sharply detail the rowdy male subculture of the times. Born in England and conscripted into the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars, Otter jumped ship and came to New York City in 1801. He apprenticed as a plasterer and joined an urban gang; later he was a master plasterer, tavernkeeper, slavecatcher, "Jackson man," bigot, town bully, notorious practical joker, borderline psychopath, mayoral candidate, and all-round "jolly fellow." History of My Own Times is one of the few first-person accounts of a rural artisan in pre-genteel America. The book depicts the ambiguities of race relations in the early nineteenth century, sheds light on its definition of manhood, and conveys a sense of humor very different from today's. Richard B. Stott's introduction an,d commentary place Otter in the context of his times and explore the significance of his autobiography in understanding the social and cultural history of the early American republic.

This printers, publishers and booksellers index is modeled after Bristol's Index of Printers, Publishers and Booksellers Indicated by Charles Evans in his American Bibliography. Each entry contains a name and place, with item numbers listed underneath by date. Personal names are listed in the most complete form that could be determined. Corporate names are listed in the form used by the Library of Congress. Newspapers and magazines are entered by their full titles as recorded in Brigham's American Newspapers, 1821-1936 and Union List of Serials. Also included is a geographical index by city and a list of omissions with explanations.

In a highly readable work that engages topics in American cultural, social and business history, Ann Fabian details the place of gambling in industrializing America. Card Sharps and Bucket Shops investigates the relationship between gambling and other ways of making profit, such as speculation and land investment, which became entrenched during the nineteenth century. While all these undertakings ran counter to deeply ingrained American--and Protestant--work ethics, only gambling took on a stigma that made other efforts to acquire wealth socially acceptable. Fabian considers here the reformers who sought to ban gambling; psychological explanations for the deviant gambler; numbers games in the African American community; and efforts by speculators to draw distinctions between their own activities and gambling. She combines first-rate cultural analysis with rigorous research, and along the way provides a wealth of colorful details, characters and anecdotes.

In They Will Have Their Game, Kenneth Cohen explores how sports, drinking, gambling, and theater produced a sense of democracy while also reinforcing racial, gender, and class divisions in early America. Pairing previously unexplored financial records with a wide range of published reports, unpublished correspondence, and material and visual evidence, Cohen demonstrates how investors, participants, and professional managers and performers from all sorts of backgrounds saw these "sporting" activities as stages for securing economic and political advantage over others. They Will Have Their Game tracks the evolution of this fight for power from 1760 to 1860, showing how its roots in masculine competition and risk-taking gradually developed gendered and racial limits and then spread from leisure activities to the consideration of elections as "races" and business as a "game." The result reorients the standard narrative about the rise of commercial popular culture to question the influence of ideas such as "gentility" and "respectability," and to put men like P. T. Barnum at the end instead of the beginning of the process, unveiling a new take on the creation of the white male republic of the early nineteenth century in which sporting activities lie at the center and not the margins of economic and political history.

"A good story, well told, of a sliver of life in Richmond, a small, elite-driven capital city in the young nation's most influential state." —Publishers Weekly George Wythe clung to the mahogany banister as he inched down the staircase of his comfortable Richmond, Virginia, home. Doubled over in agony, he stumbled to the kitchen in search of help. There he found his maid, Lydia Broadnax, and his young protegé, Michael Brown, who were also writhing in distress. Hours later, when help arrived, Wythe was quick to tell anyone who would listen, "I am murdered." Over the next two weeks, as Wythe suffered a long and painful death, insults would be added to his mortal injury. I Am Murdered tells the bizarre true story of Wythe's death and the subsequent trial of his grandnephew and namesake, George Wythe Sweeney, for the crime—unquestionably the most sensational and talked-about court case of the era. Hinging on hit-and-miss forensics, the unreliability of medical autopsies, the prevalence of poisoning, race relations, slavery, and the law, Sweeney's trial serves as a window into early nineteenth-century America. Its particular focus is on Richmond, part elegant state capital and part chaotic boomtown riddled with vice, opportunism, and crime. As Wythe lay dying, his doctors insisted that he had not been poisoned, and Sweeney had the nerve to beg him for bail money. In I Am Murdered, this signer of the Declaration of Independence, mentor to Thomas Jefferson, and "Father of American Jurisprudence" finally gets the justice he deserved.