ARKANSAS (Fanning's, 1853)

Gazetteer/Almanac
Fanning's Illustrated Gazetteer of the United States... (New York: Phelps, Fanning & Co., 1853), 26-28.
ARKANSAS, one of the United States, lies between 33° and 36° 30' north lat., and 89° ЗО' and 94° ЗО' west long. from Greenwich : and is bounded north and northeast by Missouri, east by Mississippi river, which separates it from Mississippi and Tennesee, south by Louisiana, southwest by Texas, and west by the Indian territory.   Its superficial area is 52,198 square miles.

John Brown (Reynolds, 2005)

Scholarship
David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), x.
John Brown planted the seeds for the civil rights movement by making a pioneering demand for compete social and political equality for America's ethnic minorities. To be sure, many other Americans have contributed to civil rights. But only one white reformer lived continuously among blacks, penned a revised American constitution awarding them full rights, and gave his life in a violent effort to liberate the slaves.
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

John Brown (Boyer, 1973)

Scholarship
Richard O. Boyer, The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and History (New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1973), 127.
More than a rural eccentric, although he was also that, this was the man in whom public concern mounted during the three years beginning in 1856 until his name was a curse or a prayer in the mouth of every American who could read or hear his fellows talk or had any degree of mental sentience. By 1859, John Brown was not only universally known but a national agony dividing the country and it is within this division that his memory, his reputation, and his historic role have always been judged.

The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and History.

The Political Crisis of the 1850s

Stephen Douglas, Nebraska Bill (Holt, 1983)
Type: Description
Citation:
Michael F. Hot, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983), 144-145.
Body Summary:
Douglas saw a marvelous opportunity at the end of 1853 to pursue his program and at the same time provide an issue that could unify the Democratic party. Like other Democratic politicians, he had been flooded with letters indicating that the party’s voting strength was dissolving and that only active promotion of a distinctively Democratic program could save it.…Western development through three bills that were linked together in Douglas’s mind – organization of Nebraska, a Pacific railroad bill with government land grants, and a homestead bill to encourage settlement – could serve as the necessary program. It would be distinctive because the Whigs had traditionally been reluctant to develop the West.

Douglas realized that he would have to make a concession to the South by substituting popular sovereignty for the Missouri Compromise prohibition against slavery, but he saw even in that an opportunity to put the Democratic stamp on the territorial bill. The Democrats had long pushed popular sovereignty as the proper solution for slavery in the territories, and the party was pledged to the principles of the 1850 Compromise in their 1852 platform. Why not assert that the solution of 1850 was meant to apply to all the territories, not just Utah and New Mexico? A decision by settlers in the territory would prevent sectional strife in Congress, but, even more important from Douglas’s point of view, the principle of self-government, freedom from congressional dictation, was a way to reaffirm the Democratic party’s commitment to the republican tenant of popular rule just when people were worrying that political parties and government were beyond popular control.

Kennedy Farm, Chesnut Grove Road, Washington County, Maryland, 1958

Scanned by
Library of Congress
Notes
Sized, cropped, and adjusted for use by John Osborne, Dickinson College, March 31, 2008.
Image type
photograph
Use in Day View?
No
Courtesy of
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Permission to use?
Public
Original caption
Kennedy Farm, Chesnut Grove Road, Samples Manor vicinity, Washington County, MD
Source citation
Historic Buildings Survey Collection, Library of Congress
Source note
Jack E. Boucher Photographer December 1958

John Brown, Description of Kennedy Farm (Reynolds, 2005)

Scholarship
David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 297-298.
Living conditions at the Kennedy farm were primitive and crowded. The farmhouse consisted of two rooms, one of the first floor and the other above it. The downstairs room served as kitchen, parlor, and living room. Upstairs was a dormitory, storage area, and military training space. Furniture was sparse. Boxes were used as seats, and the men slept on the floor. The dining table was made of rough boards.
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
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