What Hath God Wrought (130 page)

Historical literature on Mormonism is gigantic and sometimes polemical. Insightful presentations of the Mormon religion by outsiders include Thomas O’Dea,
The Mormons
(1957); Jan Shipps,
Mormonism
(1985); and Paul Conkin,
American Originals
(1997), 162–225. The projected multivolume history by Dale Morgan was cut short by his death; what little we have appears in
Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism
, ed. John Phillip Walker (1986). Quite a few fine historians are Latter-day Saints, and some of them write about Mormon history; see, for example, Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton,
The Mormon Experience
(1979); Klaus Hansen,
Mormonism and the American Experience
(1981); Grant Underwood,
The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism
(1993); and Richard Bushman,
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
(2005). Additional biographies of Joseph Smith, each with its own viewpoint, include Fawn Brodie,
No Man Knows My History
, rev. ed. (1973); Robert Remini,
Joseph Smith
(2002); and Dan Vogel,
Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
(2004). Mormon and gentile historians collaborate in an anthology,
The New Mormon History
, ed. D. Michael Quinn (1992). On the cultural matrix of early Mormonism, see D. Michael Quinn,
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
(1987); John Brooke,
The Refiner’s Fire
(1994); and Terryl Givens,
The Viper on the Hearth
(1997). Stephen LeSueur,
The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri
(1987) is judicious. The Mormon trek to Utah is portrayed in Leonard Arrington,
Brigham Young: American Moses
(1985); Klaus Hansen,
Quest for Empire
(1967); and Marvin Hill,
Quest for Refuge
(1989).

There are several excellent accounts of Jackson’s presidency: Glyndon Van Deusen,
The Jacksonian Era
(1959); Richard Latner,
The Presidency of Andrew Jackson
(1979); and, best of all, Donald Cole,
Presidency of Andrew Jackson
(1993). For the Eaton Affair, see Catherine Allgor,
Parlor Politics
(2000); John Marszalek,
The Petticoat Affair
(2000); and Kirsten Wood, “Gender and Power in the Eaton Affair,”
JER
17 (1997): 237–75.

On the history of the “Civilized Tribes,” see William McLoughlin,
Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic
(1986); Duane Champagne,
Social Order and Political Change
(1992); Michael Green,
The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis
(1982); and Mary Young,
Redskins, Ruffleshirts, and Rednecks
(1961). Three perspectives on the legal aspects are Tim Garrison,
The Legal Ideology of Removal
(2002); Stuart Banner,
How the Indians Lost Their Land
(2005); and Lindsay Robertson,
Conquest by Law
(2005). For Jackson’s program of Indian Removal and its effects, see Anthony F. C. Wallace,
The Long, Bitter Trail
(1993); Michael Rogin,
Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian
(1975); and Grant Foreman’s classic,
Indian Removal
(1932). A useful textbook with edited documents is Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green,
Cherokee Removal
, 2nd ed. (2005). Annie Abel,
History of Events Resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi River
(1908) still has valuable information. On the shaping of federal Indian policy, see Ronald Satz,
American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era
(1975) and Bernard Sheehan,
Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian
(1973). Jackson’s policies are defended in Francis Paul Prucha, SJ,
The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians
(1984), I, 179–242; and Robert Remini,
The Legacy of Andrew Jackson
(1988), 45–82; their arguments are rebutted in Donald Cole,
The Presidency of Andrew Jackson
(1993), 109–19. In his final statement Remini concedes much to Jackson’s critics but reminds the reader that blame for the treatment of the Indians was widely shared:
Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars
(2001). For white opposition to Removal, see John Andrew,
From Revivals to Removal
(1992); John G. West,
The Politics of Revelation and Reason
(1996); and Alisse Portnoy,
Their Right to Speak: Women’s Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates
(2005).

On suffrage and election procedures, see Chilton Williamson,
American Suffrage, 1760–1860
(1960); James S. Chase,
Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention
(1973); Ronald Formisano,
The Transformation of Political Culture
(1983); and Alexander Keyssar,
The Right to Vote
(2000). Politics was strongly influenced by the mechanisms of voting and getting out the vote; see Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin,
Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century
(2000) and Richard Bensel,
The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
(2004).

Most of the historical writing on the “Bank War” between Jackson and Biddle dates from the period 1945 to 1975. Besides Schlesinger’s
Age of Jackson
cited above, see Robert Remini,
Andrew Jackson and the Bank War
(1967); Jean Alexander Wilburn,
Biddle’s Bank: The Crucial Years
(1967); Thomas Govan,
Nicholas Biddle
(1959); Bray Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
(1957); Walter Buckingham Smith,
Economic Aspects of the Second Bank of the United States
(1953); and Fritz Redlich,
The Molding of American Banking
(1947). More recent are two books by Robert Wright,
The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850
(2002) and
The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia
(2005). Ralph Catterall,
The Second Bank of the United States
(1902), full of information, remains indispensable. For the influential Democratic banking firm of Corcoran & Riggs, see Henry Cohen,
Business and Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Civil War
(1971).

William W. Freehling,
Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina
(1965), a model historical monograph, should now be used in conjunction with the same author’s
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854
(1990). For the impact of the crisis on contemporary politics, see Richard Ellis,
The Union at Risk
(1987). Much of the best scholarship on nullification is in article form. There is a brilliant assessment in Donald Ratcliffe, “The Nullification Crisis, Southern Discontents, and the American Political Process,”
American Nineteeth-Century History
1 (2000): 1–30. Also see Kenneth Stampp, “The Concept of a Perpetual Union,”
JAH
65 (1978): 5–33; Lacy K. Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority,”
Journal of Southern History
60 (1994): 19–58; Richard Latner, “The Nullification Crisis and Republican Subversion,” ibid. 43 (1977): 19–38; and Merrill Peterson,
Olive Branch and Sword
(1982). For nullification in the broader context of southern sectionalism, see John McCardell,
The Idea of a Southern Nation
(1979); Don Fehrenbacher,
Sectional Crisis and Southern Constitutionalism
(1995); and Peter Knupfer,
The Union as It Is
(1991).

The best book on the violence that plagued Jacksonian America is David Grimsted,
American Mobbing, 1828–1861
(1998), though it does not make pleasant reading. Also valuable are Clement Eaton,
The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South
, rev. ed. (1964); Leonard Richards,
“Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America
(1970); Dickson Bruce,
Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South
(1979); Kenneth Greenberg,
Honor and Slavery
(1996); and Paul Gilje,
The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834
(1987).

For the history of schools and education, see Lawrence Cremin,
American Education, The National Experience
(1980); Carl Kaestle,
Pillars of the Republic
(1983); Carl Kaestle and Maris Vinovskis,
Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts
(1980); Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens,
The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States
(1981); Anne Boylan,
Sunday School
(1988); James McLachlan,
American Boarding Schools
(1970), 35–48; Theodore Sizer,
The Age of the Academies
(1964); Jonathan Messerli,
Horace Mann
(1972); Thomas Webber,
Deep like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community
(1978); and Janet Cornelius,
“When I Can Read My Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South
(1991).

On colleges and universities, see John Whitehead,
The Separation of College and State
(1973); Donald Tewksbury,
The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War
(1932); Barbara Solomon,
In the Company of Educated Women
(1985); Mark Noll,
Princeton and the Republic
(1989); D. H. Meyer,
The Instructed Conscience
(1972); and, on Harvard, Daniel Howe,
The Unitarian Conscience
, rev. ed. (1988).

The importance of the Bible to Americans in this period is attested in Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll,
The Bible in America
(1982); Paul Gutjahr,
An American Bible
(1999); James T. Johnson, ed.,
The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Rhetoric
(1985); and Peter Wosh,
Spreading the Word
(1994).

The idea that the relationship between science and religion has been one of continual “warfare” has been effectively demolished; see David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, eds.,
God and Nature
(1986) and John Hedley Brooke,
Science and Religion
(1991). To capture the spirit of American science in this period, consult Herbert Hovenkamp,
Science and Religion in America, 1800–1860
(1978); Leonard Wilson, ed.,
Benjamin Silliman and His Circle
(1979); Chandos Brown,
Benjamin Silliman
(1989); Margaret Welch,
The Book of Nature
(1998); John C. Greene,
American Science in the Age of Jefferson
(1984); Theodore Bozeman,
Protestants in an Age of Science
(1977); Albert Moyer,
Joseph Henry
(1997); and Hugh Slotten,
Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science
(1994). A number of classic works on the relation between science and religion retain their usefulness, including Charles Gillispie,
Genesis and Geology
(1951); John C. Greene,
The Death of Adam
(1959); and A. Hunter Dupree,
Asa Gray
(1959).

For important episodes in the history of medicine, see Charles Rosenberg,
The Cholera Years
(1962; with a new afterword, 1987) and Sheldon Watts,
Epidemics and History
(1997). Martin Pernick,
A Calculus of Suffering
(1985) and Thomas Dormandy,
Worst of Evils
(2006) treat anesthesia; and Michael Sappol,
A Traffic of Dead Bodies
(2002), anatomy. On obstetrics, see Deborah McGregor,
From Midwives to Medicine
(1998) and Amelie Kass,
Midwifery and Medicine in Boston
(2002). Marie Jenkins Schwartz,
Birthing a Slave
(2006) is broader than its title might suggest. For more comprehensive accounts, see John Duffy,
From Humors to Medical Science
(1993); James Cassedy,
Medicine in America
(1991) and
American Medicine and Statistical Thinking
(1984); John S. Haller,
American Medicine in Transition
(1981); William Rothstein,
American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine
(1987); and G. B. Rushman et al.,
A Short History of Anaesthesia
(1996). For the life of the country doctor, see Steven Stowe,
Doctoring the South
(2004); and for hospitals, Charles Rosenberg,
The Care of Strangers
(1987). The struggle between orthodox medicine and various alternatives is described in Joseph Kett,
The Formation of the American Medical Profession
(1968); Jayme Sokolow,
Eros and Modernization
(1983); and Stephen Nissenbaum,
Sylvester Graham and Health Reform
(1980). On African American folk medicine, see Sharla Fett,
Working Cures
(2002).