This collection of letters chronicles the personal lives of founding father John Jay and his wife, Sarah Livingston Jay, in the tumultuous times during and after the American Revolution. The letters showcase Sarah as a devoted wife and mother who also helped further her husband's political career. Their correspondence reveals the abiding love of husband and wife, their concern for their children, the dangers and difficulties of travel, descriptions of the lands they visited and events they witnessed, as well as a sense of the effort it took to survive in the era even with the buffer of wealth. The book includes essays on the Jay and Livingston families, family trees, and information about the character and appearance of both husband and wife,and other topics. Importantly, there are textual bridges between the letters where necessary.

In the Words of Women brings together the writings-letters, diaries, journals, pamphlets, poems, plays, depositions, and newspaper articles-of women who lived between 1765 and 1799. The writings are organized chronologically around events, battles, and developments from before the Revolution, through its prosecution and aftermath. They reflect the thoughts, observations and experiences of women during those tumultuous times, women less well known to the reading public, including patriots and loyalists; the highborn and lowly; Native Americans and blacks, both free and enslaved; the involved and observers; the young and old; and those in between. Brief narrative passages provide historical context, and information about the women as they are introduced enable readers to appreciate their relevance and significance. In the Words of Women also focuses on topics such as health, everyday life, and travel. The selections not only document existing attitudes, practices, and customs but also changes wrought by the war and independence. This book allows the voices of these women to be heard and readers to make their own inferences and judgments based on women "speaking for themselves." For more information on this topic, please visit the author's website at www.inthewordsofwomen.com.

John Jay (1745-1829) made contributions to all three branches of government, at both state and national levels. A leading representative of New York in the Continental Congress, he became one of the American commissioners who negotiated peace with Great Britain. He served the new republic as secretary for foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, as a contributor to the Federalist papers, as the first chief justice of the United States, as negotiator of the 1794 "Jay Treaty" with Great Britain, and as a two-term governor of the state of New York. In his personal life, Jay embraced a wide range of religious, social, and cultural concerns, including the abolition of slavery.--Publisher's description.

The Spanish Craze is the compelling story of the centuries-long U.S. fascination with the history, literature, art, culture, and architecture of Spain. Richard L. Kagan offers a stunningly revisionist understanding of the origins of hispanidad in America, tracing its origins from the early republic to the New Deal. As Spanish power and influence waned in the Atlantic World by the eighteenth century, her rivals created the "Black Legend," which promoted an image of Spain as a dead and lost civilization rife with innate cruelty and cultural and religious backwardness. The Black Legend and its ambivalences influenced Americans throughout the nineteenth century, reaching a high pitch in the Spanish-American War of 1898. However, the Black Legend retreated soon thereafter, and Spanish culture and heritage became attractive to Americans for its perceived authenticity and antimodernism. Although the Spanish craze infected regions where the Spanish New World presence was most felt--California, the American Southwest, Texas, and Florida--there were also early, quite serious flare-ups of the craze in Chicago, New York, and New England. Kagan revisits early interest in Hispanism among elites such as the Boston book dealer Obadiah Rich, a specialist in the early history of the Americas, and the writers Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He also considers later enthusiasts such as Angeleno Charles Lummis and the many writers, artists, and architects of the modern Spanish Colonial Revival in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spain's political and cultural elites understood that the promotion of Spanish culture in the United States and the Western Hemisphere in general would help overcome imperial defeats while uniting Spaniards and those of Spanish descent into a singular raza whose shared characteristics and interests transcended national boundaries. With elegant prose and verve, The Spanish Craze spans centuries and provides a captivating glimpse into distinct facets of Hispanism in monuments, buildings, and private homes; the visual, performing, and cinematic arts; and the literature, travel journals, and letters of its enthusiasts in the United States.

In the first intellectual biography of the man universally recognized in his own time as the founder of the Atlantic antislavery movement, Jackson demonstrates how Anthony Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, African travel narratives, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seward and Stanton comes the definitive biography of John Jay: “Wonderful” (Walter Isaacson, New York Times–bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci). John Jay is central to the early history of the American Republic. Drawing on substantial new material, renowned biographer Walter Stahr has written a full and highly readable portrait of both the public and private man—one of the most prominent figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. “The greatest founders—such as Washington and Jefferson—have kept even the greatest of the second tier of the nation’s founding generation in the shadows. But now John Jay, arguably the most important of this second group, has found an admiring, skilled student in Stahr . . . Since the last biography of Jay appeared 60 years ago, a mountain of new knowledge about the early nation has piled up, and Stahr uses it all with confidence and critical detachment. Jay had a remarkable career. He was president of the Continental Congress, secretary of foreign affairs, a negotiator of the treaty that won the United States its independence in 1783, one of three authors of The Federalist Papers, first chief justice of the Supreme Court and governor of his native New York . . . [Stahr] places Jay once again in the company of America’s greatest statesmen, where he unquestionably belongs.” —Publishers Weekly “Even-handed . . . Riveting on the matter of negotiating tactics, as practiced by Adams, Jay and Franklin.” —The Economist “Stahr has not only given us a meticulous study of the life of John Jay, but one very much in the spirit of the man . . . Thorough, fair, consistently intelligent, and presented with the most scrupulous accuracy. Let us hope that this book helps to retrieve Jay from the relative obscurity to which he has been unfairly consigned.” —Ron Chernow, author of Alexander Hamilton