"This book explores the link between Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Conference of 1848, and the Women's Suffrage Bill, unveiling Catherine Paine Blaine's journey within the Suffragist movement, highlighting her advocacy within the Suffragist history in Washington State and the Western US"--

No Permanent Waves boldly enters the ongoing debates over the utility of the "wave" metaphor for capturing the complex history of women's rights by offering fresh perspectives on the diverse movements that comprise U.S. feminism, past and present. Seventeen essays--both original and reprinted--address continuities, conflicts, and transformations among women's movements in the United States from the early nineteenth century through today. A respected group of contributors from diverse generations and backgrounds argue for new chronologies, more inclusive conceptualizations of feminist agendas and participants, and fuller engagements with contestations around particular issues and practices. Race, class, and sexuality are explored within histories of women's rights and feminism as well as the cultural and intellectual currents and social and political priorities that marked movements for women's advancement and liberation. These essays question whether the concept of waves surging and receding can fully capture the complexities of U.S. feminisms and suggest models for reimagining these histories from radio waves to hip-hop.

From 1869 to 1877, the United States found itself deeply involved in the Caribbean as Washington sought to replace European influence and colonialism with an informal American empire. The Ulysses S. Grant administration primarily dealt with an uprising in Spanish Cuba known as the Ten Years’ War that threatened to draw in the United States. The Cuban rebels used the United States as a base of support, causing conflict between Washington and Madrid. Many Americans, including Grant, wanted to replace Spanish rule in Cuba with a U.S. protectorate, but Secretary of State Hamilton Fish opposed American colonial entanglements. President Grant looked to expand U.S. interests in the Caribbean. He looked to acquire colonies to provide naval bases to protect the trade routes to a potential American built and controlled canal in Central America. Fish preferred to expand U.S. commercial interests in the region rather than acquiring colonies. At no time was he prepared to obligate the United States to any long-term commitments. He wanted to end the war in Cuba because it hurt U.S. economic interests. He had no desire to acquire territory, but expected the Caribbean to fall into the U.S. economic sphere. Despite his personal opposition to territorial acquisition in Fish went along with Grant’s Dominican annexation project because he foresaw it as a chance to end European imperialism and to gain the president’s confidence. The Senate’s failure to approve the Dominican annexation only hardened his opposition to the creation of an American empire. He rejected Haitian offers of a naval base within that country, and he continually sought an end to the Cuban rebellion, lest it drag in the United States. Though the administration’s many peace initiatives failed, it forestalled Congressional intervention and kept the United States neutral in the conflict.

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Americans were faced with the challenges and uncertainties of a new era. The comfortable Victorian values of continuity, progress, and order clashed with the unsettling modern notions of constant change, relative truth, and chaos. Attempting to embrace the intellectual challenges of modernism, American thinkers of the day were yet reluctant to welcome the wholesale rejection of the past and destruction of traditional values. In Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880-1900, George Cotkin surveys the intellectual life of this crucial transitional period. His story begins with the Darwinian controversies, since the mainstream of American culture was just beginning to come to grips with the implications of the Origins of Species, published in 1859. Cotkin demonstrates the effects of this shift in thinking on philosophy, anthropology, and the newly developing field of psychology. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of these fields, he explains clearly and concisely the essential tenets of such major thinkers and writers as William James, Franz Boas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry Adams, and Kate Chopin. Throughout this fascinating, readable history of the American fin de si cle run the contrasting themes of continuity and change, faith and rationalism, despair over the meaninglessness of life and, ultimately, a guarded optimism about the future.

On March 16, 1827,Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper, began publication in New York. Freedom's Journal was a forum edited and controlled by African Americans in which they could articulate their concerns. National in scope and distributed in several countries, the paper connected African Americans beyond the boundaries of city or region and engaged international issues from their perspective. It ceased publication after only two years, but shaped the activism of both African-American and white leaders for generations to come. A comprehensive examination of this groundbreaking periodical, Freedom's Journal: The First African-American Newspaper is a much-needed contribution to the literature. Despite its significance, it has not been investigated comprehensively. This study examines all aspects of the publication as well as extracts historical information from the content.

Using slave trials from antebellum Virginia, Christopher H. Bouton offers the first in-depth examination of physical confrontations between slaves and whites. These extraordinary acts of violence brought the ordinary concerns of enslaved Virginians into focus. Enslaved men violently asserted their masculinity, sought to protect themselves and their loved ones from punishment, and carved out their own place within southern honor culture. Enslaved women resisted sexual exploitation and their mistresses. By attacking southern efforts to control their sexuality and labor, bondswomen sought better lives for themselves and undermined white supremacy. Physical confrontations revealed the anxieties that lay at the heart of white antebellum Virginians and threatened the very foundations of the slave regime itself. While physical confrontations could not overthrow the institution of slavery, they helped the enslaved set limits on their owners’ exploitation. They also afforded the enslaved the space necessary to create lives as free from their owners’ influence as possible. When masters and mistresses continually intruded into the lives of their slaves, they risked provoking a violent backlash. Setting Slavery’s Limits explores how slaves of all ages and backgrounds resisted their oppressors and risked everything to fight back.