“If I Get Home Safe”: William C. White’s Experiences in the American Civil War
Even though his journey to the Capitol may not have been the culmination of his experiences in the American Civil War, it certainly left a lasting impression. Like many other Irish-Catholic Philadelphians, White’s actions in the Civil War allowed him to proudly identify as an Irish-American. While thousands of letters from Union and Confederate soldiers exist, William C. White’s Letters, 1861-1869 provides an intriguing new perspective on the war. As an Irish-Catholic Philadelphian, White was raised in a tradition and culture that has not received much attention from scholars. White’s upbringing in the tough ethnic districts of Philadelphia was marked by prejudice, poverty, and outright violence. Despite Philadelphia’s standing as a cultural, economic, and political power, waves of ethnically focused violence periodically occurred. This violence climaxed with the destructive and deadly Nativist Riots of 1844. Irish men, women, and children were physically and verbally assaulted, Irish-Catholic churches burned, and Irish laborers forced to work for the lowest paying, most menial jobs available. White grew up in this highly charged ethnic context, and it helped to shape the ways in which he
Receiving Erin's Children: Philadelphia, Liverpool, and the Irish Famine Migration, 1845-1855
Between 1845 and 1855, 2 million Irish men and women fled their famine-ravaged homeland, many to settle in large British and American cities that were already wrestling with a complex array of urban problems. In this innovative work of comparative urban history, Matthew Gallman looks at how two cities, Philadelphia and Liverpool, met the challenges raised by the influx of immigrants. Gallman examines how citizens and policymakers in Philadelphia and Liverpool dealt with such issues as poverty, disease, poor sanitation, crime, sectarian conflict, and juvenile delinquency. By considering how two cities of comparable population and dimensions responded to similar challenges, he sheds new light on familiar questions about distinctive national characteristics--without resorting to claims of "American exceptionalism." In this critical era of urban development, English and American cities often evolved in analogous ways, Gallman notes. But certain crucial differences--in location, material conditions, governmental structures, and voluntaristic traditions, for example--inspired varying approaches to urban problem solving on either side of the Atlantic. |This work of comparative history looks at how two rapidly growing cities, Philadelphia and Liverpool, coped with the urban challenges raised by the influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Society of Individuals
Norbert Elias (1897-1990) Note on the text Preface Part I: The Society of Individuals (1939) Part II: Problems of self-consciousness and the image of man (1940s-1950s): Wishful and fearful self-images of humans as individuals and of society The thinking statues individualisation in the social process Part III: Changes in the we-I balance (1987) Appendix I: Rainer Maria Rilke, 'The Book of Pilgrimage' Appendix II: Two poems by Goethe Appendix III: Power struggles and the concepts of 'state' and 'society' Appendix IV: Migration and the conflict of generations Bibliography Index.