"The Union" meant meant many things to Americans in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. Nagel's thesis is that the idea served as a treasure-trove of the values and images by which Americans tried to understand their nature and destiny. By tracing the idea of Union through the crucial, formative years of America's history, he makes clear the nature of the intellectual and emotional responses Americans have had to their country.

Nagel's classic work deals with nineteenth-century America's coming awareness as a nation and its agonizing struggle to turn itself into a model republic. He perceptively explores the growth of American nationalism in its political, social, religious, economic, and literary implications. The resulting book is a vivid portrait of how America viewed itself, what concerned it deeply, and ultimately, of those forces in society that led to a new spirit of militant nationalism.

There are few American families that feature such a collection of characters, both heroic and ignoble, who have made such a mark on history as the Lees. In The Lees of Virginia, Paul Nagel chronicles seven generations of Lees, covering over two hundred years of accolades and scandals. We meet Thomas Lee, who dreamed of America as a continental empire, and his son, Arthur Lee, who created a political storm with his accusations against Benjamin Franklin. Arthur's cousin was Light-Horse Harry Lee, a controversial cavalry officer in the Revolutionary War, whose wild real estate speculation led to...

From his vast storehouse of knowledge about the Adams family. Nagelpulls out the feminine threads of that tapestry to write all about the Adams women, from Abigail to daughter Nabby, from Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy, to Clover Adams, wife of Henry, with others making more than cameo appearances. They all lived exceptional, if not extraordinary, lives, in different ways.

The Adams family was America's first family. This research-based text is a multigenerational biography of that family from the founding father, John, through to the mordant writer, Brooks.

John Quincy Adams was raised, educated, and groomed to be President, following in the footsteps of his father, John. At fourteen he was secretary to the Minister to Russia and, later, was himself Minister to the Netherlands and Prussia. He was U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and then President for one ill-fated term. His private life showed a parallel descent. He was a poet, writer, critic, and Professor of Oratory at Harvard. He married a talented and engaging Southerner, but two of his three sons were disappointments. This polymath and troubled man, caught up in both a democratic age not...

In this fascinating work, Paul Nagel tells the full story of George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), one of America's greatest nineteenth-century painters. While Nagel assesses Bingham's artistic achievements, he also portrays another very important part of the artist's career--his service as a statesman and political leader in Missouri. Until now, Bingham's public service has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by his triumph as a great artist. Yet Nagel finds there were times when Bingham yearned more to be a successful politician than to be a distinguished painter. Born in Virginia, Bingham...

In the era of overland traders and steamboat pilots, of Thomas Hart Benton and Mark Twain, life in Missouri was strongly flavored by the Jeffersonian spirit, expressed in a suspicion of large cities, a belief that mankind flourished best in a rural setting, and a faith in the free individual as the guardian of liberty.