This book explores the multiple dimensions of the antebellum Kansas tempest as a microcosm of the larger history of sectional conflict and reconciliation. It shows, through an examination of the antislavery ends and means of the American Missionary Association, the American Home Missionary Society, and the New England Emigrant Aid Company, that the northeastern free-state contingent in Kansas represented a wide spectrum of opinion on black bondage, ranging from racially egalitarian Christian abolitionist absolutism on the one hand to free labor pragmatism on the other. Nevertheless, Yankee...

The racially charged stereotype of -welfare queen---an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers--is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in From Slavery to Poverty, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity.

Mining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York City's interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta...

The racially charged stereotype of -welfare queen---an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers--is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in From Slavery to Poverty, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity.

Mining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York City's interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta...