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Author:

Keillor, Steven J. (Steven James)

Title:

Grand excursion : antebellum America discovers the Upper Mississippi / Steven J. Keillor.

Edition:

1st ed.

Publisher:

Afton Historical Society Press,

Copyright Date:

c2004

Description:

288 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.

Subject:

Mississippi River Valley--Description and travel.
Mississippi River Valley--History--1803-1865.
United States--History--1815-1861.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-283) and index.

Contents:

Index. Paul A. Verret -- Preface -- The "Railroad men from near and far" -- 2. "New England finds her onward movement at a stand" -- Excursus : Catherine Sedgwick and antebellum gender roles -- 3. "All under a full head of steam" -- Excursus : Millard Fillmore and antebellum artisan politics -- 4. "Off she goes!" -- Excursus : Antebellum America and the Mississippi steamboat -- 5. "Rain and speaking, words and water" -- Excursus : Benjamin Silliman and antebellum American science -- 6. "Bluffs like gigantic sentinels" -- Excursus : George Bancroft and antebellum American historians -- 7. "The greatest epoch that has ever dawned" -- Excursus : John Dean Caton and antebellum American law -- Excursus : Cholera, C.B. Coventry, and antebellum medical science -- 8. "Going down this noblest of all rivers" -- 9. "We are on the way to the pacific" -- 10. "An angry, turbid, almost frightful looking stream" -- Excursus : The grand excursion and antebellum travel literature -- Epilogue -- Endnotes -- Index.

Summary:

"In June 1854, to celebrate completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River, the owners of the Chicago & Rock Island invited hundreds of shareholders, bondholders, notables, and fashionables to travel by rail to Rock Island, Illinois, and from there by steamboat to St. Anthony Falls in fledgling Minnesota ... Relying largely on the excursionists' own accounts of the roundtrip journey, Steven Keillor's portrait of a week in the lives of this microcosm of antebellum society captures the prevailing sectionalism, the railroad-driven economy, reform movements, the ongoing literary renaissance, westward expansion, the second-party system, the postmillennial optimism and pre-Darwinian religious fervor, the gradually changing notions of gender and class, and the romantic idealism of this period before realism"--jacket.

ISBN:

9781890434632 (alk. paper)
1890434639 (alk. paper)

LCCN:

2003024709

Locations:

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)

PNAX964 -- Northeast Iowa Community College Library - Calmar (Calmar)

UNUX074 -- University of Northern Iowa - Rod Library (Cedar Falls)

PLAX964 -- Luther College - Preus Library (Decorah)

ULAX314 -- Loras College Library (Dubuque)

UTAX314 -- Emmaus Bible College Library (Dubuque)

SCPC074 -- Hudson Public Library (Hudson)