Walter Prescott Webb
Walter Prescott Webb was an American historian noted for his groundbreaking work on the American West. As president of the Texas State Historical Association, he launched the project that produced the Handbook of Texas, he is noted for his early criticism of the water usage patterns in the region. Webb was reared on his family farm in Carthage in rural Panola Texas. After graduating from Ranger High School in Ranger in Eastland County, he earned a teaching certificate and taught at several Texas schools, he attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven. He worked as bookkeeper in San Marcos and optometrist's assistant in San Antonio in 1918 he was invited to join the history faculty at the University of Texas, he wrote his Master of Arts thesis on the Texas Rangers in 1920 and was encouraged to pursue his PhD. After a year of study at the University of Chicago, he returned to Austin, where he began a historical work on the West.
The result of this work was The Great Plains, published in 1931, hailed as great breakthrough in the interpretation of the history of the region, declared the outstanding contribution to American history since World War I by the Social Science Research Council in 1939. He was awarded his PhD for his work on The Great Plains in the year after its publication. In 1939-1946 he served as president of the Texas State Historical Association. During his tenure as president, he launched a project to produce an encyclopedia of Texas, subsequently published in 1952 as the Handbook of Texas; the world wide web version of the work is a popular Internet reference tool on the state. In all, Webb edited more than 20 books. One of them, The Texas Rangers was considered the definitive study of the legendary Texas Rangers and its Captain Bill McDonald. In 1958 Webb served as president of the American Historical Association. Webb's father-in-law was the Confederate States Army veteran and Austin, Texas-based photographer William J. Oliphant.
Webb was killed in an automobile accident near Austin. He was interred at Texas State Cemetery in Austin on the proclamation of Governor John B. Connally, Jr. At the time of his death he was working on a television series on American civilization under a grant from the Ford Foundation. In his honor the University of Texas established the Walter Prescott Webb Chair of History and Ideas; the position is held by A. G. Hopkins. Webb Middle School in Austin, Texas is named after him. Rundell has examined Webb's main books to see what inspired and prompted the writing of each, what the purpose and message of each seems to be, Webb's emergent philosophy of history; the professional reception of these studies was considered. The message of The Great Plains is contained in its subtitle'A Study in Institutions and Environment.' Its primary purpose was to present representative ideas about the region rather than to write its history. Webb called the settled area of Europe'the Metropolis' and the rest of the world'the Great Frontier', claiming that "the Great Plains environment... constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders", pointing to the revolver, barbed wire, the windmill as essential to its settlement.
He claims that the 98th meridian constitutes an "institutional fault", with "practically every institution, carried across it... either broken and remade or else altered". The book was hailed as one of the top contributions to Am. history since World War I by the Social Science Research Council in 1939. Webb's The Texas Rangers was a pungent and learned treatment of a frontier institution, but is regarded by many modern historians as an apologia for border violence perpetuated by Rangers against Mexican-Americans; the economic domination of the North, through the tariff, Civil War pensions, patent monopolies, the development of the centralized economy dominated by 200 major corporations was the theme of Divided We Stand. More Water for Texas popularized and vitalized a federal study of what he regarded as the most serious problem of his state; the Webb thesis focused on the fragility of the Western environment, pointing out the aridity of the territory and the dangers of an industrialized West.
In 1951 Webb published The Great Frontier, proposing the Boom Hypothesis, that the new lands discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 ran out by 1900, closing the frontier and giving the U. S. economic and ecological problems, threatening the future of individualism and democracy. The book caused a firestorm of controversy. O'Har shows that in his classic interdisciplinary history of the post-Civil War West, Webb develops dominant characteristics of the Great Plains – treelessness, level terrain, semiaridity – and examines effect on the lives of people from different environments. To succeed, pioneers made radical readjustments in their way of life, eschewed traditions, altered social institutions. Webb believed what set the Great Plains apart from other regions was its individualism, innovation and lawlessness, themes he derived from the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, his focus is said to have missed the emergence of a national empire, others criticize him for failing to acknowledge the roles played by women and Mexicans.
Webb was an esteemed historian when he wrote an article in the May 1957 edition of Harper's entitled "The American West, Perpetual Mirage". In the article
Orin Grant Libby
Orin Grant Libby was an American historian. Libby was the son of his wife Julia Libby; as well as farming, his father held several local government positions, worked in several skilled crafts. In 1886, Libby received a diploma from River Falls State Normal School, taught in high schools until 1890, when he entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a junior, he received a bachelor's degree from Winconsin in 1892, stayed to continue his studies in history. In 1893, he submitted a master's thesis with an emphasis on economic history entitled “De Witt Clinton and the Erie Canal — A State Enterprise.” He received a Ph. D. at Wisconsin in 1895, his dissertation being entitled The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution 1787–8. His dissertation examined the economics and geography behind the voting patterns for the Constitution. An influential advisor was Frederick Jackson Turner. Afterward, he continued at Wisconsin as an instructor, as a historical researcher seeking to apply the methodology of physical and biological sciences to his studies of Congressional voting patterns.
Although Libby's Ph. D. dissertation made a strong positive impression on Turner, their relationship was cordial, Turner began to question his former student's abilities, their interaction became contentious. Libby was denied an assistant professorship, in 1902 he was obligated to leave Wisconsin. One factor in the decision to terminate his career at Wisconsin was his devotion to ornithological research. While at Wisconsin, in 1900 he married Eva Gertrude Cory; the marriage yielded two children. He continued his interest in ornithology for the rest of his life, he moved on to become an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota. There he worked on studies of the history of North Dakota, among which were studies of the history of Native Americans. One of the latter studies, The Arikara Narrative of the Campaign against the Hostile Dakotas, June 1876, won their praise, he helped found the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, was president of it for a year. Controversy with other UND faculty resulted in his dismissal in the 1920s, but alumni pressure kept him in his position.
The history department divided into a department on American history, which Libby headed, a department of European history. After his retirement in 1945, the two departments merged into one again. Shortly before his retirement, he resigned as secretary to the state historical society and ceased editing the North Dakota Historical Quarterly, two long-time endeavors. Libby, Orin Grant. "The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution 1787–8". Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin: 1–116
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U. S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Monroe County History Center, Bloomington is known as the "Gateway to Scenic Southern Indiana." The city was established in 1818 by a group of settlers from Kentucky, the Carolinas, Virginia who were so impressed with "a haven of blooms" that they called it Bloomington. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census; the city's population was estimated at 84,067 as of July 2016 by the U. S. Census Bureau. Bloomington is the home to Indiana University Bloomington. Established in 1820, IU Bloomington has 49,695 students, as of September 2016, is the original and largest campus of Indiana University. Most of the campus buildings are built of Indiana limestone. Bloomington is the home of the Indiana University School of Education, Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University Press, the Kelley School of Business, the Kinsey Institute, the Stone Age Institute, the Indiana University School of Optometry, the Indiana University School of Informatics and Engineering.
Bloomington has been designated a Tree City for 32 years, as of 2015. The city was the location of the Academy Award–winning 1979 movie Breaking Away, featuring a reenactment of Indiana University's annual Little 500 bicycle race. Monroe County's famous limestone quarries are featured in the movie. Bloomington was platted in 1818. A post office has been in operation at Bloomington since 1825. Bloomington was incorporated in 1827; the Elias Abel House, Blair-Dunning House, Bloomington City Hall, Bloomington West Side Historic District, Cantol Wax Company Building, Coca-Cola Bottling Plant, Cochran-Helton-Lindley House, Courthouse Square Historic District, Hinkle-Garton Farmstead, Home Laundry Company, Illinois Central Railroad Freight Depot, Johnson's Creamery, Legg House, Millen House, Millen-Chase-McCalla House, Monroe Carnegie Library, Monroe County Courthouse, Morgan House, J. L. Nichols House and Studio, North Washington Street Historic District, The Old Crescent, Princess Theatre, Prospect Hill Historic District, Second Baptist Church, Seminary Square Park, Steele Dunning Historic District, University Courts Historic District, Vinegar Hill Historic District, Wicks Building, Woolery Stone Company, Andrew Wylie House are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to the 2010 census, Bloomington has a total area of 23.359 square miles, of which 23.16 square miles is land and 0.199 square miles is water. Southern Indiana receives an abundance of rain, with a yearly average of nearly 45 inches. Bloomington is an area of irregular limestone terrain characterized by sinks, fissures, underground streams, sinking streams and caves, it is situated in the rolling hills of southern Indiana, resting on the intersection of the Norman Uplands and the Mitchell Plain. The varied topography of the city provides a sharp contrast to the flatter terrain more typical of central to northern portions of Indiana. Bloomington is located on a comparatively high ground, the summit of the divide between the basins of the West Fork and East Fork of Indiana's White River. Accordingly, there are no major watercourses within the city, nor is much groundwater available for wells; the largest stream within the city itself is Clear Creek, with its eastern branch known on the Indiana University campus as Jordan River.
Due to the absence of either natural lakes or rivers or groundwater in or near the city, a number of dams have been constructed on nearby creeks over the last 100 years to provide for the water needs of Bloomington and Monroe County. Early 20th-century damming projects occurred at a number of locations southwest of the city, the most notable of them being the Leonard Springs Dam. Due to the limestone formations underlying the reservoirs and the dams, water kept seeping from the reservoirs through developing underground channels. Despite all efforts, the city was never able to stop the leakage, had to resort to pumping leaking water back to the reservoir. By the 1920s, a more radical solution was needed to deal with the water crisis. A new reservoir, known as Griffy Lake, was constructed in a more geologically suitable area north of the city. In the 1950s, two much larger reservoirs, Lake Lemon and Lake Monroe were created in the northeastern and southeastern parts of Monroe County. Monroe Lake was created by the US Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, but has since been used to supply the city and the county with water.
The water pumping station at Griffy Lake has been mothballed. PCB pollution, associated with Westinghouse's operations, long was a concern in the area. A number of sites, in particular, Bennett's Dump and Lemon Lane Landfill at the northwestern edge of the city and Neal's Landfill in the county, were listed as Superfund sites. Clean-up operations at the Bennett Quarry site, started in 1983, were completed by 2000. While cleanups at the other sites were completed in 2012. Bloomington is the principal city of the Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area, a metropolitan area that covers Greene and Owen counties and had a combined population of 175,506 at the 2000 census; as of the 2010 census, there were 80,405 people, 31,425 households, 11,267 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,471.7 inhabitants per square mile. There were 33,239 housing units at an average density of 1,435.2 per square mile (554.1/k
History of the United States
The history of the United States, a country in North America began with the settlement of Indigenous people before 15,000 BC. Numerous cultures formed; the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the year of 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies formed after 1600. By the 1760s, thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of new taxes after 1765, rejecting the colonists' argument that new taxes needed their approval. Tax resistance the Boston Tea Party, led to punitive laws by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts. Armed conflict began in 1775. In 1776 in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress declared the independence of the colonies as the United States of America. Led by General George Washington, it won the Revolutionary War with large support from France; the peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River.
The Articles of Confederation established a central government, but it was ineffectual at providing stability, as it could not collect taxes and had no executive officer. A convention in 1787 wrote a new Constitution, adopted in 1789. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. With Washington as the first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief adviser, a strong central government was created. Purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 doubled the size of the United States. A second and final war with Britain was fought in 1812. Encouraged by the notion of manifest destiny, U. S. territory expanded all the way to the Pacific coast. While the United States was large in terms of area, its population in 1790 was only 4 million. However, it grew reaching 7.2 million in 1810, 32 million in 1860, 76 million in 1900, 132 million in 1940, 321 million in 2015. Economic growth in terms of overall GDP was greater; however compared to European powers, the nation's military strength was limited in peacetime before 1940.
The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit from the institution from production of cotton. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery. Seven Southern slave states created the foundation of the Confederacy, its attack of Fort Sumter against the Union forces started the Civil War. Confederate defeat led to the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction Era and voting rights were extended to freed slaves; the national government emerged much stronger, because of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white Democrats regained their power in the South in 1877 by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, new disfranchising constitutions that prevented most African Americans and many poor whites from voting.
This continued until gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and passage of federal legislation to enforce constitutional rights were made. The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the Northeast and Midwest and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe; the national railroad network was completed and large-scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Mass dissatisfaction with corruption and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s, which led to many reforms including the 16th to 19th constitutional amendments, which brought the federal income tax, direct election of Senators and women's suffrage. Neutral during World War I, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 and funded the Allied victory the following year. Women obtained the right to vote in 1920, with Native Americans obtaining citizenship and the right to vote in 1924.
After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs, which included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage; the New Deal defined modern American liberalism. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States entered World War II and financed the Allied war effort and helped defeat Nazi Germany in the European theater, its involvement culminated in using newly invented nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities to defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific theater. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers in the aftermath of World War II. During the Cold War, the two countries confronted each other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns; the purpose of this was to stop the spread of communism.
In the 1960s, in large part due to the strength of the Civil Rights Movement, another wave of social reforms was enacted by enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African-Americans and other racial minorities. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. Its source is Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and it flows south for 2,320 miles to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U. S. two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is within the United States; the Mississippi ranks as the fifteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Native Americans have lived along its tributaries for thousands of years. Most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies; the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the native way of life as first explorers settlers, ventured into the basin in increasing numbers.
The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, the early United States, as a vital transportation artery and communications link. In the 19th century, during the height of the ideology of manifest destiny, the Mississippi and several western tributaries, most notably the Missouri, formed pathways for the western expansion of the United States. Formed from thick layers of the river's silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile regions of the United States. During the American Civil War, the Mississippi's capture by Union forces marked a turning point towards victory, due to the river's strategic importance to the Confederate war effort; because of substantial growth of cities and the larger ships and barges that replaced steamboats, the first decades of the 20th century saw the construction of massive engineering works such as levees and dams built in combination. A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya River and bypassing New Orleans.
Since the 20th century, the Mississippi River has experienced major pollution and environmental problems – most notably elevated nutrient and chemical levels from agricultural runoff, the primary contributor to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, Misi-ziibi. In the 18th century, the river was the primary western boundary of the young United States, since the country's expansion westward, the Mississippi River has been considered a convenient if approximate dividing line between the Eastern and Midwestern United States, the Western United States; this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase "Trans-Mississippi" as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, it is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, such as "the highest peak east of the Mississippi" or "the oldest city west of the Mississippi". The FCC uses it as the dividing line for broadcast call-signs, which begin with W to the east and K to the west, mixing together in media markets along the river.
The Mississippi River can be divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, the river from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River. The Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri, it is divided into two sections: The headwaters, 493 miles from the source to Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca, 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, Minnesota; the name "Itasca" was chosen to designate the "true head" of the Mississippi River as a combination of the last four letters of the Latin word for truth and the first two letters of the Latin word for head. However, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, the waterway's flow is moderated by 43 dams. Fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation.
The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all contain locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river. Taken as a whole, these 43 dams shape the geography and influence the ecology of the upper river. Beginning just below Saint Paul and continuing throughout the upper and lower river, the Mississippi is further controlled by thousands of wing dikes that moderate the river's flow in order to maintain an open navigation channel and prevent the river from eroding its banks; the head of navigation on the Mississippi is the Coon Rapids Dam in Minnesota. Before it was built in 1913, steamboats could go upstream as far as Saint Cloud, depending on river conditions; the uppermost lock and dam on the Upper Mississippi River is the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock an
Koelreuteria paniculata
Koelreuteria paniculata is a species of flowering plant in the family Sapindaceae, native to eastern Asia, in China and Korea. It was introduced in Europe 1747, to America in 1763, has become a popular landscape tree worldwide. Common names include pride of India, China tree, or varnish tree, it is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree growing to 7 m tall, with a dome-shaped crown. The leaves are pinnate, 15–40 cm long to 50 cm, with 7-15 leaflets 3–8 cm long, with a serrated margin; the flowers are yellow, with growing in large terminal panicles 20 -- 40 cm long. The fruit is a three-parted inflated bladderlike pod 3–6 cm long and 2–4 cm broad, green ripening orange to pink in autumn, containing several dark brown to black seeds 5–8 mm diameter. There are two varieties: K. paniculata var. paniculata. Northern China and Korea. Leaves single-pinnate. K. paniculata var. apiculata Rehder. Western China, intergrading with var. paniculata in central China. Leaves with larger leaflets bipinnate, it is popularly grown as an ornamental tree in temperate regions all across the world because of the aesthetic appeal of its flowers and seed pods.
Several cultivars have been selected for garden planting, including'Fastigiata' with a narrow crown, and'September Gold', flowering in late summer. In the UK The cultivar ‘Coral Sun’ has gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit; the seeds are edible when roasted, but not consumed. In some areas, notably the eastern United States and in Florida, it is considered an invasive species. Plants for a Future: Koelreuteria paniculata Koelreuteria paniculata images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
