Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1945-1972

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Logo, US Department of State
Annotation

Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity, with material culled from Presidential libraries--including transcripts of tape recordings--and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of published volumes. For the Truman Administration, the site provides "1945-50, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment." Three volumes are available for the Eisenhower years, on American republics, Guatemala, and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Cyprus. The Kennedy Administration is represented by 25 volumes that cover, among other areas, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin crisis, and exchanges with Premier Khrushchev. A complete set of 34 volumes is available on the Johnson Administration, and 19 volumes currently are furnished from the Nixon Administration. Fifty-four volumes will eventually be available on the Nixon and Ford administrations. Useful volume summaries provide historical context. FRUS volumes for 1900-1918 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/) are described in a separate entry.

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

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Logo, AMDOCS
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Provides links to approximately 390 documents, most of which are related to the nation's political, diplomatic, military, and legal history. Arranged chronologically, the site begins with excerpts of Christopher Columbus' journal of 1492 and ends, at present, with President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 address announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq [update: documents reach from around 800 to 2007]. Includes speeches, statutes, treaties, court decisions, memoirs, diaries, letters, published books, and even a few songs. The site, created by Lynn Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas, is valuable especially for high school and college students who need easy access to many of the canonical documents in American history.

America's Shifting Western Frontier

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railroad engine, Cleveland, Ohio, 1874
Question

What was Ohio like during the Old West?

Answer

It depends on what you mean by “the Old West.”

In 1828 a newspaper editor in Columbia, SC, referred to Kentucky as the “wild West.” About the same time, a group of humor writers were producing stories about the “Southwest” referring to Kentucky, Arkansas, northern Mississippi, and Alabama. The stories certainly made the area seem wild: they often featured untamed boasting frontiersmen fighting one another with long knives, gouging out eyes, wrestling bears, and generally having themselves a wonderful time.

Even earlier, around 1800, the “West” referred to land that lay to the west of the Appalachian mountains and so would have included the territory that is now the state of Ohio. That territory was opened to settlement after the Revolutionary War as part of the Northwest Territory. In the territory’s early years, the state of Connecticut claimed the northern part of what is now Ohio, referred to as the “Western Reserve.”

If you mean, by the phrase “the Old West,” the years portrayed in Western movies, dime novels, and “those thrilling days of yesteryear” when settlers moved across the Great Plains toward the Rocky Mountains and beyond, then that refers, very roughly speaking, to the period between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.

Even at the beginning of the postwar period, Ohio had been thoroughly domesticated, in the sense that it was neither “wild” nor “West.” It was geographically part of the middle of the country and had been cleared for farmland for decades. Parts of the state were heavily industrialized, especially in the cities on and near Lake Erie (Toledo, Sandusky, Akron, Youngtown, and Cleveland) and the cities in the southwest part of the state (Dayton and Cincinnati) that depended on the Ohio River for transporting goods. This was the case even before the auto industry further transformed the commerce of the state (a network of railroads also crisscrossed Ohio by that time). According to the Federal Census, Ohio’s population in 1870 was a little over two and half million and by 1900 was four million, with most of the population being of German, Irish, English, Polish, and Italian ancestry.

For more information

R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Philip D. Jordan, Ohio Comes of Age: 1873-1900. Volume 5 of Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio. Columbus, Oh.: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1944.

George W. Knepper, Ohio and Its People. 3rd edition. Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 2003.

Bibliography

Grain elevator, “Operated by Union Railroad Elevator Company, Toledo, Ohio,” Calvert Lithographic Company, 1882. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

“Railroad engine.” W. J. Morgan, Cleveland, Ohio, 1874. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Dirt on Their Skirts

Description

This electronic field trip looks at pioneering women baseball players, owners, umpires, and teams from as early as 1866, all the way up to present-day women playing and working in baseball. The common thread running through the stories examined is the efforts of women and girls to be a part of America's national pastime: baseball.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that women once played professional baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), from 1943-1954. Founded by Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley as a method to entertain Americans and keep ball parks full during World War II, the league provided an unprecedented opportunity for young women to play professional baseball; see the country; and aspire to careers beyond the traditional female roles of teacher, secretary, nurse, librarian, or housewife.

Campbell House Museum [MO]

Description

Built in 1851, the first house in the elegant neighborhood Lucas Place, the Campbell House was the home of renowned fur trader and entrepreneur Robert Campbell and his family from 1854 until 1938. The museum contains hundreds of original Campbell possessions including furniture, paintings, clothing, letters, carriages, and a unique set of interior photographs taken in the mid-1880s.

The museum offers tours, educational programs, research library access, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Hearthstone Historic House Museum [WI]

Description

The Hearthstone Historic House Museum is located in Wisconsin, and holds the honor of being the first home in the world lit by hydroelectricity. Today, the home stands as a historic house museum, and is opne to visitors year round.

The home offers guided tours, the "discovery trunks" school outreach program, special events, and exhibits. The website offers a brief history of the home, visitor information, and information regarding upcoming events.

Historic Forestville [MN]

Description

Historic Forestville presents life in 1899 Forestville, Minnesota. Once a bustling trade center, in 1868 the Southern Minnesota Railroad built tracks elsewhere, bypassing the town and significantly impacting its economy. 31 years later, the town's 50 residents all worked for Thomas Meighen (1855-1936); and were paid in housing and store credit. The historic town is interpreted via living history docents, who depict the Meighens and their employees. Five historic structures remain on site: the store, Meighen home, barn, carriage barn, and granary. All crops on site are heirloom varieties and are open pollinated.

The site offers one-hour tours guided by living history figures, costumed interpreters, demonstrations, heirloom crops, and summer camps. The website offers historic photographs and a suggested reading list.

The Village Green Heritage Center [CA]

Description

The Village Green Heritage Center presents the history of the Palm Springs area, California. The center is located in two historic structures. The 1884 McCallum Adobe, built for the area's first permanent settler of European descent, houses vernacular items, textiles, Native American artifacts, artworks, and photographs. The 1893 Little House, built of used railroad ties, is set to period.

The center offers period rooms and exhibits.

American Literature on the Web

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Image, "Ralph Waldo Emerson"
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Provides thousands of links to information on and texts by more than 300 American writers from 1620 to the present. Users can search in five chronological periods for links to timelines, author's sites, related resources, music and visual arts, and "social contexts." Also contains specific categories for electronic text collections, U.S. History, American Studies, poetry, movements and genres, Southern literature, women writers, literary theory, reference works, and "minority literature/multi-cultural resources," including categories for African-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, and Latino/Latina writers. Authors represented include famous literary figures such as Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), Anna Bradstreet (ca. 1612-72), Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), Emily Dickinson (1830-86), and Ralph Ellison (1914-94); important public figures, such as William Byrd (1674-1744) and Frederick Douglass (1818-95); and lesser-known figures, such as John Woolman (1720-72) and Amelia Edith Barr (1831-1919).

Offers images of many writers, links in Japanese, a section devoted to Canadian authors, a master list of authors in alphabetical order, and "two site-specific search engines" for word searches of this site and others. Last updated in December 2001, many links are no longer operable; however, as a gateway, it offers an abundance of usable links in a well-designed format for those needing resources on American writers and their times.