Thomas Hamblin (1800-1853) was arguably the most influential—and contradictory—figure in antebellum U.S. theater. An English actor and manager, he became synonymous with American working-class nativist culture. He transformed New York City’s Bowery Theatre from a failed venue for refined drama to what became known as “The House of Blood and...

In the fall of 1836, a fastidiously well-dressed New Yorker was elected President of the United States. One year later, the country was in the midst of a devastating economic depression, the forced removal of Native Americans from the southeastern states was in full swing, and the regime of slavery...

Historical writing in the eighteenth century has not received much attention from scholars of the period in recent years. Nevertheless, the long revolutionary era witnessed an unprecedented explosion of historical cultural production, both in the form of traditional histories and in other emerging cultural forms such as early American poetry...

In July 1861—just three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter—unabashed Southern sympathizer Rose O’Neal Greenhow of Washington, D.C., was already engaged in espionage on behalf of the Confederacy. Well-placed in Washington society—and adept at bleeding information from the many men who found her attractive—Greenhow learned that Union troops under...

The torso discovered on the bank of a pond just outside of Philadelphia was headless and limbless. The head had been severed at the fourth vertebra, one arm had been chopped off at the joint, the other cut crudely through the shoulder; the midsection had been sawed midway so that...