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This dissertation examines the ways that moneyed Philadelphians invented corporate power in America during the first four decades of the federal republic, specifically focusing on business corporations, such as canal companies and banks, and on a public corporation, Philadelphia's municipal government. Through evidence from company and municipal records and publications, the private papers and correspondence of corporate officers, newspapers, pamphlets, and legislative acts and proceedings, this study identifies the people and the technological and financial processes that contributed to the establishment and entrenchment of corporate economic and political power.;From the 1790s to the 1830s, Philadelphia-area residents demanded cheaper transportation, a better water supply, and more adequate credit facilities and financial institutions. The technical, legal, and monetary requirements of corporations that administered these projects served to increase their leverage in political and economic relations with other individuals and groups, allowing the few who controlled those institutions to exert power over space in unprecedented ways. The men who dominated those corporations justified this increased influence by successfully casting their own interests as being synonymous with those of the public at large. In addition, by the 1810s, a small group of Philadelphians recognized the centrality of transportation and banking to economic growth and coupled them to the corporate form to establish a forum at once withdrawn from public input yet able to exert power in public politics: the meeting-rooms of corporations run by men with close business and family ties.;Most significantly, this study argues that the creation of such a domain held serious consequences for the legacy of the American Revolution. Philadelphia corporations provided broader political and economic independence for more people than before the Revolution; indeed, these companies grew because of the great demand for their services and the freedoms they fostered. However, as corporate associates consolidated their hold over institutions they gained increasing command over what direction growth could take and how its rewards would be distributed. These phenomena contributed greatly to the transformation of America from a gentry-dominated society in the eighteenth century to the corporate-dominated one of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This dissertation traces the development of organizational forms and tactical doctrine in the Continental Army, the regular United States armed force in the War of American Independence. It investigates political, ideological, technological, economic, and strategic influences on the decisions made by the Continental Congress, George Washington, and other Army leaders. In the process it places the Continentals in a context of eighteenth century military science.;Individual colonies raised the first troops by drawing on their experiences in earlier wars, especially on the example of short-term Provincials supplementing the militia. Congress assumed national responsibility for the war on 14 June 1775 by establishing the Continental Army. During the next year the Army expanded to include units from every state (plus Canada), controlled by a network of territorial departments and subordinate commands. Administrative, logistical, and disciplinary systems and a staff were adapted from British Army usages.;Combat performance in 1776 convinced a majority in Congress that victory required a basic change of philosophy. It created a large army of infantry, artillery, and cavalry regiments raised for the duration of the war. The infantry regimental organization, first used in 1776, was a native development tailored to American conditions. In conjunction with the 1777 adoption of the excellent French military musket it emphasized the American advantage in individual marksmanship and was superior to British and German regiments in strength, efficiency, and flexibility. as a result of the Trenton campaign Washington introduced permanent tactical brigades capable of limited independent action.;The only significant argument over military policy occurred during the winter of 1777-1778. One element, more militant in its ideology, wished to revert to the ideal of a small regular force backed by the militia. Most Army leaders, including an influential contingent of foreign volunteers, proposed to retain the large army and make it more professional and sophisticated. Congress actually followed a course which came closer to Washington's views. New staff officers and specialists, particularly the Inspector General, and the adoption of a uniform drill dramatically improved the Army's fighting ability. In 1781 the Continentals, with important French aid, won a decisive victory at Yorktown. Washington sustained a high level of training to the end of the war and then disbanded the Army without undermining the political ideals of the Revolution.;The Continental Army triumphed in the War of American Independence because it judiciously blended American experience and new military concepts from Europe, particularly those advanced by French theorists, to create a sophisticated military machine tailored for combat in North America.

Deerskins formed an important trade in the southern half of British North America. From the last decades of the seventeenth century until the American Revolution, European traders and Indian hunters crossed the Southeast, exchanging European manufactures for American leather. During the same time period, the Indian trade intersected with the rising plantation culture of the southern colonies of South Carolina and Georgia.;Throughout its existence, the traffic in deerskins brought together peoples from Europe, America, and Africa. Although "impermanent" in the centuries-long history of post-contact America, the trade remained a fixture of southeastern life throughout periods of Indian-white hostility and European imperial warfare. Throughout these contests, traders from South Carolina and Georgia served as translators, diplomats, and informants.;Beginning with the establishment of Georgia and the trading town of Augusta in the 1730s, the trade followed the same route until the American Revolution in the 1770s. Enslaved African-American boatmen rowed European imports up the river and deerskin leather down. The town of Augusta stood as a monument to the power, influence, and ideology of the leading trading firms. The horse caravans that linked Augustans to their Indian clients followed a prescribed set of paths that remained open to all travelers and rendered all property personal and changeable. European stores in Indian villages conducted the bulk of the trade and allowed both sides to believe that they alone commanded the direction of cultural contact.;The elaborate process of moving skins and goods required a similarly elaborate code of behavior. The fluid relationships between Indians, Europeans, and Africans provided a remarkable amount of physical and cultural space for these three groups to find opportunities in the southeastern interior. The world they created ran as a powerful countercurrent to the general direction of southeastern history---a course that ran from Indian possession to white settlement to plantation slavery and the eventual rise of the cotton kingdom. Before the last could take hold, however, it had to consciously unmake the geography of the deerskin trade.

This study examines the life of Lucia True Ames Mead (1856-1936), one of the American peace movement's most effective publicists. Manuscript sources, including diaries, letters, and other personal papers, provided the necessary primary materials for this biography. Mrs. Mead also left a wide variety of published works, including seven books.;A teacher of adult courses in great literature before 1897, Mead joined the peace movement in 1897. She quickly became a leading participant at peace conferences and member of the major American peace organizations. She emerged as one of the movement's most effective publicists, travelling the United States year after year to spread the "gospel of peace." Her career spanned the pre and post-World War I peace movements. During World War I, she helped found the innovative Woman's Peace Party and later served as the national secretary of this organization.;This study of her ideas and activism reveals the important role played by a woman in a reform crusade dominated by men. She also disagreed with most of her male colleagues regarding the importance of generating mass support for pacifist doctrines. Few peace advocates wished to seek out supporters from among non-elites; but Mead not only called for such a campaign of public education, she devoted more energy to speaking to common people than any other peace activist of the period. She also wrote countless popular pieces for mass circulation journals and daily newspapers. Like all women of the era, she lacked access to the inner channels of policymaking in the United States. Thus, she chose to devote her own efforts to create grass roots support for the cause that commanded her attention. Beginning in the 1920s, most of the pacifist organizations, and most peace advocates of either gender, saw the wisdom in such a course of action.

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Born in 1786, Edward Coles came of age as Americans attempted to define this nation's character. Convinced of his generation's responsibility to ensure the survival of the republican experiment, Coles emerged from the College of William and Mary determined to assume a position of authority. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, he left Williamsburg persuaded that slavery was morally and ideologically wrong. Burdened by a conflict between a sense of duty to serve his nation and a commitment to eliminate slavery, Coles embarked on a public career that took him from the seat of national power in Washington City, to the rustic frontier of Illinois, and, finally, to the cosmopolitan city of Philadelphia.;Throughout his journey, his antislavery sensibility forced him to redefine his claim to authority. While serving as President James Madison's private secretary, Cole's participated in a national political culture that utilized elite networks to accomplish political business. Although he exercised considerable influence, he remained troubled by the slavery issue and decided to immigrate to the frontier, where he emancipated his enslaved property. to Coles's dismay, Illinois' commitment to freedom proved to be illusory. as he attempted to transform, his environment, he adopted democratic political tactics and, as governor, employed them to defeat a movement to legalize slavery. Those efforts, however, left him disillusioned with public service. Unwilling to accept his role as a displaced frontier elite, Coles moved east and settled in Philadelphia. There, the political crisis of the 1850s drew him back into the public arena. Determined to prevent a sectional crisis, Coles represented himself as the authority on the legacy of the American Revolution. Highlighting his intimate relationship with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, he attempted to recast the founding generation as antislavery statesmen who would have been outraged by the political developments of the antebellum era. Tragically, his efforts were unsuccessful and the nation plunged into civil war.;Edward Coles was emblematic of a generation of Americans who were alarmed by the democratic changes surrounding them, yet unable to prevent the erosion of elite authority those transformations engendered.

The purpose of this study is to review the creation and progress of the four Virginia waterways improvement companies which had their origins in the 1780s: the Potowmack Company, the James River Company, the Upper Appomattox Company, and the Dismal Swamp Canal Company. Primary research focused on company journals and family papers, legislative petitions, the annual reports of the Virginia Board of Public Works, and contemporary periodicals.;This study reveals that Virginians' approach to waterways improvements was simultaneously classical and liberal. The improvement advocates clung to an Opposition belief that a healthy republican polity depended on the existence of a class of small land owners who embodied the civic virtue a republic required of its citizenry. However, they also demonstrated a liberal understanding that commerce was the most effective means for cultivating in each individual the industriousness, frugality, and community concern on which virtuous behavior rested. Waterways improvements held out the promise of making undeveloped western land a more inviting option for prospective farmers, while extending commerce and its benefits out along with them.;Actually clearing the rivers, or in the case of the Dismal Swamp Canal Company, creating an entirely new waterway, proved far more difficult and expensive than the improvement advocates anticipated. The scale of waterways improvements prompted Virginia's leaders to provide an increasingly greater role for central authority, but only when situated in the state government, and to blur the distinction between public and private investment.;Once completed, the improved waterways dramatically increased traffic, as anticipated, but there were unanticipated consequences as well. The improvements inspired regional competition to capture the benefits of economic growth. White Virginians were deeply troubled by the increased number of black boatmen who were suspected of perpetrating crimes and abetting runaway slaves. and the companies appeared more interested in profits than well-maintained navigation.;If measured purely by profitability and corporate longevity, the companies were, by and large, failures. But such an evaluation is too simplistic. They were generally successful vehicles for advancing the state's internal improvement policy.