The manliest man : Samuel G. Howe and the contours of nineteenth-century American reform / James W. Trent Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trent, James W., Jr., 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Howe, S. G. (Samuel Gridley), 1801-1876.

Howe, S. G.

Philanthropists--United States--Biography.

Philanthropists.

History.

United States.

Social reformers--United States--Biography.

Social reformers.

Physicians--United States--Biography.

Physicians.

United States--History--19th century.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 325 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2012]

Summary:

He was a veteran of the Greek War of Independence, a fervent abolitionist, and the founder of both the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children. Married to Julia Ward Howe, author of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," he counted among his friends Senator Charles Summer, public school advocate Horace Mann, and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A committed reformer, Howe believed in the perfectibility of human beings and spoke out in favor of progressive services for disabled Americans. He embraced a notion of manliness that included heroism under fire but also compassion for the underdog and the oppressed. Though hardly a man without flaws and failures, he nevertheless represented the optimism that characterized much of antebellum American reform.

The first full-length biography of Howe in more than fifty years, The Manliest Man offers an original view of his personal life, his association with social causes of his time, and his efforts to shape those causes in ways that allowed for the greater inclusion of devalued people in the mainstream of American life. Book jacket.

Contents:

"A respectable, if ordinary boyhood"

"Greece! Greece!

I thought no land

could ever look more sweetly"

"The Cadmus of the blind"

A phrenologist and a superintendent

Private lives, public causes

For free soil and free men

War, freedmen, and Crete

Santo Domingo : the perpetual summer.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781558499584

155849958X

9781558499591

1558499598

OCLC:

768167116