JMS 375: Black

Print culture ranging from early works imported by colonists to later titles published on American soil on the eve of the Revolution and during the early republic. Almost every seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American title is represented. Subject strengths include Afro-Americana, agriculture, children's literature, education, eighteenth-century imprints, leisure and hobbies, Masonic works, medicine, religion, science and technology, the trades, and women's literature.

Titles documenting the growth and expansion of the United States during the Jacksonian era, from the aftermath of the Panic of 1819 through the Panic of 1837. Covers agriculture, entertainment, literary criticism, domestic arts, technology, medicine (both traditional and alternative), and politics.

Titles reveal a rapidly growing young nation where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities. Subjects covered in the collection reach into every facet of American life, including science, literature, medicine, agriculture, women’s fashion, family life, and religion.

While the Civil War is a focal point, the collection also offers a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war. More detailed subject matter includes psychiatry, gardening, freed African Americans, temperance, the Irish question, Freemasonry, the U.S. Postal Service, and dentistry.

Themes presented in this database reflect a nation that persevered through a most difficult set of circumstances: a bloody civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the incorporation of the recently freed African Americans into American life, and a population that rapidly expanded into the Western territories. Broad subject areas covered in the collection reach into every facet of American life, including science, literature, medicine, agriculture, women’s fashion, family life, and religion.