The Human Tradition in America from the Colonial Era through Reconstruction is a collection of the best biographical sketches from several volumes in SR Books' popular Human Tradition in America Series. Compiled by Series Editor Charles W. Calhoun, this book brings American history to life by illuminating the lives of ordinary Americans. This examination of common individuals helps personalize the nation's past in a way that examining only broad concepts and forces cannot. By including a wide range of people with respect to ethnicity, race, gender and geographic region, Prof. Calhoun has developed a text that highlights the diversity of the American experience.
MARLA R. MILLER, a historian of early American women and work, has made a career uncovering the lives of women who left little in the way of a documentary record. Her books include
Betsy Ross and the Making of America. She is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and directs the Public History program there. She has won the Organization of American Historians’ Lerner- Scott Prize for the best dissertation in Women’s History and the 1998 Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Colonial History.
STEVEN E. WOODWORTH is Associate Professor of History at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia. He is the author of Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (1990), Davis and Lee at War (1995), and Leadership and Command in the American Civil War (1995).
Ethan S. Rafuse is Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, USA.
Charles W. Calhoun is a professor of history at East Carolina University. A former National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, Calhoun is the author or editor of four books, including The Gilded Age, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He lives in Greenville, North Carolina.