Frankly Speaking

In a brief retrospective piece she wrote near the end of her life, Meta Chestnutt Sager spoke about her thirty years of work as an education...

By her own account, Meta Chestnutt "was born on a plantation near Kinston" in "Lenoir County, North Carolina, September 8, 18...

Naturally, the language of well-known hymns made its way into the common speech of people who sang them. For example, in his series "On...

Two more hymns indicate that the language of "spreading the Lord's Table" remained current among the Churches of Christ and Ch...

Whatever the source of the idiom, British hymn writers popularized the language of "spreading the Lord's table" as a reference...

The Gilded Age (1865-c. 1900) brought a tremendous amount of change to American culture and society, including issues directly related to wo...

In an 1889 article titled "Information Wanted," E. G. Sewell responded to a question from "Wm. Jackson, Elk River Mills, Lime...

Across the nation, Americans heard about and condemned the crime at Sand Creek. The outcry could be heard in eastern North Carolina, where i...

The lyrics of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in November 1861, make clear that the Civ...

After the war, the powerful reform impulses stemming from the Second Great Awakening were no longer directed against slavery. At least some ...

Upon hearing the news of Sand Creek, citizens of Denver celebrated. When Chivington and his troops returned they were hailed as heroes. But ...

The discovery of gold in the Territory of Colorado in 1858 attracted thousands of prospectors and miners whom settlers called "Pike...