# data[].attributes.body
Genesis 11:1-9

# data[].attributes.body
Native Americans likely came to the Americas over a land bridge that formed during the Ice Age.

Their earliest known ancestors are the Paleo-Indians.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
American Indian, or Native American or Amerindian or indigenous American, Any member of the various aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the Eskimos (Inuit) and the Aleuts. Though the term "Native American" is today often preferred to "American Indian," particularly in the U.S., many Native American peoples continue to prefer American Indian (or Indian). In Canada the name First Nation is preferred. The ancestors of the American Indians were nomadic hunters of northeast Asia who migrated over the Bering Strait land bridge into North America probably during the last glacial period (11,500-30,000 years ago). By c. 10,000 bc they had occupied much of North, Central, and South America. See also Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) culture; Andean civilization; Clovis complex; Folsom complex; Hohokam culture; Hopewell culture; Mesoamerican civilization; Mississippian culture; Mogollon culture; Northeast Indian; Northwest Coast Indian; Plains Indian; Pueblo Indian; Southeast Indian; Southwest Indian; Woodland culture.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
American Indian, or Native American or Amerindian or indigenous American, Any member of the various aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the Eskimos (Inuit) and the Aleuts. Though the term "Native American" is today often preferred to "American Indian," particularly in the U.S., many Native American peoples continue to prefer American Indian (or Indian).

# data[].attributes.body
Time Period Facts:
1. Oral literature: epic narratives, creation myths, stories, poems, songs
2. Use stories to teach moral lessons and convey practical information about the natural world
3. Deep respect for wildlife
4. Cyclical worldview
5. Figurative language/parallelism.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God and their everyday lives.
2. Sought to "purify" the church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament.
3. Saw religion as a personal, inner experience.
4. Believed in original sin and "elect" who would be saved.
5. Used a plain style of writing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The English arrive at Jamestown.
NPS Image

On December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I. The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America.

The site for Jamestown was picked for several reasons, all of which met criteria the Virginia Company, who funded the settlement, said to follow in picking a spot for the settlement. The site was surrounded by water on three sides (it was not fully an island yet) and was far inland; both meant it was easily defensible against possible Spanish attacks. The water was also deep enough that the English could tie their ships at the shoreline - good parking! The site was also not inhabited by the Native population.

Once the spot was chosen the instructions sent by the Virginia Company, with the list of the council members (chosen by officials in England), was read. The names were kept in a sealed box on the ship (each ship had a sealed copy). The first President of the new Virginia colony was to be Edward Maria Winfield. The other six council members were: Bartholomew Gosnold, Christopher Newport, John Martin, John Ratcliffe, George Kendall, and John Smith.

By June 15, the fort was completed. It was triangle shaped with a bulwark at each corner, holding four or five pieces of artillery. The settlers were now protected against any attacks that might occur from the local Powhatan Indians, whose hunting land they were living on. Relations had already been mixed between the newcomers and the Powhatan Indians. On June 22, Captain Newport left for England to get more supplies for the new settlement.

Not long after Captain Newport left, the settlers began to succumb to a variety of diseases. They were drinking water from the salty or slimy river, which was one of several things that caused the death of many. The death tolls were high. They were dying from swellings, fluxes, fevers, by famine, and sometimes by wars. Food was running low, though then Chief Powhatan starting to send gifts of food to help the English. If not for the Powhatan Indians help in the early years, the settlement would most likely have failed, as the English would have died from the various diseases or simply starved.

By late 1609, the relationship between the Powhatan Indians and the English had soured as the English were demanding too much food during a drought. That winter of 1609-10 is known as the "Starving Time." During that winter the English were afraid to leave the fort, due to a legitimate fear of being killed by the Powhatan Indians. As a result they ate anything they could: various animals, leather from their shoes and belts, and sometimes fellow settlers who had already died. By early 1610 most of the settlers, 80-90% according to William Strachey, had died due to starvation and disease.

In May 1610, shipwrecked settlers who had been stranded in Bermuda finally arrived at Jamestown. Part of a fleet sent the previous fall, the survivors used two boats built on Bermuda to get to Jamestown. Sir Thomas Gates, the newly named governor, found Jamestown in shambles with the palisades of the fort torn down, gates off their hinges, and food stores running low. The decision was made to abandon the settlement. Less than a day after leaving, however, Gates and those with him, including the survivors of the "Starving Time," were met by news of an incoming fleet. The fleet was bringing the new governor for life, Lord Delaware. Gates and his party returned to Jamestown.

Harvesting Tobacco.
NPS Image

In 1612, John Rolfe, one of many shipwrecked on Bermuda, helped turn the settlement into a profitable venture. He introduced a new strain of tobacco from seeds he brought from elsewhere. Tobacco became the long awaited cash crop for the Virginia Company, who wanted to make money off their investment in Jamestown.

On July 30, 1619, newly appointed Governor Yeardley called for the first representative legislative assembly. This was the beginning of representative government in what is now the United States of America.

In that same year, the first documented Africans were forcibly captured and brought to Virginia to work the tobacco fields. It is contested whether, at the time, these people were considered indentured servants or enslaved peoples however, historical evidence suggests they were often treated in a manner that more closely resembles enslavement as we understand it today.

Also in 1619, the Virginia Company recruited and shipped over about 90 women to become wives and start families in Virginia, something needed to establish a permanent colony. Over one hundred women, who brought or started families, had arrived in prior years, but 1619 was when establishing families became a primary focus.

Peace between the Powhatan Indians and the English, brought about by the conversion and marriage of Pocahontas (kidnapped by the English in 1613) and John Rolfe in 1614, ended in 1622. In March of that year the paramount chief, then Opechancanough, planned a coordinated attack against the English settlements. He was tired of the English encroachment on Powhatan lands. Jamestown escaped being attacked, due to a warning from a Powhatan boy living with the English. During the attack 350-400 of the 1,200 settlers were killed. After the attack, the Powhatan Indians withdrew, as was their way, and waited for the English to learn their lesson or pack up and leave. Once the English regrouped they retaliated and there was fighting between the two peoples for ten years, until a tenuous peace was reached in 1632.

On May 24, 1624, the Virginia Company's charter was revoked by King James I due to overwhelming financial problems and politics, and Virginia became a royal colony, which it remained until the Revolutionary War. This shift in control did not change the English policy towards the Powhatan Indians. Despite peace being declared in 1632, English encroachments on Powhatan lands continued undiminished as more settlers arrived in the Colony.

In April 1644, Opechancanough planned another coordinated attack, which resulted in the deaths of another 350-400 of the 8,000 settlers. The attack ended when Opechancanough was captured in 1646, taken to Jamestown, and shot in the back by a guard - against orders - and killed. His death brought an eventual death to the Powhatan Chiefdom; it was reduced to tributary status. His successor signed the first treaties with the English, which made the Powhatan Indians subjects of the English.

Bacon's Rebellion.
NPS Image

Bacon's Rebellion, in 1676, saw more struggles in Jamestown. The settlers were unhappy about their tobacco being sold only to English merchants due to the Navigation Acts, high taxes, and attacks on outlying plantations by American Indians on the frontiers. Nathaniel Bacon got about 1,000 settlers to join him and take care of the "Indian Problem." Bacon forced Governor Berkeley to give him an official commission to attack the American Indians to blame. Bacon and his followers, however, did not differentiate between those tribes responsible for the attacks and those who were loyal to the English. Governor Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel and civil war erupted in the colony. In September, Bacon and his followers set fire to Jamestown, destroying 16 to 18 houses, the church and the statehouse. Not long after, in October, the Rebellion began its end with the death of Nathaniel Bacon of the "bloody flux." Eventually, many of the rebels were captured and 23 were hanged by Governor Berkeley.

As a result of Bacon's Rebellion, another treaty was signed between the English and the Virginia Indians. More tribes were part of this treaty than the one of 1646. The treaty set up more reservation lands and reinforced a yearly tribute payment of fish and game that the tribes had to make to the English.

In 1698, fire struck Jamestown again. The fire was evidently started by a prisoner awaiting execution in the nearby prison. The fire destroyed the prison and the statehouse, though many of the public records were saved. In 1699, the government and capital were moved from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, renamed Williamsburg. People continued to live on Jamestown Island and owned farm lands, but it ceased to be a town.

Today, Jamestown Island is a historic site, though there is still a private residence on the island. It is preserved by the National Park Service and Preservation Virginia for visitors to learn about the importance of Jamestown and what was born out of its being the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Bibliography

Egloff, Keith and Deborah Woodward. First People: The Early Indians of Virginia. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1992.

Haile, Edward Wright (editor). Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony: The First Decade: 1607-1617. Chaplain: Roundhouse, 1998.

McCartney, Martha W. Jamestown: An American Legacy. Hong Kong: Eastern National, 2001.

Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 2003.

Kelso, William M. and Beverly Straube. Jamestown Rediscovery 1994-2004. Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, 2004.

Wood, Karenne (editor). Charlottesville: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2007.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Short History of Jamestown - Historic Jamestowne Part of Colonial National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I.

# data[].attributes.body
By William Bradford

# data[].attributes.headline
1741 - Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God

# data[].attributes.subject
1741 - Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God

# data[].attributes.body
By Jonathan Edwards

# data[].attributes.headline
1750-1800: Revolutionary War, Rationalism, "The Age of Reason", or "The Enlightenment"

# data[].attributes.subject
1750-1800: Revolutionary War, Rationalism, "The Age of Reason", or "The Enlightenment"

# data[].attributes.body
Period Characteristics:
1. Mostly comprised of philosophers, scientists, writing speeches and pamphlets.
2. Human beings can arrive at truth (God's rules) by using deductive reasoning, rather than relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or intuition.

# data[].attributes.body
The Revolutionary War, also called the American War of Independence, lasted 8 years. Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga were some of the locations of the primary battles of the war.

https://facts.net/history/historical-events/revolutionary-war-facts/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Synonym: American War of Independence

2. Duration: 8 years (1775 - 1783)

3. Sides: British vs. Colonists

4. Location: North America, Europe, India

5. Causes: Taxes, rebellion, violence

6. Battles: Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Quebec

7. Winners: USA and their allies

8. Movies: John Adams, April Morning, The Patriot, The Crossing

9. Type: Independence war

10. Commanders: George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Sir William Hove, Thomas Gage

1. Beginning: The War Officially Started near Boston on April 19, 1775

2. Involvement: Revolutionary War Was Actually a World War

3. Casualties: The War May Have Claimed over 100,000 Lives

4. Commander: George Washington Was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army

5. Sides: Native Americans and Loyalists Fought on the British Side

6. Alliances: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin Established Alliances That Helped Win the War

7. British. Howe, H. Clinton and G. Carleton Were British Commanders-in-Chief during the War

8. Documents: The Declaration of Independence is the Most Important Document of the War

9. Unity: Only 40 - 45% of Colonists Supported the Rebellion

10. End: The Treaty of Paris in 1783 Officially Ended the Revolutionary War

1. George Washington Put Down the Newburgh Conspiracy Rebellion Himself

2. The First Military Submarine Was Used during the Revolutionary War

3. Benedict Arnold Was an Important Asset of the Colonists

4. Believe It or Not, Women Also Fought in the Continental Army

5. George Washington Was Apparently the Greatest Man in the World

6. There Was a Sequel to the Boston Tea Party

7. The Word "Independence" Never Appears in the Declaration of Independence

8. Continental Congress Hired Pirates to Attack British Ships

9. Mel Gibson's Character in The Patriot Was Inspired by Real Patriots

10. The Famous Battle of Bunker Hill Was Actually Fought on Breed's Hill

Revolutionary War Facts Infographics

The War Officially Started near Boston on April 19 1775

Revolutionary War facts reveal that the war's first military conflicts started in the towns of Lexington and Concord on the morning of April 19. Prior to that, there were two other violent incidents in Boston: the 1770 Boston Massacre, where British soldiers killed 5 civilians on King Street (today known as State Street), and the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where a few members of the secret society Sons of Liberty destroyed an entire British shipment of tea. Neither of these two incidents were officially a part of the war, but they created tensions that gradually escalated to war in April 1775.

Revolutionary War Was Actually a World War

Although it was primarily an independence war of 13 American colonies against the Kingdom of Great Britain, fought in North America, it escalated to include various other parts of the world. France and Spain were the Colonists' main allies, backed-up by the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Mysore, while Britain was aided mostly by Germans and the natives of North America. The battles were fought on the land and in the waters of North America, Europe, Africa, India and the Caribbean.

Read also: 50 Surprising Boston Tea Party Facts They Didnt Teach You in Class

The War May Have Claimed over 100,000 Lives

As was the case with most wars of the era, the Revolutionary War saw more deaths caused by disease than actual combat. Around 7,000 Americans were killed in battle, together with 10,000 French and 5,000 Spanish soldiers. On the other side, about 6,000 British soldiers died in combat, along with 1,800 Germans. But if deaths outside of direct combat are included, the number may surpass the 100,000 victims mark, depending on the estimates used. The estimates vary greatly, ranging from 25,000 to 70,000 Americans killed, and 40,000 to 50,000 British.

George Washington Was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army

After the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress created the Continental Army on June 14 1775. George Washington, veteran of the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1758, was appointed General and Commander-in-chief of the army, which, on average, consisted of about 15,000 soldiers through the years of war. After 8 years of combat and the victory of the Thirteen Colonies and its allies, the Continental Army was disbanded and replaced by the United States Army in 1784. George Washington became the first President of the USA in 1789.

Native Americans and Loyalists Fought on the British Side

Although some Native Americans fought on the Colonists' side, most (about 13,000) of those who were directly involved in the war fought for the British side. This led to a few splits inside native tribes, most notably among the Mohawk. The majority of Native Americans were joined by at least 25,000 Loyalists who were also against the revolution and remained loyal to the British Crown. It is estimated that about 60,000 Loyalists immigrated to the US during and after the war.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin Established Alliances That Helped Win the War

Two famous Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who later became the 3rd President of the USA, and Benjamin Franklin were the driving forces behind alliances with big European nations that helped the Colonists win the war. They helped establish alliances with France, which was indirectly involved in the war since 1776; Spain, which joined the war in 1779; and the Dutch Republic, which officially entered the war in 1780.

W. Howe, H. Clinton and G. Carleton Were British Commanders-in-Chief during the War

According to Revolutionary War facts, Sir William Howe was the first of them, serving from September 1775 until May 1778. He was in charge of the Boston siege and won the famous Battle of Bunker Hill, but was later involved in the poor British planning of the Saratoga campaign, consequently inviting France to officially join the war on the Colonists' side.

In 1778, he was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton, who successfully won the Siege of Charleston in 1780, but eventually greatly contributed to the British defeat in the Siege of Yorktown.

The last of the British Commanders-in-Chief, Sir Guy Carleton, initially serving as the Governor of Quebec, was appointed in May 1782, but by then the Colonists were well on their way to victory. One of his major roles as the Commander-in-chief of the British forces was to supervise the final evacuation of the British troops.

The Declaration of Independence is the Most Important Document of the War

The Declaration of Independence is the most important document in the entire history of the USA as well. The 13 Colonies (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) announced their independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain with this document, effectively forming a new nation: the Unites States of America.

The main driving force behind the Declaration was John Adams (later becoming the second President of the USA), but it was mostly written by Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the USA). It was unanimously approved on July 2 1776, but officially confirmed by the Second Continental Congress on July 4 1776 - the day which is today still commemorated as the Independence Day across the USA.

Read also: 20 Black History Month Facts Cause Origin Celebrations

Only 40 - 45% of Colonists Supported the Rebellion

Although the joint efforts and the vision of the Colonists eventually won the war, and won independence from the British, the Colonists were divided into 3 very different groups during the Revolutionary War. Some 40 - 45% of them supported the rebellion and the Patriots, but 15 - 20% opposed the revolution and remained loyal to the British Crown. And the rest? They tried to remain neutral and avoid the feud as much as possible...

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 Officially Ended the Revolutionary War

Revolutionary War facts show that the war effectively ended in April 1782 when the British House of Commons voted to end it, and peace negotiations began. But the official ending of the Revolutionary War was marked with the Treaty of Paris on September 3 1783, signed by the representative of the then British monarch, King George III, David Hartley, and the representatives of the USA - John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay. The Treaty acknowledged the USA as a sovereign state and granted various territorial provisions to the USA and its allies.

George Washington Put Down the Newburgh Conspiracy Rebellion Himself

Towards the end of 1782, a group of officers of the Continental Army, organized under the leadership of General Henry Knox, drafted a memorial to Congress, stating their unhappiness over poor financial support for the soldiers and subtly threatening a rebellion. But the possible rebellion was put down by none other than the Commander-in-chief himself, George Washington, in a meeting with the officers in March 1783.

Not by force and not through threats - he united the Continental Army using just the power of his words. "Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country" were the words that had the most impact on his fellow officers, supposedly moving many of them to tears and effectively ending the possibility of a rebellion.

The First Military Submarine Was Used during the Revolutionary War

Although the first reliably documented submarine appeared in the 17th century, it was not until 1775 when the world got its first submarine capable of independent underwater movement. The Turtle, as the submarine was named by its American inventor, David Bushnell, is the first documented submarine to be used in combat - on September 6 1776, it was used to attack the HMS Eagle, the flagship of the British fleet. Although the attack was unsuccessful, the Turtle set the foundations for modern submarine warfare.

Benedict Arnold Was an Important Asset of the Colonists

Although Benedict Arnold, a General in the Continental Army during the first years of the Revolutionary War, is today best-known as the traitor who joined the British during the war, he was actually one of the best generals the Continental Army had ever had. He bravely resisted the bigger British fleet in the Battle of Lake Champlain, and won the battle at Saratoga in 1777. In the words of historian George Neumann, the Colonists would probably have lost the Revolutionary War if not for Arnold.

Revolutionary War facts reveal that Arnold supposedly joined the British due to his disapproval of the French alliance, but, coincidentally, he himself largely caused the French to join the war by winning at Saratoga...

Believe It or Not, Women Also Fought in the Continental Army

Although women fighting wars was a ridiculous idea at the time, quite a few of them served in the army as nurses or cooks, and some of them even as soldiers on the battlefield! The most well-known among them are Molly Pitcher, who replaced her wounded husband behind a canon in the Battle of Monmouth, and Margaret Corbin, who served, and was wounded, in her husband's gun crew in the Battle of Harlem Heights.

Read also: Top 20 DDay Facts Invasion History Casualties More

George Washington Was Apparently the Greatest Man in the World

At least, he was according to the words of King George III after the British realized that the war was lost. The king first decided to abdicate, but then withdrew his decision, finding consolation for the defeat of British forces in his belief that Washington would become a dictator and make America pray for the return of the British Crown.

Washington of course did no such thing. He calmly resigned his commission in 1783, returning the command of the army to Congress. When King George III was notified about Washington's plans to do that, he supposedly said, "If he does that, sir, he will be the greatest man in the world."

There Was a Sequel to the Boston Tea Party

While practically every American knows about the 1773 Boston Tea Party, when Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawk Indians destroyed an entire British shipment of 342 chests of tea, many don't know that there was a sequel to the "tea drowning" in Boston. They reprised their attack in March 1774, but with much less success than the first time - they got hold of only 16 chests of tea...

The Word "Independence" Never Appears in the Declaration of Independence

Although arguably the most important document in US history, proclaiming independence from the British, the Declaration of Independence actually never uses the word "independence". Revolutionary War facts show that it was originally named "The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America".

Continental Congress Hired Pirates to Attack British Ships

Since the Continental Army had very limited funds and could not afford as big a navy as the British could, they were forced to hire private combat-able ships. These so called "privateers" were actually nothing more than pirates prior to the war...

Mel Gibson's Character in The Patriot Was Inspired by Real Patriots

Benjamin Martin, the fictional hero of the 2000 historical spectacle The Patriot, was modeled on real Colonial officers and heroes of the Revolutionary War: Thomas Sumter, Daniel Morgan, Andrew Pickens and Francis Marion.

The Famous Battle of Bunker Hill Was Actually Fought on Breed's Hill

According to Revolutionary War facts, most of the battle took place on the 62-feet high Breed's Hill, but was named after the adjacent Bunker Hill. Breed's Hill is thus the home of the commemorative Bunker Hill Monument...

Read also: 50 Cinco de Mayo Facts To Celebrate About

Revolutionary War Facts - Facts about the Revolutionary War Summary

The Revolutionary War was the war for American Independence between 1775 and 1783. The 13 colonies that wanted independence were represented by the Patriots and aided by France, Spain and Holland. They fought the British founders of these colonies, who were aided by many Native Americans, a few hundred German troops and Loyalists - inhabitants of the colonies that were against the rebellion. Estimates of the casualties of this 8-year war vary greatly, but it is clear that the deaths of men and women on both sides changed the world forever. The Colonies were confirmed and accepted as a new nation after the war, becoming the United States of America, and took an important role in shaping the world in the following centuries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Revolutionary War Facts: Causes, Battles & More - Facts.net

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Synonym: American War of Independence Duration: 8 years (1775 - 1783) Sides: British vs.

# data[].attributes.body
During this time the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence were all created.

Famous authors included Benjamin Franklin for his autobiography, Patrick Henry for his speech to the Virginia Convention, Thomas Paine for his work "The Crisis", and Phyllis Wheatley for her poetry.

# data[].attributes.body
Rationalism is defined by Merriam-Webster's dictionary as:
1: reliance on reason as the basis for establishment of religious truth
2a: a theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions
2b: a view that reason and experience rather than the nonrational are the fundamental criteria in the solution of problems

# data[].attributes.headline
The term "rationalism" was first used in 1732.

# data[].attributes.subject
The term "rationalism" was first used in 1732.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rationalism#learn-more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
reliance on reason as the basis for establishment of religious truth; a theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions… See the full definition

# data[].attributes.body
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19th, 1809, in Boston Massachusetts. He was born to two professional actors that both unfortunately died before he was three. He was raised as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia by John and Frances Allan.

# data[].attributes.body
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10th, 1830, in Amherst, Massachussets to Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Her poetry was only published beginning in 1890, four years after her death. It has become popular among all generations since then.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Emily Dickinson is one of America's greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet's work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints. Like writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she crafted a new type of persona for the first person. The speakers in Dickinson's poetry, like those in Brontë's and Browning's works, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. Like the Concord Transcendentalists whose works she knew well, she saw poetry as a double-edged sword. While it liberated the individual, it as readily left him ungrounded. The literary marketplace, however, offered new ground for her work in the last decade of the 19th century. When the first volume of her poetry was published in 1890, four years after her death, it met with stunning success. Going through 11 editions in less than two years, the poems eventually extended far beyond their first household audiences. Dickinson is now known as one of the most important American poets, and her poetry is widely read among people of all ages and interests.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830 to Edward and Emily (Norcross) Dickinson. At the time of her birth, Emily's father was an ambitious young lawyer. Educated at Amherst and Yale, he returned to his hometown and joined the ailing law practice of his father, Samuel Fowler Dickinson. Edward also joined his father in the family home, the Homestead, built by Samuel Dickinson in 1813. Active in the Whig Party, Edward Dickinson was elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature (1837-1839) and the Massachusetts State Senate (1842-1843). Between 1852 and 1855 he served a single term as a representative from Massachusetts to the U.S. Congress. In Amherst he presented himself as a model citizen and prided himself on his civic work-treasurer of Amherst College, supporter of Amherst Academy, secretary to the Fire Society, and chairman of the annual Cattle Show. Comparatively little is known of Emily's mother, who is often represented as the passive wife of a domineering husband. Her few surviving letters suggest a different picture, as does the scant information about her early education at Monson Academy. Academy papers and records discovered by Martha Ackmann reveal a young woman dedicated to her studies, particularly in the sciences.

By the time of Emily's early childhood, there were three children in the household. Her brother, William Austin Dickinson, had preceded her by a year and a half. Her sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson, was born in 1833. All three children attended the one-room primary school in Amherst and then moved on to Amherst Academy, the school out of which Amherst College had grown. The brother and sisters' education was soon divided. Austin was sent to Williston Seminary in 1842; Emily and Vinnie continued at Amherst Academy. By Emily Dickinson's account, she delighted in all aspects of the school-the curriculum, the teachers, the students. The school prided itself on its connection with Amherst College, offering students regular attendance at college lectures in all the principal subjects- astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, mathematics, natural history, natural philosophy, and zoology. As this list suggests, the curriculum reflected the 19th-century emphasis on science. That emphasis reappeared in Dickinson's poems and letters through her fascination with naming, her skilled observation and cultivation of flowers, her carefully wrought descriptions of plants, and her interest in "chemic force." Those interests, however, rarely celebrated science in the same spirit as the teachers advocated. In an early poem, she chastised science for its prying interests. Its system interfered with the observer's preferences; its study took the life out of living things. In "'Arcturus' is his other name" she writes, "I pull a flower from the woods - / A monster with a glass / Computes the stamens in a breath - / And has her in a 'class!'" At the same time, Dickinson's study of botany was clearly a source of delight. She encouraged her friend Abiah Root to join her in a school assignment: "Have you made an herbarium yet? I hope you will, if you have not, it would be such a treasure to you." She herself took that assignment seriously, keeping the herbarium generated by her botany textbook for the rest of her life. Behind her school botanical studies lay a popular text in common use at female seminaries. Written by Almira H. Lincoln, Familiar Lectures on Botany (1829) featured a particular kind of natural history, emphasizing the religious nature of scientific study. Lincoln was one of many early 19th-century writers who forwarded the "argument from design." She assured her students that study of the natural world invariably revealed God. Its impeccably ordered systems showed the Creator's hand at work.

Lincoln's assessment accorded well with the local Amherst authority in natural philosophy. Edward Hitchcock, president of Amherst College, devoted his life to maintaining the unbroken connection between the natural world and its divine Creator. He was a frequent lecturer at the college, and Emily had many opportunities to hear him speak. His emphasis was clear from the titles of his books, like Religious Truth Illustrated from Science (1857). Dickinson found the conventional religious wisdom the least compelling part of these arguments. From what she read and what she heard at Amherst Academy, scientific observation proved its excellence in powerful description. The writer who could say what he saw was invariably the writer who opened the greatest meaning to his readers. While this definition fit well with the science practiced by natural historians such as Hitchcock and Lincoln, it also articulates the poetic theory then being formed by a writer with whom Dickinson's name was often later linked. In 1838 Emerson told his Harvard audience, "Always the seer is a sayer." Acknowledging the human penchant for classification, he approached this phenomenon with a different intent. Less interested than some in using the natural world to prove a supernatural one, he called his listeners and readers' attention to the creative power of definition. The individual who could say what is was the individual for whom words were power.

While the strength of Amherst Academy lay in its emphasis on science, it also contributed to Dickinson's development as a poet. The seven years at the academy provided her with her first "Master," Leonard Humphrey, who served as principal of the academy from 1846 to 1848. Although Dickinson undoubtedly esteemed him while she was a student, her response to his unexpected death in 1850 clearly suggests her growing poetic interest. She wrote Abiah Root that her only tribute was her tears, and she lingered over them in her description. She will not brush them away, she says, for their presence is her expression. So, of course, is her language, which is in keeping with the memorial verses expected of 19th-century mourners.

Humphrey's designation as "Master" parallels the other relationships Emily was cultivating at school. At the academy she developed a group of close friends within and against whom she defined her self and its written expression. Among these were Abiah Root, Abby Wood, and Emily Fowler. Other girls from Amherst were among her friends-particularly Jane Humphrey, who had lived with the Dickinsons while attending Amherst Academy. As was common for young women of the middle class, the scant formal schooling they received in the academies for "young ladies" provided them with a momentary autonomy. As students, they were invited to take their intellectual work seriously. Many of the schools, like Amherst Academy, required full-day attendance, and thus domestic duties were subordinated to academic ones. The curriculum was often the same as that for a young man's education. At their "School for Young Ladies," William and Waldo Emerson, for example, recycled their Harvard assignments for their students. When asked for advice about future study, they offered the reading list expected of young men. Thus, the time at school was a time of intellectual challenge and relative freedom for girls, especially in an academy such as Amherst, which prided itself on its progressive understanding of education. The students looked to each other for their discussions, grew accustomed to thinking in terms of their identity as scholars, and faced a marked change when they left school.

Dickinson's last term at Amherst Academy, however, did not mark the end of her formal schooling. As was common, Dickinson left the academy at the age of 15 in order to pursue a higher, and for women, final, level of education. In the fall of 1847 Dickinson entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Under the guidance of Mary Lyon, the school was known for its religious predilection. Part and parcel of the curriculum were weekly sessions with Lyon in which religious questions were examined and the state of the students' faith assessed. The young women were divided into three categories: those who were "established Christians," those who "expressed hope," and those who were "without hope." Much has been made of Emily's place in this latter category and of the widely circulated story that she was the only member of that group. Years later fellow student Clara Newman Turner remembered the moment when Mary Lyon "asked all those who wanted to be Christians to rise." Emily remained seated. No one else did. Turner reports Emily's comment to her: "'They thought it queer I didn't rise'-adding with a twinkle in her eye, 'I thought a lie would be queerer.'" Written in 1894, shortly after the publication of the first two volumes of Dickinson's poetry and the initial publication of her letters, Turner's reminiscences carry the burden of the 50 intervening years as well as the reviewers and readers' delight in the apparent strangeness of the newly published Dickinson. The solitary rebel may well have been the only one sitting at that meeting, but the school records indicate that Dickinson was not alone in the "without hope" category. In fact, 30 students finished the school year with that designation.

The brevity of Emily's stay at Mount Holyoke-a single year-has given rise to much speculation as to the nature of her departure. Some have argued that the beginning of her so-called reclusiveness can be seen in her frequent mentions of homesickness in her letters, but in no case do the letters suggest that her regular activities were disrupted. She did not make the same kind of close friends as she had at Amherst Academy, but her reports on the daily routine suggest that she was fully a part of the activities of the school. Additional questions are raised by the uncertainty over who made the decision that she not return for a second year. Dickinson attributed the decision to her father, but she said nothing further about his reasoning. Edward Dickinson's reputation as a domineering individual in private and public affairs suggests that his decision may have stemmed from his desire to keep this particular daughter at home. Dickinson's comments occasionally substantiate such speculation. She frequently represents herself as essential to her father's contentment. But in other places her description of her father is quite different (the individual too busy with his law practice to notice what occurred at home). The least sensational explanation has been offered by biographer Richard Sewall. Looking over the Mount Holyoke curriculum and seeing how many of the texts duplicated those Dickinson had already studied at Amherst, he concludes that Mount Holyoke had little new to offer her. Whatever the reason, when it came Vinnie's turn to attend a female seminary, she was sent to Ipswich.

Dickinson's departure from Mount Holyoke marked the end of her formal schooling. It also prompted the dissatisfaction common among young women in the early 19th century. Upon their return, unmarried daughters were indeed expected to demonstrate their dutiful nature by setting aside their own interests in order to meet the needs of the home. For Dickinson the change was hardly welcome. Her letters from the early 1850s register dislike of domestic work and frustration with the time constraints created by the work that was never done. "God keep me from what they call households," she exclaimed in a letter to Root in 1850.

Particularly annoying were the number of calls expected of the women in the Homestead. Edward Dickinson's prominence meant a tacit support within the private sphere. The daily rounds of receiving and paying visits were deemed essential to social standing. Not only were visitors to the college welcome at all times in the home, but also members of the Whig Party or the legislators with whom Edward Dickinson worked. Emily Norcross Dickinson's retreat into poor health in the 1850s may well be understood as one response to such a routine.

For Dickinson, the pace of such visits was mind-numbing, and she began limiting the number of visits she made or received. She baked bread and tended the garden, but she would neither dust nor visit. There was one other duty she gladly took on. As the elder of Austin's two sisters, she slotted herself into the expected role of counselor and confidante. In the 19th century the sister was expected to act as moral guide to her brother; Dickinson rose to that requirement-but on her own terms. Known at school as a "wit," she put a sharp edge on her sweetest remarks. In her early letters to Austin, she represented the eldest child as the rising hope of the family. From Dickinson's perspective, Austin's safe passage to adulthood depended on two aspects of his character. With the first she was in firm agreement with the wisdom of the century: the young man should emerge from his education with a firm loyalty to home. The second was Dickinson's own invention: Austin's success depended on a ruthless intellectual honesty. If he borrowed his ideas, he failed her test of character. There were to be no pieties between them, and when she detected his own reliance on conventional wisdom, she used her language to challenge what he had left unquestioned.

In her letters to Austin in the early 1850s, while he was teaching and in the mid 1850s during his three years as a law student at Harvard, she presented herself as a keen critic, using extravagant praise to invite him to question the worth of his own perceptions. She positioned herself as a spur to his ambition, readily reminding him of her own work when she wondered about the extent of his. Dickinson's 1850s letters to Austin are marked by an intensity that did not outlast the decade. As Austin faced his own future, most of his choices defined an increasing separation between his sister's world and his. Initially lured by the prospect of going West, he decided to settle in Amherst, apparently at his father's urging. Not only did he return to his hometown, but he also joined his father in his law practice. Austin Dickinson gradually took over his father's role: He too became the citizen of Amherst, treasurer of the College, and chairman of the Cattle Show. In only one case, and an increasingly controversial one, Austin Dickinson's decision offered Dickinson the intensity she desired. His marriage to Susan Gilbert brought a new "sister" into the family, one with whom Dickinson felt she had much in common. That Gilbert's intensity was of a different order Dickinson would learn over time, but in the early 1850s, as her relationship with Austin was waning, her relationship with Gilbert was growing. Gilbert would figure powerfully in Dickinson's life as a beloved comrade, critic, and alter ego.

Born just nine days after Dickinson, Susan Gilbert entered a profoundly different world from the one she would one day share with her sister-in-law. The daughter of a tavern keeper, Sue was born at the margins of Amherst society. Her father's work defined her world as clearly as Edward Dickinson's did that of his daughters. Had her father lived, Sue might never have moved from the world of the working class to the world of educated lawyers. Sue's mother died in 1837; her father, in 1841. After her mother's death, she and her sister Martha were sent to live with their aunt in Geneva, New York. They returned periodically to Amherst to visit their older married sister, Harriet Gilbert Cutler. Sue, however, returned to Amherst to live and attend school in 1847. Enrolled at Amherst Academy while Dickinson was at Mount Holyoke, Sue was gradually included in the Dickinson circle of friends by way of her sister Martha.

The end of Sue's schooling signaled the beginning of work outside the home. She took a teaching position in Baltimore in 1851. On the eve of her departure, Amherst was in the midst of a religious revival. The community was galvanized by the strong preaching of both its regular and its visiting ministers. The Dickinson household was memorably affected. Emily Norcross Dickinson's church membership dated from 1831, a few months after Emily's birth. By the end of the revival, two more of the family members counted themselves among the saved: Edward Dickinson joined the church on August 11, 1850, the day as Susan Gilbert. Vinnie Dickinson delayed some months longer, until November. Austin Dickinson waited several more years, joining the church in 1856, the year of his marriage. The other daughter never made that profession of faith. As Dickinson wrote to her friend Jane Humphrey in 1850, "I am standing alone in rebellion."

To gauge the extent of Dickinson's rebellion, consideration must be taken of the nature of church membership at the time as well as the attitudes toward revivalist fervor. As shown by Edward Dickinson's and Susan Gilbert's decisions to join the church in 1850, church membership was not tied to any particular stage of a person's life. To be enrolled as a member was not a matter of age but of "conviction." The individuals had first to be convinced of a true conversion experience, had to believe themselves chosen by God, of his "elect." In keeping with the old-style Calvinism, the world was divided among the regenerate, the unregenerate, and those in between. The categories Mary Lyon used at Mount Holyoke ("established Christians," "without hope," and "with hope") were the standard of the revivalist. But unlike their Puritan predecessors, the members of this generation moved with greater freedom between the latter two categories. Those "without hope" might well see a different possibility for themselves after a season of intense religious focus. The 19th-century Christians of Calvinist persuasion continued to maintain the absolute power of God's election. His omnipotence could not be compromised by an individual's effort; however, the individual's unquestioning search for a true faith was an unalterable part of the salvific equation. While God would not simply choose those who chose themselves, he also would only make his choice from those present and accounted for-thus, the importance of church attendance as well as the centrality of religious self-examination. Revivals guaranteed that both would be inescapable.

As Dickinson wrote in a poem dated to 1875, "Escape is such a thankful Word." In fact, her references to "escape" occur primarily in reference to the soul. In her scheme of redemption, salvation depended upon freedom. The poem ends with praise for the "trusty word" of escape. Contrasting a vision of "the savior" with the condition of being "saved," Dickinson says there is clearly one choice: "And that is why I lay my Head / Opon this trusty word -" She invites the reader to compare one incarnation with another. Upending the Christian language about the "word," Dickinson substitutes her own agency for the incarnate savior. She will choose "escape." A decade earlier, the choice had been as apparent. In the poems from 1862 Dickinson describes the soul's defining experiences. Figuring these "events" in terms of moments, she passes from the soul's "Bandaged moments" of suspect thought to the soul's freedom. In these "moments of escape," the soul will not be confined; nor will its explosive power be contained: "The soul has moments of escape - / When bursting all the doors - / She dances like a Bomb, abroad, / And swings opon the Hours,"

Like the soul of her description, Dickinson refused to be confined by the elements expected of her. The demands of her father's, her mother's, and her dear friends' religion invariably prompted such "moments of escape." During the period of the 1850 revival in Amherst, Dickinson reported her own assessment of the circumstances. Far from using the language of "renewal" associated with revivalist vocabulary, she described a landscape of desolation darkened by an affliction of the spirit. In her "rebellion" letter to Humphrey, she wrote, "How lonely this world is growing, something so desolate creeps over the spirit and we don't know its name, and it won't go away, either Heaven is seeming greater, or Earth a great deal more small, or God is more 'Our Father,' and we feel our need increased. Christ is calling everyone here, all my companions have answered, even my darling Vinnie believes she loves, and trusts him, and I am standing alone in rebellion, and growing very careless. Abby, Mary, Jane, and farthest of all my Vinnie have been seeking, and they all believe they have found; I can't tell you what they have found, but they think it is something precious. I wonder if it is?"

Dickinson's question frames the decade. Within those 10 years she defined what was incontrovertibly precious to her. Not religion, but poetry; not the vehicle reduced to its tenor, but the process of making metaphor and watching the meaning emerge. As early as 1850 her letters suggest that her mind was turning over the possibility of her own work. Extending the contrast between herself and her friends, she described but did not specify an "aim" to her life. She announced its novelty ("I have dared to do strange things-bold things"), asserted her independence ("and have asked no advice from any"), and couched it in the language of temptation ("I have heeded beautiful tempters"). She described the winter as one long dream from which she had not yet awakened. That winter began with the gift of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Poems for New Year's. Her letters of the period are frequent and long. Their heightened language provided working space for herself as writer. In these passionate letters to her female friends, she tried out different voices. At times she sounded like the female protagonist from a contemporary novel; at times, she was the narrator who chastises her characters for their failure to see beyond complicated circumstances. She played the wit and sounded the divine, exploring the possibility of the new converts' religious faith only to come up short against its distinct unreality in her own experience. And finally, she confronted the difference imposed by that challenging change of state from daughter/sister to wife.

Lacking the letters written to Dickinson, readers cannot know whether the language of her friends matched her own, but the freedom with which Dickinson wrote to Humphrey and to Fowler suggests that their own responses encouraged hers. Perhaps this sense of encouragement was nowhere stronger than with Gilbert. Although little is known of their early relations, the letters written to Gilbert while she was teaching at Baltimore speak with a kind of hope for a shared perspective, if not a shared vocation. Recent critics have speculated that Gilbert, like Dickinson, thought of herself as a poet. Several of Dickinson's letters stand behind this speculation, as does one of the few pieces of surviving correspondence with Gilbert from 1861-their discussion and disagreement over the second stanza of Dickinson's "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers." Writing to Gilbert in 1851, Dickinson imagined that their books would one day keep company with the poets. They will not be ignominiously jumbled together with grammars and dictionaries (the fate assigned to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's in the local stationer's). Sue and Emily, she reports, are "the only poets."

Whatever Gilbert's poetic aspirations were, Dickinson clearly looked to Gilbert as one of her most important readers, if not the most important. She sent Gilbert more than 270 of her poems. Gilbert may well have read most of the poems that Dickinson wrote. In many cases the poems were written for her. They functioned as letters, with perhaps an additional line of greeting or closing. Gilbert's involvement, however, did not satisfy Dickinson. In 1850-1851 there had been some minor argument, perhaps about religion. In the mid 1850s a more serious break occurred, one that was healed, yet one that marked a change in the nature of the relationship. In a letter dated to 1854 Dickinson begins bluntly, "Sue-you can go or stay-There is but one alternative-We differ often lately, and this must be the last." The nature of the difference remains unknown. Critics have speculated about its connection with religion, with Austin Dickinson, with poetry, with their own love for each other. The nature of that love has been much debated: What did Dickinson's passionate language signify? Her words are the declarations of a lover, but such language is not unique to the letters to Gilbert. It appears in the correspondence with Fowler and Humphrey. As Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has illustrated in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (1985), female friendships in the 19th century were often passionate. But modern categories of sexual relations do not fit neatly with the verbal record of the 19th century. "The love that dare not speak its name" may well have been a kind of common parlance among mid-19th-century women.

Dickinson's own ambivalence toward marriage-an ambivalence so common as to be ubiquitous in the journals of young women-was clearly grounded in her perception of what the role of "wife" required. From her own housework as dutiful daughter, she had seen how secondary her own work became. In her observation of married women, her mother not excluded, she saw the failing health, the unmet demands, the absenting of self that was part of the husband-wife relationship. The "wife" poems of the 1860s reflect this ambivalence. The gold wears away; "amplitude" and "awe" are absent for the woman who meets the requirements of wife. The loss remains unspoken, but, like the irritating grain in the oyster's shell, it leaves behind ample evidence.

She rose to His Requirement - dropt
The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife -

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe -
Or first Prospective - Or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned - as the Sea
Develope Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself - be known
The Fathoms they abide -

Little wonder that the words of another poem bound the woman's life by the wedding. In one line the woman is "Born-Bridalled-Shrouded."

Such thoughts did not belong to the poems alone. Writing to Gilbert in the midst of Gilbert's courtship with Austin Dickinson, only four years before their marriage, Dickinson painted a haunting picture. She began with a discussion of "union" but implied that its conventional connection with marriage was not her meaning. She wrote, "Those unions, my dear Susie, by which two lives are one, this sweet and strange adoption wherein we can but look, and are not yet admitted, how it can fill the heart, and make it gang wildly beating, how it will take us one day, and make us all it's own, and we shall not run away from it, but lie still and be happy!" The use evokes the conventional association with marriage, but as Dickinson continued her reflection, she distinguished between the imagined happiness of "union" and the parched life of the married woman. She commented, "How dull our lives must seem to the bride, and the plighted maiden, whose days are fed with gold, and who gathers pearls every evening; but to the wife, Susie, sometimes the wife forgotten, our lives perhaps seem dearer than all others in the world; you have seen flowers at morning, satisfied with the dew, and those same sweet flowers at noon with their heads bowed in anguish before the mighty sun." The bride for whom the gold has not yet worn away, who gathers pearls without knowing what lies at their core, cannot fathom the value of the unmarried woman's life. That remains to be discovered-too late-by the wife. Her wilted noon is hardly the happiness associated with Dickinson's first mention of union. Rather, that bond belongs to another relationship, one that clearly she broached with Gilbert. Defined by an illuminating aim, it is particular to its holder, yet shared deeply with another. Dickinson represents her own position, and in turn asks Gilbert whether such a perspective is not also hers: "I have always hoped to know if you had no dear fancy, illumining all your life, no one of whom you murmured in the faithful ear of night-and at whose side in fancy, you walked the livelong day." Dickinson's "dear fancy" of becoming poet would indeed illumine her life. What remained less dependable was Gilbert's accompaniment.

That Susan Dickinson would not join Dickinson in the "walk" became increasingly clear as she turned her attention to the social duties befitting the wife of a rising lawyer. Between hosting distinguished visitors (Emerson among them), presiding over various dinners, and mothering three children, Susan Dickinson's "dear fancy" was far from Dickinson's. As Dickinson had predicted, their paths diverged, but the letters and poems continued. The letters grow more cryptic, aphorism defining the distance between them. Dickinson began to divide her attention between Susan Dickinson and Susan's children. In the last decade of Dickinson's life, she apparently facilitated the extramarital affair between her brother and Mabel Loomis Todd. Regardless of outward behavior, however, Susan Dickinson remained a center to Dickinson's circumference.

As the relationship with Susan Dickinson wavered, other aspects in Dickinson's life were just coming to the fore. The 1850s marked a shift in her friendships. As her school friends married, she sought new companions. Defined by the written word, they divided between the known correspondent and the admired author. No new source of companionship for Dickinson, her books were primary voices behind her own writing. Regardless of the reading endorsed by the master in the academy or the father in the house, Dickinson read widely among the contemporary authors on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the British were the Romantic poets, the Brontë sisters, the Brownings, and George Eliot. On the American side was the unlikely company of Longfellow, Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emerson. With a knowledge-bound sentence that suggested she knew more than she revealed, she claimed not to have read Whitman. She read Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, and Matthew Arnold. Her contemporaries gave Dickinson a kind of currency for her own writing, but commanding equal ground were the Bible and Shakespeare. While the authors were here defined by their inaccessibility, the allusions in Dickinson's letters and poems suggest just how vividly she imagined her words in conversation with others.

Included in these epistolary conversations were her actual correspondents. Their number was growing. In two cases, the individuals were editors; later generations have wondered whether Dickinson saw Samuel Bowles and Josiah Holland as men who were likely to help her poetry into print. Bowles was chief editor of the Springfield Republican; Holland joined him in those duties in 1850. With both men Dickinson forwarded a lively correspondence. To each she sent many poems, and seven of those poems were printed in the paper-"Sic transit gloria mundi," "Nobody knows this little rose," "I Taste a liquor never brewed," "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers," "Flowers - Well - if anybody," "Blazing in gold and quenching in purple," and "A narrow fellow in the grass." The language in Dickinson's letters to Bowles is similar to the passionate language of her letters to Susan Gilbert Dickinson. She readily declared her love to him; yet, as readily declared that love to his wife, Mary. In each she hoped to find an answering spirit, and from each she settled on different conclusions. Josiah Holland never elicited declarations of love. When she wrote to him, she wrote primarily to his wife. In contrast to the friends who married, Mary Holland became a sister she did not have to forfeit.

These friendships were in their early moments in 1853 when Edward Dickinson took up residence in Washington as he entered what he hoped would be the first of many terms in Congress. With their father's absence, Vinnie and Emily Dickinson spent more time visiting-staying with the Hollands in Springfield or heading to Washington. In 1855 after one such visit, the sisters stopped in Philadelphia on their return to Amherst. Staying with their Amherst friend Eliza Coleman, they likely attended church with her. The minister in the pulpit was Charles Wadsworth, renowned for his preaching and pastoral care. Dickinson found herself interested in both. She eventually deemed Wadsworth one of her "Masters." No letters from Dickinson to Wadsworth are extant, and yet the correspondence with Mary Holland indicates that Holland forwarded many letters from Dickinson to Wadsworth. The content of those letters is unknown. That Dickinson felt the need to send them under the covering hand of Holland suggests an intimacy critics have long puzzled over. As with Susan Dickinson, the question of relationship seems irreducible to familiar terms. While many have assumed a "love affair"-and in certain cases, assumption extends to a consummation in more than words-there is little evidence to support a sensationalized version. The only surviving letter written by Wadsworth to Dickinson dates from 1862. It speaks of the pastor's concern for one of his flock: "I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, -I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you. Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers." Whether her letter to him has in fact survived is not clear. There are three letters addressed to an unnamed "Master"-the so-called "Master Letters"-but they are silent on the question of whether or not the letters were sent and if so, to whom. The second letter in particular speaks of "affliction" through sharply expressed pain. This language may have prompted Wadsworth's response, but there is no conclusive evidence.

Edward Dickinson did not win reelection and thus turned his attention to his Amherst residence after his defeat in November 1855. At this time Edward's law partnership with his son became a daily reality. He also returned his family to the Homestead. Emily Dickinson had been born in that house; the Dickinsons had resided there for the first 10 years of her life. She had also spent time at the Homestead with her cousin John Graves and with Susan Dickinson during Edward Dickinson's term in Washington. It became the center of Dickinson's daily world from which she sent her mind "out upon Circumference," writing hundreds of poems and letters in the rooms she had known for most of her life. It was not, however, a solitary house but increasingly became defined by its proximity to the house next door. Austin Dickinson and Susan Gilbert married in July 1856. They settled in the Evergreens, the house newly built down the path from the Homestead.

For Dickinson, the next years were both powerful and difficult. Her letters reflect the centrality of friendship in her life. As she commented to Bowles in 1858, "My friends are my 'estate.' Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them." By this time in her life, there were significant losses to that "estate" through death-her first "Master," Leonard Humphrey, in 1850; the second, Benjamin Newton, in 1853. There were also the losses through marriage and the mirror of loss, departure from Amherst. Whether comforting Mary Bowles on a stillbirth, remembering the death of a friend's wife, or consoling her cousins Frances and Louise Norcross after their mother's death, her words sought to accomplish the impossible. "Split lives-never 'get well,'" she commented; yet, in her letters she wrote into that divide, offering images to hold these lives together. Her approach forged a particular kind of connection. In these years, she turned increasingly to the cryptic style that came to define her writing. The letters are rich in aphorism and dense with allusion. She asks her reader to complete the connection her words only imply-to round out the context from which the allusion is taken, to take the part and imagine a whole. Through her letters, Dickinson reminds her correspondents that their broken worlds are not a mere chaos of fragments. Behind the seeming fragments of her short statements lies the invitation to remember the world in which each correspondent shares a certain and rich knowledge with the other. They alone know the extent of their connections; the friendship has given them the experiences peculiar to the relation.

At the same time that Dickinson was celebrating friendship, she was also limiting the amount of daily time she spent with other people. By 1858, when she solicited a visit from her cousin Louise Norcross, Dickinson reminded Norcross that she was "one of the ones from whom I do not run away." Much, and in all likelihood too much, has been made of Dickinson's decision to restrict her visits with other people. She has been termed "recluse" and "hermit." Both terms sensationalize a decision that has come to be seen as eminently practical. As Dickinson's experience taught her, household duties were anathema to other activities. The visiting alone was so time-consuming as to be prohibitive in itself. As she turned her attention to writing, she gradually eased out of the countless rounds of social calls. Sometime in 1858 she began organizing her poems into distinct groupings. These "fascicles," as Mabel Loomis Todd, Dickinson's first editor, termed them, comprised fair copies of the poems, several written on a page, the pages sewn together. By 1860 Dickinson had written more than 150 poems. At the same time, she pursued an active correspondence with many individuals. For Dickinson, letter writing was "visiting" at its best. It was focused and uninterrupted. Other callers would not intrude. It winnowed out "polite conversation." The correspondents could speak their minds outside the formulas of parlor conversation. Foremost, it meant an active engagement in the art of writing. If Dickinson began her letters as a kind of literary apprenticeship, using them to hone her skills of expression, she turned practice into performance. The genre offered ample opportunity for the play of meaning.

By the late 1850s the poems as well as the letters begin to speak with their own distinct voice. They shift from the early lush language of the 1850s valentines to their signature economy of expression. The poems dated to 1858 already carry the familiar metric pattern of the hymn. The alternating four-beat/three-beat lines are marked by a brevity in turn reinforced by Dickinson's syntax. Her poems followed both the cadence and the rhythm of the hymn form she adopted. This form was fertile ground for her poetic exploration. Through its faithful predictability, she could play content off against form. While certain lines accord with their place in the hymn-either leading the reader to the next line or drawing a thought to its conclusion-the poems are as likely to upend the structure so that the expected moment of cadence includes the words that speak the greatest ambiguity. In the following poem, the hymn meter is respected until the last line. A poem built from biblical quotations, it undermines their certainty through both rhythm and image. In the first stanza Dickinson breaks lines one and three with her asides to the implied listener. The poem is figured as a conversation about who enters Heaven. It begins with biblical references, then uses the story of the rich man's difficulty as the governing image for the rest of the poem. Unlike Christ's counsel to the young man, however, Dickinson's images turn decidedly secular. She places the reader in a world of commodity with its brokers and discounts, its dividends and costs. The neat financial transaction ends on a note of incompleteness created by rhythm, sound, and definition. The final line is truncated to a single iamb, the final word ends with an open double s sound, and the word itself describes uncertainty:

You're right - "the way is narrow"
And "difficult the Gate" -
And "few there be" - Correct again -
That "enter in - thereat" -

'Tis Costly - so are purples!
'Tis just the price of Breath -
With but the "Discount" of the Grave -
Termed by the Brokers - "Death"!

And after that - there's Heaven -
The Good man's - " Dividend" -
And Bad men - "go to Jail" -
I guess -

The late 1850s marked the beginning of Dickinson's greatest poetic period. By 1865 she had written nearly 1,100 poems. Bounded on one side by Austin and Susan Dickinson's marriage and on the other by severe difficulty with her eyesight, the years between held an explosion of expression in both poems and letters. Her own stated ambitions are cryptic and contradictory. Later critics have read the epistolary comments about her own "wickedness" as a tacit acknowledgment of her poetic ambition. In contrast to joining the church, she joined the ranks of the writers, a potentially suspect group. Distrust, however, extended only to certain types. If Dickinson associated herself with the Wattses and the Cowpers, she occupied respected literary ground; if she aspired toward Pope or Shakespeare, she crossed into the ranks of the "libertine." Dickinson's poems themselves suggest she made no such distinctions-she blended the form of Watts with the content of Shakespeare. She described personae of her poems as disobedient children and youthful "debauchees."

The place she envisioned for her writing is far from clear. Did she pursue the friendships with Bowles and Holland in the hope that these editors would help her poetry into print? Did she identify her poems as apt candidates for inclusion in the "Portfolio" pages of newspapers, or did she always imagine a different kind of circulation for her writing? Dickinson apologized for the public appearance of her poem "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," claiming that it had been stolen from her, but her own complicity in such theft remains unknown. Her April 1862 letter to the well-known literary figure Thomas Wentworth Higginson certainly suggests a particular answer. Written as a response to his Atlantic Monthly article "Letter to a Young Contributor" -the lead article in the April issue-her intention seems unmistakable. She sent him four poems, one of which she had worked over several times. With this gesture she placed herself in the ranks of "young contributor," offering him a sample of her work, hoping for its acceptance. Her accompanying letter, however, does not speak the language of publication. It decidedly asks for his estimate; yet, at the same time it couches the request in terms far different from the vocabulary of the literary marketplace:

Mr. Higginson,

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?

The Mind is so near itself-it cannot see, distinctly-and I have none to ask-

Should you think it breathed-and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude-

If I make the mistake-that you dared to tell me-would give me sincerer honor-toward you-

I enclose my name-asking you, if you please-Sir-to tell me what is true?

That you will not betray me-it is needless to ask-since Honor is it's own pawn-

Higginson's response is not extant. It can only be gleaned from Dickinson's subsequent letters. In them she makes clear that Higginson's response was far from an enthusiastic endorsement. She speaks of the "surgery" he performed; she asks him if the subsequent poems that she has sent are "more orderly."

Higginson himself was intrigued but not impressed. His first recorded comments about Dickinson's poetry are dismissive. In a letter to Atlantic Monthly editor James T. Fields, Higginson complained about the response to his article: "I foresee that 'Young Contributors' will send me worse things than ever now. Two such specimens of verse as came yesterday & day before-fortunately not to be forwarded for publication!" He had received Dickinson's poems the day before he wrote this letter. While Dickinson's letters clearly piqued his curiosity, he did not readily envision a published poet emerging from this poetry, which he found poorly structured. As is made clear by one of Dickinson's responses, he counseled her to work longer and harder on her poetry before she attempted its publication. Her reply, in turn, piques the later reader's curiosity. She wrote, "I smile when you suggest that I delay 'to publish'-that being foreign to my thought, as Firmament to Fin." What lay behind this comment? The brave cover of profound disappointment? The accurate rendering of her own ambition? Sometime in 1863 she wrote her often-quoted poem about publication with its disparaging remarks about reducing expression to a market value. At a time when slave auctions were palpably rendered for a Northern audience, she offered another example of the corrupting force of the merchant's world. The poem begins, "Publication - is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man" and ends by returning its reader to the image of the opening: "But reduce no Human Spirit / To Disgrace of Price -."

While Dickinson spoke strongly against publication once Higginson had suggested its inadvisability, her earlier remarks tell a different story. In the same letter to Higginson in which she eschews publication, she also asserts her identity as a poet. "My dying Tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet." In all likelihood the tutor is Ben Newton, the lawyer who had given her Emerson's Poems. His death in 1853 suggests how early Dickinson was beginning to think of herself as a poet, but unexplained is Dickinson's view on the relationship between being a poet and being published. When she was working over her poem "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers," one of the poems included with the first letter to Higginson, she suggested that the distance between firmament and fin was not as far as it first appeared. As she reworked the second stanza again, and yet again, she indicated a future that did not preclude publication. She wrote to Sue, "Could I make you and Austin-proud-sometime-a great way off-'twould give me taller feet." Written sometime in 1861, the letter predates her exchange with Higginson. Again, the frame of reference is omitted. One can only conjecture what circumstance would lead to Austin and Susan Dickinson's pride. That such pride is in direct relation to Dickinson's poetry is unquestioned; that it means publication is not. Given her penchant for double meanings, her anticipation of "taller feet" might well signal a change of poetic form. Her ambition lay in moving from brevity to expanse, but this movement again is the later reader's speculation. The only evidence is the few poems published in the 1850s and 1860s and a single poem published in the 1870s.

This minimal publication, however, was not a retreat to a completely private expression. Her poems circulated widely among her friends, and this audience was part and parcel of women's literary culture in the 19th century. She sent poems to nearly all her correspondents; they in turn may well have read those poems with their friends. Dickinson's poems were rarely restricted to her eyes alone. She continued to collect her poems into distinct packets. The practice has been seen as her own trope on domestic work: she sewed the pages together. Poetry was by no means foreign to women's daily tasks-mending, sewing, stitching together the material to clothe the person. Unremarked, however, is its other kinship. Her work was also the minister's. Preachers stitched together the pages of their sermons, a task they apparently undertook themselves.

Dickinson's comments on herself as poet invariably implied a widespread audience. As she commented to Higginson in 1862, "My Business is Circumference." She adapted that phrase to two other endings, both of which reinforced the expansiveness she envisioned for her work. To the Hollands she wrote, " My business is to love. ... My Business is to Sing." In all versions of that phrase, the guiding image evokes boundlessness. In song the sound of the voice extends across space, and the ear cannot accurately measure its dissipating tones. Love is idealized as a condition without end. Even the "circumference"-the image that Dickinson returned to many times in her poetry-is a boundary that suggests boundlessness. As Emerson's essay "Circles" may well have taught Dickinson, another circle can always be drawn around any circumference. When, in Dickinson's terms, individuals go "out upon Circumference," they stand on the edge of an unbounded space. Dickinson's use of the image refers directly to the project central to her poetic work. It appears in the structure of her declaration to Higginson; it is integral to the structure and subjects of the poems themselves. The key rests in the small word is. In her poetry Dickinson set herself the double-edged task of definition. Her poems frequently identify themselves as definitions: "'Hope' is the thing with feathers," "Renunciation-is a piercing Virtue," "Remorse-is Memory-awake," or "Eden is that old fashioned House." As these examples illustrate, Dickinsonian definition is inseparable from metaphor. The statement that says "is" is invariably the statement that articulates a comparison. "We see-Comparatively," Dickinson wrote, and her poems demonstrate that assertion. In the world of her poetry, definition proceeds via comparison. One cannot say directly what is; essence remains unnamed and unnameable. In its place the poet articulates connections created out of correspondence. In some cases the abstract noun is matched with a concrete object-hope figures as a bird, its appearances and disappearances signaled by the defining element of flight. In other cases, one abstract concept is connected with another, remorse described as wakeful memory; renunciation, as the "piercing virtue."

Comparison becomes a reciprocal process. Dickinson's metaphors observe no firm distinction between tenor and vehicle. Defining one concept in terms of another produces a new layer of meaning in which both terms are changed. Neither hope nor birds are seen in the same way by the end of Dickinson's poem. Dickinson frequently builds her poems around this trope of change. Her vocabulary circles around transformation, often ending before change is completed. The final lines of her poems might well be defined by their inconclusiveness: the "I guess" of "You're right - 'the way is narrow'"; a direct statement of slippage-"and then - it doesn't stay"-in "I prayed, at first, a little Girl." Dickinson's endings are frequently open. In this world of comparison, extremes are powerful. There are many negative definitions and sharp contrasts. While the emphasis on the outer limits of emotion may well be the most familiar form of the Dickinsonian extreme, it is not the only one. Dickinson's use of synecdoche is yet another version. The part that is taken for the whole functions by way of contrast. The specific detail speaks for the thing itself, but in its speaking, it reminds the reader of the difference between the minute particular and what it represents. Opposition frames the system of meaning in Dickinson's poetry: the reader knows what is, by what is not. In an early poem, " There's a certain Slant of light, (320)" Dickinson located meaning in a geography of "internal difference." Her 1862 poem " It was not Death, for I stood up, (355) " picks up on this important thread in her career.

Emily Dickinson died in Amherst in 1886. After her death her family members found her hand-sewn books, or "fascicles." These fascicles contained nearly 1,800 poems. Though Mabel Loomis Todd and Higginson published the first selection of her poems in 1890, a complete volume did not appear until 1955. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, the poems still bore the editorial hand of Todd and Higginson. It was not until R.W. Franklin's version of Dickinson's poems appeared in 1998 that her order, unusual punctuation and spelling choices were completely restored.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Emily Dickinson is one of America's greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet's work. Like writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, she experimented with...

# data[].attributes.body
1. Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.

2. People can use their intuition to behold God's spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.

3. Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and link conformity to tradition.

4. Important social and political movements include the Abolitionist, Utopian, and Women's Suffrage Movements

# data[].attributes.body
In 1853, after he completed writing "Tanglewood Tales" Hawthorne served as a United States consul in Liverpool, England, for four years.
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-nathaniel-hawthorne

# data[].attributes.body
Hawthorne briefly lived in a utopian commune called Brook Farm, but left shortly as the lifestyle there was not as relaxing as he had anticipated.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nathaniel-Hawthorne

# data[].attributes.body
Period Characteristics:
1. Valued feeling, intuition, idealism, and inductive reasoning.

2. Placed faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination.

3. Shunned the artificiality of civilization and sought unspoiled nature as a path to spirituality.

4. Championed individual freedom and the worth of the individual

5. Saw poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

6. Dark Romantics: used dark and supernatural themes/settings (Gothic style)

# data[].attributes.body
Robert Frost was a poet born in San Francisco, California, on March 26th, 1874 to parents William Prescott Frost Jr. and Isabelle Moodie. His interest in reading and writing grew in highschool, and went to Dartmouth College, and later Harvard.

https://poets.org/poet/robert-frost

# data[].attributes.body
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare

McCarthyism became a sort of "witch hunt" fueled by paranoia much like the original witch hunts in Salem. But instead of so-called witches being hunted, it was communists. Almost all of the accused were innocent victims of the fear of communism brought about post WW2.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. The Presidency

2. Historical Moments

3. The Age of Eisenhower

McCarthyism and the Red Scare

In the end, President Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back against Senator Joseph McCarthy-and he did

Senator Joseph McCarthy

In the early 1950s, American leaders repeatedly told the public that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination. This paranoia about the internal Communist threat-what we call the Red Scare-reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army. During Eisenhower's first two years in office, McCarthy's shrieking denunciations and fear-mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled disloyal.

Any man who has been named by a either a senator or a committee or a congressman as dangerous to the welfare of this nation, his name should be submitted to the various intelligence units, and they should conduct a complete check upon him. It's not too much to ask.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1953

It has long been a subject of debate among historians: Why didn't Eisenhower do more to confront McCarthy? Journalists, intellectuals, and even many of Eisenhower's friends and close advisers agonized over what they saw as Ike's timid approach to McCarthyism. Despite his popularity and his enormous political capital, they believed, Ike refused to engage directly with McCarthy. By avoiding the Red-hunting senator, some have argued, Eisenhower allowed McCarthyism to continue unchecked.

In this letter to his brother Milton, Eisenhower explains, "As for McCarthy. Only a short-sighted or completely inexperienced individual would urge the use of the office of the presidency to give an opponent the publicity he so avidly desires."

By contrast, later scholars working from the documentary record perceived a design in Eisenhower's strategy with McCarthy. Ike adopted an "indirect approach." Instead of going right at McCarthy, Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to undercut and stymie the senator and his attacks. The political scientist Fred Greenstein, for example, argued that Eisenhower's handling of McCarthy provides evidence of a "hidden hand" approach to government. In this interpretation, Ike rode above the fray of politics while secretly pulling levers and using White House influence to obstruct McCarthy and his allies.

President read my text with great irritation, slammed it back at me and said he would not refer to McCarthy personally-'I will not get in the gutter with that guy.'
C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower speechwriter, 1953

Late in his first presidential campaign, Eisenhower excised a defense of General George C. Marshall from a speech he gave in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin. He addressed the issue more abstractly, stating, "The right to question a man's judgment carries with it no automatic right to question his honor."

Looking at all the evidence, the clearest conclusion is that Eisenhower did not want to confront Joe McCarthy at all. And during 1953, he tried to avoid the whole issue, hoping the Senate would silence the explosive senator. McCarthy was a Republican, after all, and many fellow senators supported him. Ike needed to keep his party unified to pass bills in other areas; battling McCarthy would only stir up a civil war inside the GOP.

Furthermore, Eisenhower did not want to appear "soft" on the problem of internal subversion. There had, after all, been real spies who penetrated into the State Department, notably Alger Hiss.

Alger Hiss

And Communist agents had stolen classified secrets from the wartime Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were condemned to die in the electric chair as punishment for their theft of atomic secrets, Eisenhower did not for a moment consider granting them clemency. On June 19, 1953, they were both put to death.

Eisenhower in 1953 improvised in dealing with McCarthy, at first trying to ignore him, then trying to outdo him in the Red-hunting business. Then he tried to seduce him with promises of new legislation to destroy Communism in America. None of these tactics worked.
'The Age of Eisenhower,' chapter 6

The first two paragraphs of the March 13, 1954 New York Times story on McCarthy, Cohn, and David Schine

But at the start of 1954, the picture changed. Joe McCarthy turned his investigatory resources on the US Army and on members of the administration itself. Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back. The first move the White House made was to try to discredit the men around McCarthy, notably the lawyer Roy Cohn, who was leading the investigation, and Cohn's assistant David Schine, who had recently been drafted into the Army.

The Army compiled a damaging dossier of dirt on Cohn, showing that he used threats and intimidation to demand that Schine be given plum assignments and easy duty. The White House leaked this dossier to the press and Congress. McCarthy and Cohn now stood accused of abuse of power.

A 2003 report from NBC News reviewed newly released documents related to the McCarthy hearings

Ike went one step further. In order to close down McCarthy's reckless use of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before his committee, Eisenhower invoked executive privilege.

In this May 17, 1954 memo to the Secretary of Defense, Eisenhower ordered, "You will instruct employees of your Department that in all of their appearances before the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Operations regarding the inquiry now before it, they are not to testify to any such conversations or communications or to produce any such documents or reproductions. This principle must be maintained regardless of who would be benefitted by such disclosures."

In May 1954, Ike simply said that administration officials and all executive branch employees would ignore any call from McCarthy to testify. Eisenhower explained his action, declaring that "it is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters," without those conversations being subject to Congressional scrutiny.

It was a bold and daring move, and it worked. McCarthy, his credibility in tatters and now starved of witnesses, hit a brick wall-and his fellow senators turned against him. In early December 1954, the Senate passed a motion of condemnation, in a vote of 67 to 22. McCarthy was ruined-and within three years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was over. Ike had helped bring it to a bitter end.

Senate Resolution 301 censured McCarthy for conduct that "tends to bring the Senate into disrepute"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
McCarthyism and the Red Scare | Miller Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The paranoia about the internal Communist threat-what we call the Red Scare-reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes. Journalists, intellectuals, and even many of Eisenhower's friends and close advisers agonized over what they saw as Ike's timid approach to McCarthyism.

# data[].attributes.body
President Dwight Eisenhower eventually had to fight back against McCarthy's rampant accusations affecting many people. McCarthy was censured for dishonoring the Senate.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/myfreedomday-2021-spc-intl/index.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Updated 2:08 p.m. ET, March 22, 2021

What we covered here

March 16, 2021 was #MyFreedomDay, when students around the world shined a light on modern-day slavery.

Despite the pandemic, schools across the globe took part -- and some students joined in from home.

You can still take the #MyFreedomDay pledge and share on social media.

1:19 p.m. ET, March 18, 2021
A trafficking survivor, spreading the message

Mexican trafficking survivor Karla Jacinto recorded this heartfelt video. "You are making a difference," she says, "and everyone can help, by spreading the message."

5:05 p.m. ET, March 16, 2021
Until next year!

That's a wrap from us on the live blog for #MyFreedomDay 2021. On behalf of everyone at the CNN Freedom Project, thank you for the photos, videos, signed pledges and creative artwork shared from all over the world.

Most importantly, thank you for pledging to help fight modern-day slavery. It takes all of us. See you next year!

4:45 p.m. ET, March 16, 2021
Doing your part to spread the message

Though they couldn't get together in person, members of the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton in Ohio, US, virtually showed their support for My Freedom Day with a call to action to raise awareness of modern slavery.

What we covered here

March 16, 2021 was #MyFreedomDay, when students around the world shined a light on modern-day slavery.

Despite the pandemic, schools across the globe took part -- and some students joined in from home.

You can still take the #MyFreedomDay pledge and share on social media.

1:19 p.m. ET, March 18, 2021
A trafficking survivor, spreading the message

Mexican trafficking survivor Karla Jacinto recorded this heartfelt video. "You are making a difference," she says, "and everyone can help, by spreading the message."

5:05 p.m. ET, March 16, 2021
Until next year!

That's a wrap from us on the live blog for #MyFreedomDay 2021. On behalf of everyone at the CNN Freedom Project, thank you for the photos, videos, signed pledges and creative artwork shared from all over the world.

Most importantly, thank you for pledging to help fight modern-day slavery. It takes all of us. See you next year!

4:45 p.m. ET, March 16, 2021
Doing your part to spread the message

Though they couldn't get together in person, members of the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton in Ohio, US, virtually showed their support for My Freedom Day with a call to action to raise awareness of modern slavery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
#myfreedomday 2021: students take a stand against modern-day slavery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#MyFreedomDay 2021: Students take a stand against modern-day slavery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Updated 2:08 p.m. ET, March 22, 2021 What we covered here March 16, 2021 was #MyFreedomDay, when students around the world shined a light on modern-day slavery. Despite the pandemic, schools across the globe took part -- and some students joined in from home. You can still take the #MyFreedomDay pledge and share on social media.