Jonathan Daniel Wells
Biographic Data
| ID | 964095 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Daniel Wells |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Wells |
| SIGNATURE | WELLS J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Temple University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9882-9196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America
Standing High among the Whites: Race, Class, and Teaching in the New South
In the decades following the end of the Civil War, Black southerners asserted their right to enter the legal, medical, and educational professions, understanding that higher education would vault them out of poverty and farm work and into a small but growing Black middle class. Mining underutilized primary sources such as the Southern Workman magazine, this essay argues that emerging middle-class Black professionals solidified their personal fina…
Printed Communities: Race, Respectability, and Black Newspapers in the Civil War Era West
Black editors and journalistic writers in the US West, such as Philip Bell, Peter Anderson, John J. Moore, and Jennie Carter, shaped their communities' views on racial uplift, gender relations, legal claims to citizenship, and other issues. This essay argues that from the 1860s to the 1880s, Black editors produced a shared sense of identity for western African Americans separated by vast distances. Whether in Nevada or British Columbia, Black edi…
Civil War Song in Black and White: Print and the Representation of the Spirituals
This article explores how White writers wrote about African American spirituals during and after the Civil War. While these writers tended to view Black speech as deficient, they were willing to regard Black musical expression as simply different, paving the way for its eventual nationalization as “American music”. Noting that White writers were not in the habit of admitting the inadequacies of their preferred modes of representation, the article…
Southern Scoundrels: Grifters and Graft in the Nineteenth Century
If honor marked the culture of the nineteenth-century South, it must have been honor among thieves. At least that is the conclusion one reaches after reading this collection of ten original essays edited ably by two leading historians of the region. As Jeff Forret and Bruce E. Baker point out in their introduction to the volume, con men and swindlers exposed the messy nature of southern capitalism in daily practice. In fact, they argue, illicit a…
Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America by Elena K. Abbott
Utilizing traditional historical sources, many of which have been digitized, Abbott offers scholars a deeply researched and well-crafted narrative of how international antislavery movements shaped the thinking of American activists. By the early nineteenth century, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands had begun to end slavery, and, as Abbott demonstrates convincingly, black and white abolitionists in the United States watched these changes i…
The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco
Reviewed by: The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco Jonathan Daniel Wells (bio) The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War. By Andrew Delbanco. (New York: Penguin Press, 2018. Pp. 453. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $18.00.) Was the Civil War inevitable? Modern scholars may still be reticent to …
The press and slavery in America, 1791–1859
In this valuable new study of newspaper reports of several antebellum slave rebellions, Gabrial examines resistance from small riots and conspiracies to large-scale revolts. While historians are li...
Introduction: Plantation Modernity
Introduction:Plantation Modernity Amy Clukey (bio) and Jeremy Wells (bio) When Samuel Johnson first published A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, "plantation" meant something different than it does now, denoting process as much as place, an activity as much as a socioeconomic institution. In Johnson's Dictionary, plantation was "the act or practice of planting" or "the place planted." Its third definition-"a colony"-comes closer to the …
Charles Dickens, the American South, and the Transatlantic Debate over Slavery
The complex relationship between Dickens and his readers in the American South was shaped by the novelist's views of slavery and capitalism. Neglected both by Dickens scholars as well as historians of the South, Dickens' views on slavery offer important insights into the transatlantic debate over bondage and free labour. In addition, the way in which Dickens was read by both black and white Americans and his popularity among southerners in partic…
Slavery's Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River
Slavery's Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River." American Nineteenth Century History, 15(2), pp. 219–220
Class and Slavery
This article reviews scholarship on class and slavery. The evolution of the historiography on class and slavery is complex, and historians have only recently begun to revisit some of their basic assumptions about class formation, class ideology, and the social structure of the Old South more broadly. New studies raise questions about the ways in which human bondage and class intertwined in slave societies, particularly the American South, and hav…
Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South
The first study to focus on white and black women journalists and writers both before and after the Civil War, this book offers fresh insight into Southern intellectual life, the fight for women's rights and gender ideology. Based on new research into Southern magazines and newspapers, this book seeks to shift scholarly attention away from novelists and toward the rich and diverse periodical culture of the South between 1820 and 1900. Magazines w…
A Voice in the Nation: Women Journalists in the Early Nineteenth‐Century South
Recent work on southern women and intellectual life in the nineteenth‐century South has focused on women novelists. Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to literary periodicals as important vehicles through which women earned financial reward and often regional or national reputations as authors and editors. Perhaps most significantly, southern women viewed periodicals as opportunities to speak out boldly on politics and current ev…
The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class - including merchants, doctors, and teachers - that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells s…
James Kirke Paulding: The Last Republican
Introduction The Contrast Defining and Defending the Simple Republic The West: Revitalizing the American Dream The South and the Impending Crisis Politics and the Final Dream Fanaticism in Charge Bibliographical Essay Index
Introduction: Plantation Modernity
Introduction:Plantation Modernity Amy Clukey (bio) and Jeremy Wells (bio) When Samuel Johnson first published A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, "plantation" meant something different than it does now, denoting process as much as place, an activity as much as a socioeconomic institution. In Johnson's Dictionary, plantation was "the act or practice of planting" or "the place planted." Its third definition-"a colony"-comes closer to the …
James Kirke Paulding: The Last Republican
Introduction The Contrast Defining and Defending the Simple Republic The West: Revitalizing the American Dream The South and the Impending Crisis Politics and the Final Dream Fanaticism in Charge Bibliographical Essay Index
The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class - including merchants, doctors, and teachers - that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells s…
A Voice in the Nation: Women Journalists in the Early Nineteenth‐Century South
Recent work on southern women and intellectual life in the nineteenth‐century South has focused on women novelists. Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to literary periodicals as important vehicles through which women earned financial reward and often regional or national reputations as authors and editors. Perhaps most significantly, southern women viewed periodicals as opportunities to speak out boldly on politics and current ev…
Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South
The first study to focus on white and black women journalists and writers both before and after the Civil War, this book offers fresh insight into Southern intellectual life, the fight for women's rights and gender ideology. Based on new research into Southern magazines and newspapers, this book seeks to shift scholarly attention away from novelists and toward the rich and diverse periodical culture of the South between 1820 and 1900. Magazines w…
Class and Slavery
This article reviews scholarship on class and slavery. The evolution of the historiography on class and slavery is complex, and historians have only recently begun to revisit some of their basic assumptions about class formation, class ideology, and the social structure of the Old South more broadly. New studies raise questions about the ways in which human bondage and class intertwined in slave societies, particularly the American South, and hav…
Slavery's Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River
Slavery's Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River." American Nineteenth Century History, 15(2), pp. 219–220
Charles Dickens, the American South, and the Transatlantic Debate over Slavery
The complex relationship between Dickens and his readers in the American South was shaped by the novelist's views of slavery and capitalism. Neglected both by Dickens scholars as well as historians of the South, Dickens' views on slavery offer important insights into the transatlantic debate over bondage and free labour. In addition, the way in which Dickens was read by both black and white Americans and his popularity among southerners in partic…
Introduction: Plantation Modernity
Introduction:Plantation Modernity Amy Clukey (bio) and Jeremy Wells (bio) When Samuel Johnson first published A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, "plantation" meant something different than it does now, denoting process as much as place, an activity as much as a socioeconomic institution. In Johnson's Dictionary, plantation was "the act or practice of planting" or "the place planted." Its third definition-"a colony"-comes closer to the …
The press and slavery in America, 1791–1859
In this valuable new study of newspaper reports of several antebellum slave rebellions, Gabrial examines resistance from small riots and conspiracies to large-scale revolts. While historians are li...
The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco
Reviewed by: The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco Jonathan Daniel Wells (bio) The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War. By Andrew Delbanco. (New York: Penguin Press, 2018. Pp. 453. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $18.00.) Was the Civil War inevitable? Modern scholars may still be reticent to …
Printed Communities: Race, Respectability, and Black Newspapers in the Civil War Era West
Black editors and journalistic writers in the US West, such as Philip Bell, Peter Anderson, John J. Moore, and Jennie Carter, shaped their communities' views on racial uplift, gender relations, legal claims to citizenship, and other issues. This essay argues that from the 1860s to the 1880s, Black editors produced a shared sense of identity for western African Americans separated by vast distances. Whether in Nevada or British Columbia, Black edi…
Civil War Song in Black and White: Print and the Representation of the Spirituals
This article explores how White writers wrote about African American spirituals during and after the Civil War. While these writers tended to view Black speech as deficient, they were willing to regard Black musical expression as simply different, paving the way for its eventual nationalization as “American music”. Noting that White writers were not in the habit of admitting the inadequacies of their preferred modes of representation, the article…
Southern Scoundrels: Grifters and Graft in the Nineteenth Century
If honor marked the culture of the nineteenth-century South, it must have been honor among thieves. At least that is the conclusion one reaches after reading this collection of ten original essays edited ably by two leading historians of the region. As Jeff Forret and Bruce E. Baker point out in their introduction to the volume, con men and swindlers exposed the messy nature of southern capitalism in daily practice. In fact, they argue, illicit a…
Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America by Elena K. Abbott
Utilizing traditional historical sources, many of which have been digitized, Abbott offers scholars a deeply researched and well-crafted narrative of how international antislavery movements shaped the thinking of American activists. By the early nineteenth century, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands had begun to end slavery, and, as Abbott demonstrates convincingly, black and white abolitionists in the United States watched these changes i…
Standing High among the Whites: Race, Class, and Teaching in the New South
In the decades following the end of the Civil War, Black southerners asserted their right to enter the legal, medical, and educational professions, understanding that higher education would vault them out of poverty and farm work and into a small but growing Black middle class. Mining underutilized primary sources such as the Southern Workman magazine, this essay argues that emerging middle-class Black professionals solidified their personal fina…
Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America
History (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Race, History, and American Society (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · American History and Culture (7 works) · History (7 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (5 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (5 works)