LINCOLN, NE 1/9/10 (NET RADIO) NET Radio Interview with William Thomas and Leslie Working – By the end of the 1800’s, railroads connected the world. Now, the University of Nebraska is becoming a center for studying railroads with the support of a major international grant. Historian Dr. William Thomas is leading the project called Digging into Data. He and a group of UNL Historians, Computer Scientists, and Geographers will use the latest research techniques called Digital History. He explains a few of the details in an interview with NET Radio’s Jerry Johnston.
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This podcast with Will Thomas and Leslie Working considers the experience of death and dying for 19th century Americans and the significance of changing ideas about death in American society. Sarah Sim and her husband Francis Sim migrated to Otoe County, Nebraska Territory, in 1856 to start a farm. Their trials included the death of three of their children, the near suicide of Sarah, the difficulties of moving to and farming in the Great Plains in the 1850s, and the death of Sarah from breast cancer in 1880. Their letters are online at Railroads and the Making of Modern America.
Sarah Sim and her husband Francis Sim migrated to Otoe County, Nebraska Territory, in 1856 to start a farm. Their trials and travails included the death of three of their children, the near suicide of Sarah, and the difficulties of moving to and farming in the Great Plains in the 1850s. Their letters are online at The Railroads and the Making of Modern America. This podcast with Will Thomas and Leslie Working explores the significance of these letters and of the Sims’ experience in the years before the Civil War.
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Why did William Jennings Bryan run for the Senate in 1894, and why did he lose, and how was this campaign a precursor to his Democratic presidential campaign in 1896? We might look for the beginnings of modern American politics in this showdown between Bryan and the Union Pacific Railroad lead counsel, John M. Thurston. Michael Kazin’s recent biography of Bryan, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, views Bryan more as a progressive reformer than as a populist crusader. Kazin allows Bryan to stand as a transitional figure to the modern era in both his Christian liberalism and his progressive vision for the political economy. Bryan, in retrospect, made a concerted attempt throughout his career to resolve a very modern problem—how to realign the Democratic Party so that it represented the broad working and middle classes in an aggressively growth-oriented political economy–in other words, how to appeal to voters based on their class interests without being labeled a demagogue or being accused of class warfare. In recent presidential contests in 2000, 2004, and now in 2008, the problem Bryan faced has reemerged. We might say that the line between statesman and demagogue in American politics has been a thin one ever since Bryan.[display_podcast]