Item Detail
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25019
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0
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0
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English
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Looking for the New Jerusalem : Antebellum New Religious Movements and the Mississippi River
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Gods of the Mississippi
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Bloomington, IN
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Indiana University Press
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74-94
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In 1830, in common with many of his contemporaries, Lyman Beecher was looking to the West. As he described in a letter to his daughter Catherine, what he saw in that direction was of the utmost importance: 'The moral destiny of the nation, and all our institutions and hopes, and the world’s hopes, turn on the character of the West.' Beecher himself was about to transplant his family to Cincinnati in order 'to spend the remnant of my days in that great conflict, and in consecrating all my children to God in that region who are willing to go.' The stakes were high, and Beecher was resolute about the potential significance of the struggle that waited for him there: 'If we gain the West, all is safe; if we lose it, all is lost . . . this is not with me a transient flash of feeling, but a feeling as if the great battle is to be fought in the Valley of the Mississippi.' [From the text]