Spreading the Word : : The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America / / Peter J. Wosh.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Wosh, Peter J.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©1994
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (286 p.)

Civil war, the completion of transcontinental railroads, rapid urbanization and industrialization, the rise of managerial capitalism, and new entanglements abroad rent the fabric of life in nineteenth-century America. Through all the turmoil, the American Bible Society thrived. This engaging book tells how a modest antebellum reform agency responded to cataclysmic social change and grew to be a nonprofit corporate bureaucracy that managed, among other projects, what was one of the largest publishing houses in the United States.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List Of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. A Bible House In The City -- 2. From Civic Humanitarianism To Corporate Benevolence: The Changing Nature Of The Board Of Managers -- 3. Local Particularism And National Interests: Creating The Agency System, 1816-1830 -- 4. The Limits Of Consensus In A Capitalist Metropolis: The Problem Of Mariners And "Papists" -- 5. The Limits Of Consensus In A Christian Republic: Jacksonians, Baptists, Translators, And Abolitionists -- 6. "Motives Of Both Duty And Expediency": Entering The Foreign Field, 1831-1844 -- 7. Making Agents Accountable: Bureaucratization And The Agency System, 1845-1865 -- 8. Race, War, And Sectionalism: Reconstructing The Southern Agencies, 1850-1867 -- 9. Bringing System And Order To The Agency: Bible Work In The Levant, 1854-1889 -- Epilogue: From "Missionary Basis" To "Business Basis"? Isaac Bliss's Strange Lament -- Index