As some recent historians have argued, the phenomenon of “gender,” that is, the way in which a society or group perceives and articulates difference between the sexes, can provide that society or group with fundamental terms in which to understand itself and explain or justify its actions. Consequently, historical evidence of the way groups or societies have perceived and articulated sexual difference—have constructed gender—may therefore take us beyond matters of sexuality per se to wider revelations about the perceivers' sense of themselves1.

The most extensive early test of the American dogma of the separation of church and state seems to me to have taken place in pioneer Ohio, where a complete range of the plurality of America's religious associations first confronted public consciousness. Unlike Kentucky, whose many Protestant denominations had a largely southern cast, and unlike upstate New York, whose culture was heavily under New England influence (or, at least, appeared to literate Yankees to be so), Ohio's early citizens came from a wide mix of puritan, mid-Atlantic, and southern backgrounds. For example, every sect of Pennsylvania Germans established major outposts in Ohio's developing counties. The Buckeye State early brought together several concentrations of Roman Catholics. Early and late, diverse communities of Jews also settled there, both in smaller towns as well as in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. Also at the end of the nineteenth century, Eastern Orthodox Christians began a migration to Cleveland that later expanded into the larger industrial towns that grew southward, in such places as Toledo, Canton, and Youngstown.

Pius IX's categorical rejection of an Italian republic from 1848 to his death in 1878 created a daunting task for American Catholic apologists, who wanted to defend their besieged leader without fueling anti-Catholic nationalism.1 The responses, even from those who had oniy minimally defended the papacy's temporal power prior to 1848, exceeded predictable expressions of sympathy. Pius IX's long suffering became the prism through which a beleaguered American Catholic community viewed the whole spectrum of its own experiences of hope and frustration in securing influence in an often hostile society.

The literature dealing with those women and men who dedicated themselves to teaching the newly freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction has grown considerably in recent years. From W. E. B. DuBois's Black Reconstruction in America in 1935, with its positive depiction of the role of these teachers through Henry L.ee Swint's 1941 work, The Northern Teacher in the South, with its negative stereotype to more recent works, we now have a body of literature which has begun to examine this group in a more thorough and complex manner.1 The general stereotype which often appears in the literature is of the missionar teacher as a white woman from New England, fresh from the abolitionist movement. While it is true that many teachers fit into this category, there were also many African-American teachers and missionaries, both women and men.2 A good deal of the literature has dealt, at least briefly, with the ways in which African-American men functioned in the context of such organizations as the American Missionary Association (AMA). However, the experience of these men was different from that of African- American women, in part because these men were more likely to be givenadministrative positions in the organizations, either as principals, field agents, or supported missionaries. Most of the women, then, were more likely to remain “in the trenches” as teachers during their tenure with the missionary society.3

The philosophy of Auguste Comte changed irrevocably the intellectual contours of nineteenth-century Europe. In the Anglo-American world, John Stuart Mill was profoundly influenced by Comte's magisterial Cours de philosophie positive (1830–1842) and Mill's work became an important conduit through which Americans such as John Fiske, Lester F. Ward and Henry Adams encountered positivism. Comte's controversial later work (especially the Systéme de politique positive [1851–1854]) was also significant, although Mill and others became harsh critics of the so-called ‘second system.’ English admirers of Comte's bizarre social and religious blueprint did include notables, however, such as Frederic Harrison, Harriet Martineau and novelist George Eliot1.