19th Century America Quotes

I like stories in specific time periods. 'The Revenant's' era of American history was fascinating because it was this lawless no-man's land. It defined the idea of the American frontiersman as man conquering nature. In a way, the story of Hugh Glass is about man dominating nature.

A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman.

For me, I've always been fascinated by tales of the Chinese railroad and the workers and the conditions of the workers who built the railroad.

Everyone knows 'Little Women.' Most women love it if they've read it. If they haven't, they might love the movie, or they've heard of it.

I've been enjoying 'Life on the Mississippi' by Mark Twain that I picked up at the airport randomly. It's very witty and interesting to read about his time as a steamboat pilot.

The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing.

We Polked you in '44, We shall Pierce you in '52

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

My family has existed in eastern Kentucky for as long as there are records. If you're familiar with the famous Hatfield-McCoy family feud back in the 1860s, '70s and '80s in the United States, my family was an integral part of that.

'What I would give,' I thought, 'to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective.'

It was David McCullough's 'The Johnstown Flood' that lit my imagination as to how I might one day go about writing book-length nonfiction, though my favorite of his books is 'Mornings on Horseback,' about the young Teddy Roosevelt.

A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.

When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.

[The film Woman Walks Ahead] is from a long time ago. I wrote that ages ago. It looks gorgeous and Jessica [Chastain] is so good that I've got high hopes.

I honestly think I was an Indian living in the time of the Trail of Tears. Something like that. Every time I read books about back then, I get so devastatingly sad, so, so... I feel such a deep connection to it.

'Little Women' made me into a reader.

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

Growing up, I read all three of Frederick Douglass' autobiographies by the time I was 12.

The book 'A Reliable Wife' is a slice of American history. It takes a part of American history and tells a story about the purchase of a wife by a Wisconsin businessman. The research of that would have been really interesting.

The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.

An American store is generally a very extensive apartment, handsomely decorated, the roof frequently supported on marble pillars. The owner or clerk is seen seated by his goods, absorbed in the morning paper - probably balancing himself on one leg of his chair, with a spittoon by his side.

In 1881, my dad's grandparents, who were Norwegian farmers, immigrated to the United States - the same year my great grandfather from Laguna Pueblo was put on a train to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Before the Great Chicago Fire, no one took notice of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, two Irish immigrants who lived with their five children on the city's West Side.