Grand excursion
Subtitle: antebellum America discovers the Upper Mississippi
By: Steven J. Keillor.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Afton Historical Society Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Afton, [Minn.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
Subjects: Mississippi River Valley -- Description and travel; Mississippi River Valley -- History -- 1803-1865; United States -- History -- 1815-1861
Description: "In June 1854, to celebrate completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River, the owners of the Chicago & Rock Island invited hundreds of shareholders, bondholders, notables, and fashionables to travel by rail to Rock Island, Illinois, and from there by steamboat to St. Anthony Falls in fledgling Minnesota Territory, all at the railroad's expense." "Relying largely on the excursionists' own accounts of the roundtrip journey, Steven Keillor's engaging portrait of a week in the lives of this microcosm of antebellum society captures the prevailing sectionalism, the railroad-driven economy, reform movements, the ongoing literary renaissance, westward expansion, the second-party system, the postmillennial optimism and pre-Darwinian religious fervor, the gradually changing notions of gender and class, and the romantic idealism of this period before realism."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-283) and index.