Word: 1780s
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...late 1780s, every influential western leader was "publicly proclaiming his loss of faith in the national government." Separatist plans were rife: one scheme set up the state of Franklin, complete with constitution and elected governor. In Washington's phrase, "the touch of a feather" might have turned the frontier to independence, or even to an alliance with Great Britain...
Revolution-minded, some 40 faithful set out from the Soviet embassy in Washington to visit Early American landmarks, stopping at Fredericksburg, Va., for a look at the law office occupied in the late 1780s by President James Monroe. Unrest became apparent when Laurence G. Hoes, 63, great-great-grandson of Monroe, pressed a copy of the Monroe Doctrine on Russian Counselor Igor Kolosovski, 42. "Give this to Premier Khrushchev," suggested Hoes, "and tell him the Monroe Doctrine is very much alive." Nyet, snorted Kolosovski, "a dead document." Immediately followed a Cossack chorus of "dead document, dead document," until Hoes added...
When conscience nagged, slave owners cited the Bible (Leviticus 25:44-"Thy bondmen shall be of the heathen") as justification. But the trade offered the chance of such fantastic commercial gain that few men could resist it. In the 1780s, when a man could live on ?6 a year, the merchants of Liverpool with 87 ships working the African coast netted ?300,000 profit in one twelve-month period...
...John Hawkins, Knt. Well worth the time of Johnson fans, this full-length biography of the lexicographer was written four years before Boswell's, by a man who knew him considerably longer. The book became a victim of literary feuding, and this is the first printing since the 1780s...
...James Graham pleased Londoners in the 1780s by opening a "Hymeneal Temple." Centerpiece of this edifice was the "Celestial Bed," over which "presided" a pretty young healer named Miss Emma Lyons. Gentlemen who found the "Celestial Bed" (fee: ?100 per night) somewhat fatiguing could retreat to another bed to be refreshed with charges of "Magneto-Electric" virility (fee: ?50 per night). Dr. Graham soon abdicated from his "Electrical Throne," but Emma Lyons married Sir William Hamilton and, in due course, became the historic sharer of the celestial bed of Admiral Lord Nelson...