Sorrow and Satisfaction

Millions of Americans moved west to settle the Mississippi Valley and the Great Plains during the tumultuous nineteenth century. In 1850, Dr. James Dudley Gray (1821–1894) set out for Iowa from Marietta, Ohio, following a family migration path pioneered by his oldest brother a decade earlier. Sorrow and Satisfaction: The Life of Dr. James Dudley Gray takes readers along on Gray's journey, revealing what it was like to settle the frontier, suffer bankruptcy, witness religious persecution, confront Locofoco politicians, assist enslaved people on the Underground Railroad, work as a country doctor and Civil War surgeon, and found a town that prospered but then withered away.

Gray's story also recounts his unrequited love for his cousin Mary, who refused to marry him. His eloquent letters to her reveal his life from 1841 to the Civil War, chronicling his thoughts on religion, politics, abolition, women's rights, and technological change. While in Ohio, Gray co-owned the Belmont Farmer, an abolitionist newspaper published in Bridgeport, just across the Ohio River from Wheeling, in the slave state of Virginia. Although the venture was not a success, the paper vividly records Gray's conviction that freedom is a human right.

A preeminent historian of technology, David E. Nye, analyzes Gray's life for insight about the social and political environment of his time. Sorrow and Satisfaction provides a valuable resource for history scholars as well as anyone interested in a historical perspective on one of the most turbulent periods in American history.