Digital Commons Network^™

Jones Family Papers, 1837-2005, South Caroliniana Library

The South Caroliniana Library Report of Acquisitions

11.25 linear feet of correspondence, account books, receipts, photographs, and genealogical material chiefly relating to the families of Lewis Jones (1813–1892) and his wife Rebecca Margaret Jones (b. 1819) and their son Louis Pou Jones (1849–1890) and his wife Matilda Virginia Lomax (1851–1926) of Abbeville and Edgefield Counties, South Carolina.

Antebellum materials include:

Letters, 1843-1851, written by Matilda Lomax’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Duncan (1825–1851) describing her experiences at Buckingham Female Institute in Buckingham County, Virginia; her life in Boydton, Virginia, where she lived while her father David Duncan (1791–1881) taught at Randolph-Macon College; her life in Abbeville, South Carolina following …

Sadler Family Papers, 1836-1921, South Caroliniana Library

The South Caroliniana Library Report of Acquisitions

Correspondence, receipts, legal documents, and labor contracts chiefly documenting the lives of the family of Richard Sadler (1815–1890) and his wife Mary Henrietta Williams (1818–1896) of York County, S.C.

The earliest correspondence in the collection, dated 1846-1846, relates to family affairs and the settlement of the estate of Mary Robertson Sadler (1774–1842) and includes letters written to the Sadlers in York County from relatives in Alabama.

A significant portion of the correspondence are letters to and from Kiah Price Harris Sadler (1842–1864), the oldest son of Richard and Mary Sadler, while he was employed as a clerk in a mercantile …

From The End Of Politics To Legitimate Opposition: Political Perceptions Of The 37th Congress Of The United States In The North 1860-1862, Lauren Dubas

Honors Theses

This paper intends to explore the political landscape of the Union during the first two years of the Civil War, specifically how the people in the North perceived what remained of the Congress from 1860-1862. I will be using a combination of primary and secondary sources to cover the 37^th Congress of the United States, whose members were elected in 1860 and legislated until the next Congressional election in 1862. My research shows several significant stages in the political landscape during this period and uses these stages of partisan politics as the foundation for understanding how the federal government, …

Bearing Report: A Roundtable On Historians And American Veterans, James Marten

History Faculty Research and Publications

Five historians—each an expert on a specific era and issue related to veterans—were asked to ponder the following questions: 1. What are the most important questions explored by historians in veterans studies? 2. What are the books that have been most useful to your particular area of interest in veterans studies? 3. How can the history of veterans help us understand larger cultural, social, and economic issues during the time periods in which the veterans you study lived? 4. What are the particular contributions that a historic sensibility can bring to the study of veterans of any war? 5. How …

"No Place In American History": Remembering And Forgetting The Sultana Disaster, Elias John Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the historical memory of the Sultana steamboat disaster of April 27, 1865. The Sultana, ferrying recently-released federal prisoners, exploded north of Memphis, killing over 1,700 in the nation’s worst maritime disaster. Contemporaries interpreted the disaster through a variety of lenses, finding evidence of recalcitrant rebels, the heroism of Union soldiers, and critiques of Republican emancipationist wartime policy. Steamboat safety advocates deployed the disaster’s memory to successfully press Radical Republicans for the 1871 Steamboat Act, establishing the nation’s first maritime safety code. The disaster’s survivors gathered at reunions and published personal narratives to secure the Sultana, and the …

“We Do Not Believe Him To Be Sick… But Completely Worthless:” Victorian Character, Self-Mastery, And Pension Outcomes For Disabled Union Veterans, Matthew L. Castagna

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Close, But No Cigar: Tobacco Usage During The Civil War Era, Benjamin M. Roy

Student Publications

Tobacco carried a range of gendered, social, regional, and racial meanings in America during the nineteenth century, and these disparate meanings were symbolized through different forms of consumption. The cultural meaning inherent within chewing tobacco, cigars, pipes, and cigarettes, are the object of this research. I will examine the class associations linked to chewing tobacco, the manly identities symbolized through cigars and pipes, and explore cultural movement and racial meaning through the cigarette. Through tobacco, I will explain how nineteenth century Americans comprehended addiction, and establish the organic agency of consumable commodities to influence the consciousness of their users.

Carolina Sunset, Cuban Sunrise: A Comparative Study Of Race, Class, And Gender In The Reconstructed South And Colonial Cuba, 1867-1869, Eric Walls

Madison Historical Review

The loss of the American Civil War and the consequence of Reconstruction literally turned the South on its head, profoundly altering the dynamics of race, class, and gender that previously defined antebellum Southern society. The letters of Harriet Rutledge Elliott Gonzales reveal one formerly elite South Carolina family’s struggle as they faced a new social landscape that forced them to adapt to new challenges, particularly surrounding emancipation and the drastic reversal of the norms that previously characterized Southern society that development entailed. Harriet Rutledge Elliot Gonzales never abandoned a sense of her “aristocratic” origins and “good blood,” despite the hardships …

Ulster, Georgia, And The Civil War: Stories Of Variation, William Loveless

Honors Theses

Ulster, Georgia, and The Civil War: Stories of Variation explores the lives of 13 men from Northern Ireland who immigrated to the American South and fought for the Confederacy. The author pursues the stories of each man’s life in order to have a more thorough understanding of what life looked like for Irish/Ulster immigrants in the South during the 19^th century. By looking at the lives of the men in Ulster, their first experiences in the United States, their experiences in the Civil War, and their lives following the war, the author identifies more variation than consistent trends.

Knott Family Papers (Mss 675), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 675. Papers and photographs of James Proctor Knott, Lebanon, Kentucky, and his wife Sarah "Sallie" (McElroy) Knott. Includes two journals of Sallie Knott covering the first eight years of their marriage (Click on "Additional Files" below to view typescripts), and miscellaneous papers of a related family, the Clarks.

Horse Racing During The Civil War: The Perseverance Of The Sport During A Time Of National Crisis, Danael Christian Suttle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Horse racing has a long and uninterrupted history in the United States. The historiography, however, maintains that horse racing went into hiatus during the Civil War. This simply is not true. While it is true that horse racing saw a decline in the beginning of the war, by the time the war ended, the sport had risen to similar heights as seen before the war. During the war, the sport was enjoyed by both soldiers and civilians. In the army, soldiers would often have impromptu camp races. As the war continued on, camp races became frowned upon by officers. The …

Searching For Compromise: Missouri Congressman John Richard Barret’S Fight To Save The Union, Nicholas Sacco

The Confluence (2009-2020)

In the months leading to the Civil War, Missouri politics were turbulent. Some supported union, others not. John Richard Barret fought to keep Missouri and the state’s Democrats loyal to the union.

Ligon, Lucy Ann (Parker) Robbins, 1833-1891 - Letters To (Sc 3278), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescripts (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3278. Letters to Lucy Ann Robbins Ligon, the daughter of Fulton County, Kentucky judge Josiah Parker and his wife Lucy A. Parker, written while she lived in Crittenden County, Arkansas with her late husband’s brother, and in Hickman, Kentucky after her remarriage. Lucy’s parents relay news of her siblings and of pre-Civil War Hickman, and at the outbreak of war dramatically describe the division of loyalties, the townspeople’s fear and uncertainty as invasion threatens from the North, the enlistment of local men, two destructive fires, economic conditions, …

"Cracks In The Melting Pot": Native Americans, Military Service And Citizenship, Brittany A. Kelley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper focuses on Native American military service in Euro-American Wars. It analyzes their reasons for fighting and compares those reasons to the reasons of other racial and ethnic groups. This paper explores how certain racial and ethnic groups are marginalized and “otherized” and how they occasionally attempt to assimilate into mainstream society through military service. Irish Americans and African Americans viewed the Civil War in this way, while Native Americans hoped they would be able to improve their individual situations. Native Americans fought for purposes of assimilation and citizenship in World War I, and while they were technically granted …

Defying Civility: Female Writers And Educators In Nineteenth-Century America, Tess Evans

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis project investigates how northern American women in the nineteenth-century defied civility and what the consequences were. Primary and secondary source research of poetry, prose, letters, government documents, and personal accounts reveal that these women were able to step out of the domestic sphere to create a new world for themselves without the aid of males. This paper and accompanying online exhibit, Civil War Successes, explores how defying the notions of a civil woman paved the way for an earlier women’s movement than the twentieth-century. A nation torn apart by civil war saw women creating outlets for their …

Maligned “Milish:” Mississippi Militiamen In The Civil War, Tracy L. Barnett

Master's Theses

Thousands of southern men avoided regular military service in the American Civil War and enlisted or were drafted into state organized militias. In Mississippi, these units were termed Mississippi State Troops or Minute Men. This thesis argues that Mississippi militiamen’s pre-war positions and localized conception of military service directly influenced their wartime experiences. Militiamen, often in their thirties and forties, were older than the average Confederate soldier, established community members, and heads of families who sought service near home. The Mississippi state government, however, visualized militia service as anything but local and developed a centralized militia system that removed men …

Good Union People: Enduring Bonds Between Black And White Unionists In The Civil War And Beyond, James Schruefer

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The thesis investigates the nature of the relationship between white unionists during the American Civil War and their enslaved and free black counterparts. To do this it utilizes the records of the Southern Claims Commission, which collected testimony from former unionists and their character witnesses from 1872 to 1880. For comparative purposes, it focuses on two regions economically similar and frequently contested by opposing armies: Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and the region of central Tennessee to the southeast of Nashville. As the war began, white unionists were suddenly alienated from the larger community and faced persecution by authorities and threats of …

Mobile Daily Register, January-June 1860, Vicki Betts

By Title

Selected articles from the Mobile Daily Register, published in Mobile, Alabama, covering the months January through December, 1860.

“$300 Or Your Life”: Recruitment And The Draft In The Civil War, Melissa Traub

Honors Scholar Theses

One of the most challenging tasks of a nation at war is turning its average citizens into soldiers. While volunteers flooded to the war front in thousands in the beginning of the Civil War, recruitment slowly dwindled as the war dragged on. Eventually, the North was forced to pass the Enrollment Act of 1863, the first national draft in United States history. Every able bodied man between the ages of twenty and forty-five was subject to the draft. For an already unstable nation, the national draft did little to help the divides that split the country. The policies of substitution …

The Saint Patrick’S Battalion: Loyalty, Nativism, And Identity In The Nineteenth Century And Today, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Two decades before the Irish Brigade covered itself with glory, an earlier unit of Irish immigrants had won renown for its service during the Mexican American War. Calling themselves the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, these men marched under a flag of brilliant emerald decorated with Irish motifs: a harp, a shamrock, and the image of Saint Patrick [excerpt].

The "Unfinished Work:" The Civil War Centennial And The Civil Rights Movement, Megan A. Sutter

Student Publications

The Civil War Centennial celebrations fell short of a great opportunity in which Americans could reflect on the legacy of the Civil War through the racial crisis erupting in their nation. Different groups exploited the Centennial for their own purposes, but only the African Americans and civil rights activists tried to emphasize the importance of emancipation and slavery to the memory of the war. Southerners asserted states’ rights in resistance to what they saw as a black rebellion in their area. Northerners reflected back on the theme of reconciliation, prevalent in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the war. Unfortunately, those who …

July 4, 1865: A Nation In Search Of Itself, Sorn A. Jessen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The eighty-ninth anniversary of the declaration of American independence from Britain, on July 4, 1865, caught the nation at a critical time in its history. The great national crisis of civil war was over, but the nation had not yet re-united. The thesis argues that in the aftermath of the Civil War, American nationalism could not be reconstituted on neither an ethnic nor a civic model. Rather, on the eighty-ninth anniversary of Independence, the course of American Nationalism fell out along lines decreed by historical memory. The narrative construction of the past in the present constituted the only common thread …

Class Conflict And The Confederate Conscription Acts In North Carolina, 1862-1864, Tyler Cline

Honors College

This thesis will analyze the effect that Confederate conscription policies during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1864 had on the social order that existed in North Carolina. Conflicts arose during the war between the slave-owning aristocratic class and the yeomen farmers who owned few slaves, if any, and thus were not dependent on the slave system in the pre-war era. A regional approach, exploring the impact of geography on social development, illustrates that the undermining of this social stability led to growing class-consciousness among the middle class farmers who dominated the Piedmont region of North Carolina. It will …

Richard D. Dunphy: A Veteran’S Struggle Echoing Into The Present, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

When I first received the bundle of Richard Dunphy’s pension documents, I was prepared to begin research on an obscure figure lost to time. To my great surprise, the very first search I performed resulted in a handful of genealogy websites, several citations of his merit, and even a Wikipedia page. As I began research, it became clear that this coal heaver was not one of the faceless many who fought in the American Civil War, but rather a man of the age whose life told a timeless story of hardship and resolve. [excerpt]

Tabor, Sharon - Collector (Sc 2704), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of contents (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2704. Calendar of events, historic walking tour information, and Pioneer Cemetery Lantern Tour scripts and supporting research, all relating to Civil War Sesquicentennial commemorations in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Includes information on Civil War-era burials in Pioneer Cemetery.

Anti-Slavery And Church Schism Among Protestants In Antebellum Central Kentucky, Lance Justin Hale

Online Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the effects of anti-slavery and church schism among Protestant Christians in the Bluegrass region of antebellum Kentucky. A variety of secondary and primary sources are utilized, including books and journal articles from current scholarship, journals kept by historical actors, books, letters, and articles, written during or some years after the time under consideration, as well as publications of churches and denominations. Throughout the antebellum years, churches and denominations in the United States fractured over disagreements on slavery and theology. Pastors, such as James Pendleton and Peter Cartwright, endeavored to keep Christianity vibrant and relevant …

South Kingstown’S Own: A Biographical Sketch Of Isaac Peace Rodman Brigadier General, Robert E. Gough

Special Collections (Miscellaneous)

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of Destruction: Racial Identity And Noncombatant Immunity In The Civil War Era, James M. Bartek

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores how Americans chose to conduct war in the mid-nineteenth century and the relationship between race and the onset of “total war” policies. It is my argument that enlisted soldiers in the Civil War era selectively waged total war using race and cultural standards as determining factors. A comparative analysis of the treatment of noncombatants throughout the United States between 1861 and 1865 demonstrates that nonwhites invariably suffered greater depredations at the hands of military forces than did whites. Five types of encounters are examined: 1) the treatment of white noncombatants by regular Union and Confederate forces; 2) …

The First Battle Of Gettysburg: April 22, 1861, Timothy H. Smith

Adams County History

The fears of invasion voiced by the residents of south-central Pennsylvania prior to the Gettysburg Campaign are often the subject of ridicule in books and articles written on the battle. But to appreciate the events that occurred during the summer of 1863, it is necessary to understand how the citizens were affected by the constant rumors of invasion during the first two years of the war. And although there were many such scares prior to the battle, nothing reached the level of anxiety that was felt during the first few days of the war. On Monday morning, April 15, 1861, …

Adams County History 2010

Adams County History

No abstract provided.