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Missouri! Bright Land Of The West: Civil War Memory And Western Identity In Missouri, Amy Fluker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project argues that Missouri’s singular position as a border state not only between the North and South, but also between the East and West shaped the state’s Civil War experience as well as its memory of the conflict. During the Civil War, Missouri was a slaveholding border state on the western frontier and home to a diverse and divided population. Neither wholly Union nor Confederate, Missouri’s Civil War was bitterly divisive. In its aftermath, Missourians struggled to come to terms with what it had been about. They found no place within the national narratives of Civil War commemoration emerging …

Constructing The World's Largest Prison: Understanding Identity By Examining Labor, Hubert J. Gibson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

A Civil War prison camp operated by the Confederacy known as Camp Lawton was once considered the largest prison in the world. This label was attributed to the fact that Lawton’s stockade enclosed 42 acres. The historical record does not have a clear picture of who built it. Newspaper interviews claim the construction was carried out by 500 impressed slave laborers and 300 Union POWs, but these lack the credibility of official orders. Unfortunately, many Confederate documents were lost when Sherman’s army came through Millen, GA. This study archaeologically examines construction techniques utilized for building stockades in an effort …