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Monuments Ought To Be Considered Case By Case, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

In a press conference last week President Donald Trump made this contribution to the escalating debate about monuments and memorials to American heroes who, by today’s reckoning, failed a moral test.

The statue debate is inherently emotional and when it comes to keeping certain statues up or pulling them down, it riles people up —including Donald Trump. However, it is important to separate President Trump’s intemperate and often factually inaccurate remarks at Tuesday’s press conference from the statue controversy as it is currently playing out. (excerpt)

What If The South Had Won The Civil War? 4 Sci-Fi Scenarios For Hbo's 'Confederate', Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

“What if” has always been the favorite game of Civil War historians. Now, thanks to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — the team that created HBO’s insanely popular Game of Thrones — it looks as though we’ll get a chance to see that “what if” on screen. Their new project, Confederate, proposes an alternate America in which the secession of the Southern Confederacy in 1861 actually succeeds. It is a place where slavery is legal and pervasive, and where a new civil war is brewing between the divided sections. (excerpt)

Slavery, Civil War, And Contemporary Public Opinion In The South, Madison R. Swiney

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

This paper is an empirical extension of Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen’s piece (forthcoming), “A Culture of Disenfranchisement: How American Slavery Continues to Affect Voting Behavior.” In their project, Acharya, Blackwell and Sen (forthcoming) show that the counties that had more slaves versus free population in the nineteenth century are more likely to exhibit conservative attitudes in contemporary elections. I am extending this argument by measuring potential influence of Civil War battlegrounds on recent voting patterns and political predispositions. My project finds further support for Acharya, Blackwell and Sen’s study on the predictive power …

Petty Passions, Nobler Actions, And Two Peculiar Institutions: Sectionalism, Partisanship, And The United States Senate, 1845-1850, Stanley G. Schwartz

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

The period from 1845-1850 was a critical moment in American history, as the question of the expansion of slavery into western territories battered the nation, turning a political system until then focused on issues of tariff and banking, to the decision of sectional and moral questions. Despite the emotion and danger of the time, the Senate, which ultimately decided the questions of slavery’s expansion, brokered the Compromise of 1850, a measure that stemmed the sectionalist fervor for a time. This was achieved only through the seasoned leadership and sacrifice of uniquely great American political leaders, overcoming complications of party and …

A Reformers' Union: Land Reform, Labor, And The Evolution Of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860, Sean G. Griffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Reformers’ Union: Land Reform, Labor, and the Evolution of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860” offers a critical revision of the existing literature on both the early labor and antislavery movements by examining the ideologies and organizational approaches that labor reformers and abolitionists used to challenge both the expansion of slavery and the spread of market relationships. Extending the timeframe of the antislavery and labor movements backwards to the 1790s, this dissertation situates the origins of the pre-Civil War labor movement in republican ideology and currents of transatlantic radical thought, and traces the rise of agrarian and communitarian labor reform against the …

An Anomalous Case Of Southern Sympathy: New Jersey's Civil War Stance, Emily A. Hawk

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

A popular narrative of the Civil War assumes that all Northern states stood united behind President Abraham Lincoln in their loyalty to the Union. However, the case of New Jersey suggests that this narrative of devotion is simply a myth. The agrarian economy of New Jersey kept the state firmly opposed to universal emancipation, and New Jersey behaved more like a border state than its geographic neighbors of Pennsylvania and New York. By examining New Jersey's response to the release of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Election of 1864, the myth of Northern unity is broken by understanding persistent state-level …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2017

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

A Few Comments About The Unfair Criticisms Of Abraham And Mary Lincoln Or Two Sides Of A Penny, Rebecca Clark

The Student Researcher: A Phi Alpha Theta Publication

There are a tremendous number of books and articles printed about Abraham and Mary Lincoln. They comment, critique, and analyze every aspect of their lives before, during, and after the Lincoln Presidency. No triviality has been deemed too small or inconsequential to dwell upon and debate. In fact, the Lincolns, from the beginning of Abraham’s courtship of Mary Todd to after the fatal assassination, were treated unfairly and subjected to false attacks by the press, public, and family members for self-serving agendas, and nefarious purposes. Despite her family’s qualms over her choice of a husband, Mary saw in Abrahamqualities others …