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Carolina Sunset, Cuban Sunrise: A Comparative Study Of Race, Class, And Gender In The Reconstructed South And Colonial Cuba, 1867-1869, Eric Walls Aug 2020

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 …


Defying Civility: Female Writers And Educators In Nineteenth-Century America, Tess Evans May 2017

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 …


Good Union People: Enduring Bonds Between Black And White Unionists In The Civil War And Beyond, James Schruefer May 2016

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 …