Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Robert E. Lee And Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Robert E. Lee was the most successful Confederate military leader during the American Civil War (1861–1865). This also made him, by virtue of the Confederacy's defense of chattel slavery, the most successful defender of the enslavement of African Americans. Yet his own personal record on both slavery and race is mottled with contradictions and ambivalence, all which were in plain view during his long career. Born into two of Virginia's most prominent families, Lee spent his early years surrounded by enslaved African Americans, although that changed once he joined the Army. His wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, freed her own …

Hays Family Papers (Sc 3161), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3161. Estate papers of the Hays family of Warren County Kentucky: wills of Samuel, Rebecca and Daniel W. Hays; William Hays estate settlement; appraisement of slaves of Daniel Hays; and sale bill of personal property of Rebecca Hays.

Reconciling With The Past: Ana Lucia Araujo’S Lecture On Coming To Terms With The Past When Monuments Are Taken Down, Daniel Wright

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

On Thursday, November 2nd, Howard University History Professor Ana Lucia Araujo visited Gettysburg College to give a lecture titled “Slavery, Memory, and Reparations: Coming to Terms with the Past When Monuments Are Taken Down.” The historian, author, and professor talked about the history of slavery as well as the concepts of memory and reparations. One form of reparations discussed recently has been the removal of Confederate monuments in the United States, which has been heavily debated for years. [excerpt]

Forggett, Essie (Fa 1104), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1104. Student paper titled “Slavery in Green County” in which Essie Forggett details the history of the settlement of Green County and its eventual dependence upon slave labor. Forggett also includes stories of slave auctions, punishments, attempted escapes, and religious practices of slaves throughout the region. Paper is based on information collected by Forggett from county clerk records and in-person interviews with slave descendants.

Slaveholder Investment In Territorial Minnesota, Christopher P. Lehman

Ethnic and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

Enslavers from slave states came to Minnesota during the Antebellum Era and invested in land and businesses there. The investors represented the diversity of slaveholders: owners of large plantations, operators of small farms, and urban residents. Some enslavers actively bought and sold people, but others had unwittingly inherited captives from deceased relatives. Most of them had brief stays in Minnesota during the spring and summer while making their investments, but a few of them sold all their captives in the South and then permanently relocated to Minnesota to buy the land for their new homes. Their investments provided sorely needed …

Revisiting Fredericksburg: Using Provocation To Explore New Questions, Jonathan Tracey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

To Freeman Tilden, provocation was an essential ingredient to effective interpretation, and I tend to agree with that idea. Both my walking tour at the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center and the interpretive exhibits at Chatham Manor utilize provocation in different forms, with different challenges and opportunities. Overall, the atmosphere of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is one that supports and encourages provocative thinking by visitors.

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)

Should We Banish Robert E. Lee & His Confederate Friends? Let's Talk., Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

After 152 years, Robert E. Lee is back in the headlines. But not in any way he could have imagined.

The “Unite the Right” forces descended on Charlottesville, Va., to protest calls for the removal of an equestrian statue of Lee that has been sitting in a city park since 1924. The larger question, however, was about whether the famous Confederate general was also a symbol of white supremacy.

The same issues were in play in May when a statue of Lee was removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans. There are also more than two dozen streets and schools …

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)

"La Patria Es Nuestra Madre": Family Metaphor And Race In The La Guaira Conspiracy, Thomas Genova

Spanish Publications

This paper explores the intersection of race and the metaphor of the national family in the texts generated during the Conspiración de La Guaira, a failed 1797 republican independentista revolt in colonial Venezuela led by Mallorcan enlightened intellectual Juan Mariano Picornell. Turning away from traditional representations of the dynastic state in terms of paternity, the La Guaira conspirators figure the nation as a mother and creoles and Afro-Venezuelans as brother citizens. Yet, at the same time that it indicates a transition from dynastic to republican paradigms, the conspirators’ emphasis on revolutionary brotherhood serves to contain the radical notions of equality …

Defending Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

There are no Reconstruction re-enactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word “reconstruction”—he qualified it with add-ons like “what is called reconstruction” or “a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)”—and preferred to speak of the “re-inauguration of the national authority” or the need to “re-inaugurate loyal state governments.” Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. ( …

Appomattox: 152 Years Later, Jonathan Tracey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Just over a week ago was the 152nd anniversary of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. Although that number may not be as big a deal as the 150th anniversary a few years ago, there was something else special about this year. For only the seventh time since 1865, April 9th fell on Palm Sunday, just as it did on the day that Grant and Lee met in the McLean House. Not only was I lucky enough to attend this commemoration, but I was able to revisit the job I held over the summer by volunteering that weekend. Arriving …

The Corwin Amendment: The Last Last-Minute Attempt To Save The Union, Hannah M. Christensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

At around 5:20AM on March 4, 1861—Inauguration Day—the Senate voted 24-12 to pass a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would permanently preserve slavery in the states where it currently existed. If successfully ratified, it would become the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution—and hopefully avert the secession crisis and the impending Civil War. However, only six states had ratified the amendment by early 1862, and the amendment died soon after. The last attempt to stop the Civil War, an attempt which had been in the works since shortly after the presidential election, had failed.

Finding Meaning In The Flag: Ex-Slaves And Newsies, Olivia Ortman

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Thus far we’ve talked about predominately white Union and Confederate views of the Confederate flag, so for my last piece on perspectives during the war I want to talk about the views of African Americans. For African Americans, especially, the Civil War was tightly intertwined with the matter of slavery. They realized that the outcome of the war would be instrumental in determining the fate of slavery as an institution and believed that a Confederate victory would be detrimental to the prospects of their freedom. If Southerners had their way, slavery would likely never die.

Listening/Reading For Disremembered Voices: Additive Archival Representation And The Zong Massacre Of 1781, Jorge E. Cartaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice …

Western Lunatic Asylum - Hopkinsville, Kentucky (Sc 3093), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans of selected items (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3093. Documents, chiefly 1854-1870, relating to the operation of the Western Lunatic Asylum, Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Includes contracts and accounts for wood, coal, foodstuffs, laborers and employees, and repair and construction. Also includes legislation relating to appropriations and management, an 1855 inventory of movable property, a report to Governor Beriah Magoffin of an 1860 fire, and contracts and inventories relating to the subsequent rebuilding of the asylum.

Newroom: Do Lord Remember Me: Black Church In Ri 02-21-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Commentary: Challenging Three Electoral College Indictments, Allen C. Guelzo, James H. Hulme

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

On the day the Electoral College met and elected Donald J. Trump the 45th president of the United States, the New York Times editorial board published a scathing attack on the Electoral College as an "antiquated mechanism" which "overwhelming majorities" of Americans would prefer to eliminate in favor of a direct national popular vote. [excerpt]

Kentucky Slavery: The Historiography Of Human Property Records, Andrew D. Johnson

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

The domestic slave trade in the United States was generally condemned as an evil business. Nonetheless, many documents pertaining to this trade do not reflect the negative aspects. The reason for this lies in the simple fact that many of the primary source documents studied are written by those who took part in the trade—not those who were forcibly traded. To view the trade from the eyes of those who were lost in the abominable trade, historians are faced with the dilemma mainly stemming from a lack of literacy from those who experienced this narrative. With the extreme bias in …