Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Deconstructing Reconstruction: The Portrayal Of The Reconstruction Era In High School History Textbooks, Eleanor Katari

Graduate Masters Theses

This paper examines the persistence of Dunning School narratives of the Reconstruction Era in high school US History textbooks, despite the thorough rejection of those narratives among academic historians at the college level and above. In examining the reasons for the persistence of these narratives, this paper acknowledges some structural elements of the textbook industry before focusing on the role of white women’s parent activism in shaping textbook content and adoption, stretching backwards to the 1890s and the Daughters of Confederate Veterans, and forward to the present day and organizations such as Moms for Liberty. This paper also points out …

Little Men And Big Banks: The Republican Party's Financial Policy From The Civil War To The Panic Of 1873, Miles Sebastian Hansen

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

False Idol: The Memory Of Andrew Johnson And Reconstruction In Greeneville, Tennessee 1869-2022, Zachary A. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The memory of Andrew Johnson in Greeneville has progressed through three phases. The first phase began during Johnson’s post-presidential career when he sought national office to demonstrate his vindication. After Johnson died the first phase continued through the efforts of his daughters and local Unionists who sought to strengthen the myth of monolithic Unionism and use Johnson to promote reconciliation and to shield the region from federal intervention in the racial hierarchy. The second phase in the construction of Johnson’s memory began in 1908 when Northerners began to unite with white Southerners in white supremacy. East Tennesseans then celebrated the …

Embattled Learning: Education And Emancipation In The Post-Civil War Upper South, Lucas Somers

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the establishment of schools for and by formerly enslaved African Americans in Kentucky and Tennessee in the decade after the Civil War, analyzing the different individuals and organizations that supported or opposed those efforts. Members of Black communities strove to secure an education for children and adults while doing everything in their power to maintain control of those schools. Widespread poverty, racism, and uncertain political status necessitated that African Americans accept help from outsiders, especially from teachers and agents sent by the federal government and northern benevolent associations. The central argument is that the ultimate failure to …

War And Reconstruction From An East Texas Perspective: Nacogdoches County From 1861-1876, William Wade Carter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Initially founded in 1826 as a municipality of Mexico and organized as a county in 1837—and sharing its name with the oldest town in Texas—Nacogdoches County flourishes with a rich history and has been a factor in nearly every major event in early Texas history. The Civil War is no exception. Men from the county contributed to the war effort but also felt the war’s sting at home. Citizens did what they could to survive. The county continued under the yoke of Reconstruction after the war before booming again in the 1880s thanks largely to the town the county shares …

"Freedmen Not Freemen": The Freedmen's Bureau And Black Land Ownership In Arkansas, Eric Johnson

Honors Theses

When slavery ended at the close of the Civil War, there was no universal answer for where former slaves were to live. The type and quality of freedom Black Southerners would experience during Reconstruction would be largely determined by where they lived. Many freedpeople and Republicans desired for widespread Black land ownership across the South. “Forty acres and a mule” was a common phrase that spread throughout the South and represented the hope that the United States government would ensure that all former slaves would be given land to own and live on. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which was created under …

The Contributions Of Edward A. Pollard's The Lost Cause To The Myth Of The Lost Cause, Justin F. Krasnoff

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Edward A. Pollard’s The Lost Cause first appeared in 1866. Although it established the Myth of the Lost Cause, it was widely read, not as myth, but as history, especially in the South. Then, after 1900, it was largely forgotten. However, starting in the early 1970s, historians began to investigate the Myth of the Lost Cause as a myth. Pollard’s name and the title of his book finally came up again, but usually just in passing. Except for occasionally getting credit for coining the term “the Lost Cause,” his contributions and popularity remained largely ignored. The purpose of this thesis …

Evangels Of Emancipation: Missionary Activity In Postemancipation Sierra Leone, Jamaica, And The United States, Rowan Mcgarry-Williams

Pomona Senior Theses

White missionaries shaped the development of social relations and the political economies of post-emancipation Anglo-American societies. They imbued their destinations with a particular logic of freedom, stemming from a shared language of evangelicalism, liberalism, and white supremacy. For missionaries in Sierra Leone, Jamaica, and the United States, freedom meant the ability to engage in Christian worship and market relations. Freedom from Christianity or freedom from the market, however, did not factor into the missionary idea of what freedom entailed. In the face of conflict with formerly enslaved people and a hostile planter class, missionaries ultimately abandoned egalitarian and optimistic visions …

“Escaped From Dixie:” Civil War Refugees And The Creation Of A Confederate Diaspora, Stefanie Greenhill

Theses and Dissertations--History

My dissertation, “‘Escaped from Dixie:’ Civil War Refugees and the Creation of a Confederate Diaspora,” examines the experiences of the half a million people who fled from the Confederacy to Union territory under duress during the U.S. Civil War—a massive, diverse movement that had a lasting impact on the nation’s reconstruction in the aftermath of the war. My research considers what prompted refugees to leave, as well as what logistics those escaping from the Confederacy and resettling elsewhere considered, especially in the absence of any formal institutions for the aid of refugees in the nineteenth century. The handful of studies …

“They Know Too Much Already:” Black Education In Post-Emancipation Era Columbus, Ga, 1866-1876, William Dwayne Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Despite local histories that have been published on the history of Columbus, Georgia, and its school system, very little has been written about Columbus’s freedmen schools created after the U.S. Civil War. As a result, a comprehensive history of Columbus’s freedmen does not exist, and those written are fragmented. The focus of this study is to document the beginnings of Columbus’s freedmen school efforts in the post-emancipation era, through those African Americans’ own historical voices and experiences. Though an analysis of archived unpublished letters, local and religious newspapers, census data, government documents, and meeting minutes, this study recovers the authentic …

The Confederate Triumvirate: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, And The Making Of The Lost Cause, 1863-1940, Aaron Lewis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While numerous historians have studied and written about the lives and deeds of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis, fewer have conducted analyses of these three individuals’ popular memories. This study considers how the memory of these three Confederate leaders formed the foundation of the Lost Cause. From 1863 through the 1940s, white southerners held each of these three men in high esteem, proclaiming them as heroes to the dead Confederate ideology. Orators and writers who built the Lost Cause in South consistently utilized their memories to argue in favor of the righteousness of the Confederate cause and …

"A Pressure Not To Be Resisted Or Evaded": Military Occupation, Reform, And The Incorporation Of Northern Montana, 1879-1916, Hayden Nelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores Fort Assinniboine’s role as an extension of the federal government’s military arm in the Northern Plains. It argues that the military occupation of northern Montana served to incorporate the northern borderland region and peoples into the American mainstream as a part of the national reconstruction processes following the Civil War into the twentieth century. In a period of half a century, north-central Montana transformed from a Native American common hunting ground lacking any major white settlement to a rapidly developing agricultural region. Fort Assinniboine played a central role in this transformation, hastening the economic collapse of the …

The Hydraulic Dimension Of Reconstruction In Louisiana, 1863-1879, Matthew P. Carlin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Louisiana developed an extensive system of levees throughout the Atchafalaya Basin and along its territorial Mississippi River. This system reached its zenith on the eve of the American Civil War. It went into dramatic decline following the conflict due to the confluence of military activity, protracted irregular warfare, and neglect stemming from labor and capital revolution. These shifts intensified with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and finally consolidated after the ratification of Louisiana’s Constitution of 1879. The shift of responsibility for the construction and maintenance of levees during the Reconstruction Era led to many significant changes in the character and function …

The Battle Over The Canal: The Dispute Between Sister Cities That Shaped The Future Of The Twin Ports, Parker Bertel

Departmental Honors Projects

In 1870 two towns emerged on the northwestern head of Lake Superior. Both sought to take advantage of the only sandy and protected bay on the great northern lake. Superior WI, on the southern end of the bay, was situated at the only natural entrance to the harbor. In the fall of 1870 the residents of Duluth, MN, located on the northern Minnesotan shore, began digging a canal to rival Superior’s entrance. The result was a dispute between the two towns that lasted several years. Both towns fought tirelessly to fulfill what they saw as their destiny to become the …

Architect Of The New South: The Life And Legacy Of William Mahone, Heath M. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

In Virginia following the Civil War, white and black people formed complex and shifting alliances based on their own self-interests that cut across the lines of established political parties. In this turbulent atmosphere, William Mahone forged a new biracial political coalition called the Readjuster Party in order to transform Virginia’s economy so that it would be competitive in the years to come. Chapter One argues that Mahone’s experience as a soldier and railroad man gave him the political clout needed to enter politics and an industrial vision for Virginia’s future that was markedly different from many of his contemporaries. Chapter …

The Challenges Faced By The Freedmen’S Bureau Agents Of Deep East Texas, Jacy D. King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The years following the Civil War proved to be tumultuous for the nation and caused great social and economic upheaval in the South. Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in 1865 to provide a smoother transition in former Confederate states and to guard the liberties of the former bondsmen. The agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Deep East Texas faced the same challenges and hardships as their counterparts in other areas of the state and throughout the South. Numerous historians have written on Reconstruction and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas, but in a broader sense.

This …

Deepening Divisions: The Influence Of Protestant Faith In Civil War Reconciliation, Jeremy Solomon

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis considers the influence of mainstream Protestantism on Civil War reconciliation. Through reconciliation, Northern and Southern residents came to forgiveness and comradery, moving beyond animosity. This has been a focus of historical research in the past two decades, but with particular attention to the resentment of veterans. With this, many scholars have overlooked the impact of other institutions of American society. This thesis addresses the issue by analyzing the effects of religious opinions on the perceptions that veterans and civilians held of their former enemies. Protestantism was the dominant faith of the nation, rivaling any organization of influence in …

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …

Arkansas's Divided Democracy: The Making Of The Constitution Of 1874, Rodney Waymon Harris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the making of Arkansas’s constitution of 1874, which drew the curtain on Reconstruction in the state and remains in force in the twenty-first century. It contributes to the scholarship of Arkansas history, Southern history, and U.S. political and constitutional history by showing that Arkansas’s Redeemers were not unified or homogeneous, but rather a fractured group who fought about how restrictive the state’s new constitution would be. In the end, it was more generous in some sections than some Democrats wished. This dissertation, thus, challenges a traditional narrative of a likeminded convention and relentlessly restrictive constitution-making. However, it …

Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans in the South were tied to the land during slavery and after emancipation. Many felt that land ownership was the key to freedom. For decades, black farmers strove for land ownership, in many cases falling prey to sharecropping and tenancy agreements in the meantime. Despite this drive toward independent farming, however, since 1920, there has been a steady decline in the number of black farm owners. This trend is especially prevalent in the Southern United States. The black farm owners who persevered through periods of economic, social, and political turmoil were able to, for varying reasons, navigate those …

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 …

Reporting Rumors In The Reconstruction South: The Aftermath Of The New Orleans Riot Of 1866, Joanna L. Gunnufsen

Honors Theses

At the end of the American Civil War, political divisiveness, economic turmoil, and violence plagued the South. Riots occurred across the Reconstruction South, from New Orleans to Memphis. Though scholars have examined the causes of Reconstruction violence, this study examines the role of newspapers in promulgating fear, paranoia, and violence in Southern communities in the wake of the New Orleans Riot of 1866. This thesis analyzes nine Louisiana newspapers to investigate whether newspapers published local and national rumors of violence or potential uprisings in the first three months after the riot. Though the rise of telegraphic news aided the rapid …

"Let Us Bury And Forget:" Civil War Memory And Identity In Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865-1915, Seth Adam Nichols

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis covers the events of the Civil War in Cabell County, West Virginia, and how those events were remembered by the county’s residents in the decades after the war. It provides a brief look at the early development of the county and how its inhabitants sought to exploit the county’s topography in order to facilitate commercial investment in the region. Cabell Countians were deeply divided and several skirmishes between Union and Confederate forces produced a time of terror and hardship. When the war was over, Cabell Countians sought a return to normality and to renew projects that might bring …

"Life Under Union Occupation: Elite Women In Richmond, April And May 1865", Amanda C. Tompkins

Theses and Dissertations

This paper crafts a narrative about how elite, white Richmond women experienced the fall and rebuilding of their city in April and May 1865. At first, the women feared the entrance of the occupying army because they believed the troops would treat them as enemies. However, the goal of the white occupiers was to restore order in the city. Even though they were initially saddened by the occupation, many women were surprised at the courtesy and respected afforded them by the Union troops. Black soldiers also made up the occupying army, and women struggled to submit to black authority. With …

Memory As Torchlight: Frederick Douglass And Public Memories Of The Haitian Revolution, James Lincoln

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The following explores how Frederick Douglass and others used public memories of the Haitian Revolution during the nineteenth century.

Family Ties: The Gibbs Family, Race, And Society In South Carolina: 1865-1945, Andre Thompson

Graduate Theses

The ancestors of the Gibbs family came to South Carolina as slaves from Barbados in the early 19th C., and four brothers, Anthony, Fortune, Moses and Wetus, born in South Carolina between 1832 and 1845, all grew up as slaves and became emancipated while they were still young men. This thesis will chronicle the lineage of these four brothers whose family serves as a microcosm of African American life in South Carolina and beyond. This includes an examination of the family from Reconstruction through the World War II period, and it will focus on issues such as emancipation, agriculture, landownership, …

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 …

"Ruin And Desolation Scarcely Paralleled" : An Examination Of The Virginia Flood Of 1870’S Aftermath And Relief Efforts, Paula Fielding Green

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

During the autumn of 1870, a massive flood engulfed parts of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. The turbid waters claimed over 100 lives and left communities and residents along the James, Shenandoah, Potomac, Rappahannock, Anna, Rivanna, Maury, Middle, South, Staunton, Rockfish, Tye, and Pamunkey Rivers in varying states of distress. At least one quarter of Virginia was affected by the storm and subsequent flooding, making it significant to multiple areas of the State through the loss of life, property, and infrastructure.

This thesis examines the flooding event in detail through both a written thesis and website component. The written thesis …

Bacteria And Politics: The Application Of Science To The Yellow Fever Crisis In Reconstruction New Orleans, Polly M. Rolman-Smith

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of germ theory during the nineteenth century transformed Western medicine. By the 1870s, public health officials in the American South used germ theory to promote sanitation efforts to control public health crises, such as yellow fever epidemics. Before the discovery of mosquito transmission of yellow fever, physicians of the late nineteenth century believed the disease was spread by a highly contagious germ. Prominent medical practitioners of New Orleans, such as Confederate Army veteran Dr. Joseph Jones, used available scientific knowledge and investigation to attempt to control yellow fever during the Reconstruction period, a period rife with political and …

The Ideological Reconstruction Of Southern Elite White Women Before During And After Reconstruction, Lindsey Halse

Honors Theses

The purpose of my research is to reevaluate and extend the commonly understood time frame of Reconstruction by scholars to include Southern women’s ideological Reconstruction as well as provide a particular perspective on women during this era, which is underdeveloped in literature. Elite, white women during the Civil War began a journey towards independence and involvement in the public sphere. This evolution occurred approximately fifteen years behind similar actions taken by Northern women; this paper attempts to explain this lag. Additionally, my research asserts that Southern women were forced in a sense to become independent during the Civil War while …