Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Breaking Down The “Heritage Not Hate” Movement’S Origin, Usage, And Effect On Race Relations In The Post Civil War Era, Laith Kewan

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

When the Confederacy first formed, its governmental symbolism and ideology mirrored that of the northern United States. The two Constitutions were incredibly similar – minus the South’s adjustments to further enhance the rights of states and slaveowners – with the Confederate government installing a Legislative Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Judicial Branch. In addition to this Constitutional similarity, the Confederacy also created a flag that looked similar to the United States’ that Confederate troops had trouble differentiating the two in combat. Following a chaotic Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861, General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard pushed for the …

¡Si Nicaragua Venció, El Salvador Vencerá!: A Comparative Analysis Of The Nicaraguan Revolution And The Salvadoran Civil War, Edrei Pena

Honors Theses

This thesis compares the history of the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Salvadoran Civil War in order to understand why Nicaragua had success, unlike El Salvador. I analyze the history by focusing on four factors I believe are important for a successful revolution. These factors are broad multi-class alliances, military strength and strategy, the role of the Church, and external influences. Through this, I find that the factor of class alliances is the most crucial for a successful revolution to take place. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua had these broad class alliances while the FMLN in El Salvador did not.

The Railsplitter And The Pathfinder: The Relationship Between Abraham Lincoln And John C. Frémont, Kourtney Yantis

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study serves as an analysis of the connections between Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and John Charles Frémont as a Civil War general. Lincoln’s position within history is solid, unlike that of John C. Frémont. The thesis will elevate Frémont to a higher status as a historical figure by arguing that the emancipation edict that he issued for Missouri in August of 1861 would influence Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 1862, even though Lincoln repealed Frémont’s decree. In biographies of each man, their interactions are merely a small part of the stories of their …

Analyzing The Relationship Between Aid Agencies And The Union Army In Civil War Arkansas From 1862 To 1865, Kimberly Green

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

This thesis examines the administration of Arkansas’s contraband camps. The Union Army originally failed Black refugees in their quest for freedom as it was unprepared for the large number of African Americans seeking protection and guidance from the army. Arkansas historians have analyzed the effect the war had on the state as a whole and the operation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, but none of these works detail the various agencies that worked with federal authorities. This thesis follows the Western Sanitary Commission and the American Missionary Association as they assisted the federal government by providing supplies and forming partnerships with …

The Lost Cause And The Commonwealth: The United Daughters Of The Confederacy And Forging Civil War Memory In Kentucky., Emma Donaghy

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

For over a century, the Kentucky division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy has worked to instill the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy in the state’s public schools, libraries, and places where a white child could learn about the past. Few scholars have studied the activities of the Kentucky division of the UDC, although some of the organization’s most influential work took place in the state, and the organization’s national founder, Caroline Meriwether Goodlett, was born in Todd County, Kentucky. This honors thesis offers an in-depth examination of the work of the Kentucky division, drawing from the rich …

The Civil War Conflict Between Anglophones/Francophones In The Northwest And Southwest Regions Of Cameroon, Myriam Jeter

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The Civil War conflict between Anglophones and Francophones, also known as the Ambazonia war, is a long-standing issue that continues to plague the people living in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. This paper explores the colonial history of the nation, the cause of the ongoing conflict, the reasons for its escalation, and how it gave rise to the Ambazonian separatists who want to have a separate nation called the Ambazonia Republic.

This study contributes to conflict understanding in two ways. First, it sheds light on the cultural and economic impacts of internally generated crises in a country. Second, …

Is Hindsight 20/20? Reconsidering Popular Perceptions Of Civil War Surgeons, Miller Bacon

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper provides a cursory examination of the history and truth of the modern “butcher” stereotype associated with Civil War surgeons. Beginning with a review of modern examples of the stereotype in cinema, educational materials, children’s literature, and academic literature, this thesis further provides a detailed historical analysis of the source of this stereotype in the nineteenth century. This analysis completes the cultural analysis present within the paper by demonstrating the presence of the “butcher” stereotype in Civil War era newspapers and literature.

Finally, after the cultural analysis of the modern stereotype and its historical roots in the nineteenth century, …

From Enslaver To White Savior: The Blackford Family And The Memory Of The American Colonization Society, Helen Dhue

Student Research Submissions

Part of the same family but with a generation dividing them, Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford and her grandson, Launcelot Minor Blackford Junior, shared much of the same sentiment toward the American Colonization Society (ACS). Mary, active in the ACS before the Civil War, supported the organization despite criticisms wielded by abolitionists of the period. Mary looked to the ACS for salvation from discussions about the morality of enslavement while enjoying the comforts that the thought of an all-white America brought her. Launcelot, writing fifty years after Mary’s passing at the beginning of an emerging national conversation about Black civil rights, …

Enduring The Elements: Civil War Soldiers’ Struggles Against The Weather, Cameron Boutin

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation is an environmental history that studies the variety of ways that soldiers in the American Civil War experienced the pressures of weather over the course of their military service. For the troops of the U.S. and Confederacy, the weather was more than simply a passive backdrop to their time in the military, but a central preoccupation. This dissertation analyzes how weather intersected with some of the most central experiences of soldiering – tent camping and winter quarters, marching, bivouacking, manning sentry posts and field fortifications, and fighting in battles. Life in Civil War armies consisted of all of …

Literature As A Monument: Uncle Tom’S Cabin Reflecting The Morality Of A Nation, Shalane Parcenue Conrads

Theses and Dissertations

This essay studies the critical response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by studying the novel’s critical reception from publication and into contemporary America to understand how the novel remains an institution of Civil War remembrance. In accepting the polemical status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as both a literary and historical document, I argue that the novel is a monument in American culture. In studying the wide spectrum of critical response to the novel since its publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin becomes a social barometer that reflects the controversial race relations in the United States from the Civil …

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 …

Mason & Dixon: History And Identity In The Borderlands, Drew Leventhal

Masters Theses

My project, Mason & Dixon, traces the footsteps of the original surveyors of the Mason-Dixon Line and their search for purpose in the borderlands between Pennsylvania and Maryland. For the past 250 years, the Line has inscribed a violent and painful scar on the land, filled with memories and (re)written histories. Holding the legacies of slavery and colonial expansion deep in its soil, the region is now a visceral example of the ongoing divisions and conflicts around the past, the present, and the future of the United States. The friction is in the air, it is in the monuments, and …

“Infantry Would Not Do:” Appalachia, The Environment, And The Evolution Of Mountain Warfare During The American Civil War, Lucas Michael Wilder

Theses and Dissertations

Union General Ambrose E. Burnside launched his invasion of East Tennessee in the summer of 1863. The corps he used consisted of half-infantry and half-mounted units to utilize their speed to overcome mountain obstacles. The successful campaign and the capture of the agriculturally rich region of East Tennessee and its vital East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad deprived the Confederacy of resources, ultimately contributing to Confederate defeat. The American Civil War saw commanders plunge into the mountains of Appalachia and encounter a terrain and a people with which many were unacquainted. This dissertation argues that their tactics and strategies for dealing …

Fighting For Home: Northern New England Women And The Civil War, Savannah A. Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the experiences of Northern New England women during the Civil War. Though these women were physically distant from the frontlines, the war came to their doorsteps. The war challenged and changed the physical and idealized space of the household and women’s role within it. This thesis examines how women experienced, resisted, or enacted wartime changes to household space. Through an examination of letters written by women, this study argues that, despite the disruptions of the war and the absence of male family members, Northern New England women fought to protect their homes from change.

Women used a …

Whitman War Poetry Settings By Three Composers, Grady Hayden

Recital Papers

This paper centers around the treatment of Walt Whitman's poetry in Ned Rorem’s War Scenes, Kurt Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs, and Ethan McGrath’s Four Whitman Settings. In this paper, these works are explored through formal and textual analysis along with investigating the backgrounds of the works and their composers. Further background information will include wider discussions on form and compositional history. In addition, the technical considerations and challenges of singing the selected songs will be examined.

The “Honorable” Woman: Gender, Honor, And Privilege In The Civil War South, Sarah West

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

When past wars are discussed or taught in a mainstream setting, the focus is often on the soldiers, the battles, and the generals that led them. The topic of the people who passively lived through them is rarely included in the narrative and when it is, it usually pertains to the people on the winning side. During the Civil War, the Southern women made tremendous contributions on the home front. Although social construction of southern honor paved the way for patriotic expressions, as the war went on many women found themselves discarding these honorable gestures in favor of self-preservation. The …

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 …

“People Like They Historical Shit In A Certain Way”: The Civil War Plays Of Suzan-Lori Parks, Or Commercialized Memory And Black Lives, Brandon Eric Fisher

All Theses

Suzan-Lori Parks has explored the relationship between Blackness, slavery, and capitalism throughout her career. I argue that Parks’s three works—The America Play (1995), Topdog/Underdog (2001), and Father Comes Home from the Wars (2015)—should receive critical attention as her Civil War plays. By this phrase, I mean that Parks embeds her critiques of racial capitalism in historical narratives about America’s bloodiest conflict. In these three plays, she takes up several white supremacist Civil War tropes—tropes like what scholar Cody Marrs calls the “Father Abraham” story and the “Agrarian Imagination” myth—and criticizes them as narratives that deny African American history. To …

Southerners On New Ground: The Battle For Civil War Memory Since 1993, Andrew William Hoffman

History Theses & Dissertations

Between the years 2015 and 2020, over 300 Confederate symbols, including over 140 monuments, were removed from public land across the United States. This unprecedented movement to discard Confederate symbols reflected a shift in how Americans chose to remember the Civil War. By 2015, the wide-spread attack on the legacy of the Confederacy was much-anticipated. In fact, its foundation was laid during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This thesis fills a gap within the historiography of Civil War memory by exploring controversial events that reflect Americans’ contrasting interpretation of the American Civil War from the years 1993 to …

The 1863 Invasion Of Pennsylvania, Michael J. Gallagher

Theses

Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863 was a grave mistake, on a variety of levels, which ultimately culminated in a crippling defeat at Gettysburg. After the Army of Northern Virginia successfully defended southern territory against northern attacks, the transition to an offensive strategy, advancing north in to Pennsylvania was a vast miscalculation. Lee’s army now traversed enemy territory, leaving behind the advantages of a campaign on southern territory and abandoning a defensive posture. This transition to fighting on enemy territory brought several difficulties that Lee seemingly overlooked, and presented challenges for which Lee was unprepared. Lee …

What Mother Meant: Maternal Competence, Medical Authority, And Memory In The Case Of Mary Bickerdyke (1820-1910), Megan Marie Vangorder

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a poor widowed mother from Galesburg, Illinois, cared for sick and wounded soldiers across the Western theater throughout the course of the American Civil War. As a result of her efforts, authors and historians lauded her accomplishments. Her success as a Civil War nurse and Sanitary Commission agent has been the subject of several biographies and young adult books that idealize the role of women during the war. These portrayals suggest that Mary Bickerdyke provided an example of determined professionalism during the war years.

Those histories, however, do not tell the whole story. Mary Bickerdyke’s professional journey …

Gendered Language In The Catalogues Of Saint Mary’S Academy, 1860-1871, Kylie Hamm

Masters Theses

This research builds upon studies that explore Catholic women’s and girls’ educational institutions in the nineteenth century. This case study focuses on one girls’ academy, Saint Mary’s Academy, precursor to Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, founded by the Congregation of the Holy Cross in 1844. The research provided here analyzes the gendered language utilized by school leaders in the academy’s public catalogues during the decade of the Civil War, from 1860 through 1871. The language in these catalogues subtly changed over the course of the decade, reflecting changing white, middle-class gender norms surrounding women’s work and education. Leaders of …

Composers And Publishers Of Parlor Songs And Spirituals From Civil War Richmond: 1861 – 1867, Michael Gray

Theses and Dissertations

This document is an historical compendium of how Richmond, Virginia contributed to a significant shift in early American music during and after the American Civil War. Firstly, we will explore the music industry practices of the 1850’s and 1860’s in Richmond, and how they were a reflection of the rest of the American South at that time. Secondly, we will explore the height of parlor song repertoire in the South, its technical simplicity, and use as a tool for music education, artistic expression, but perhaps most notably as a means of informal propaganda for the Confederate cause. Finally, we will …

Cross-National Variation In Women’S Rights: Europe And Civil War, Nourah Shuaibi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on Women’s Social, Economic and Political rights in post-Conflict countries. In order to evaluate the relationship with sound causal logic, I set out to study multiple relationships to understand the impact of the variables in question. Looking at the nature of the relationship required an evaluation in 3 ways, which culminated in the writing of 4 separate chapters. Chapter 2 demonstrates the importance of understanding Women’s Rights and their role in economic development and peace building. This places women’s rights in context to set the scene for the rest of …

Paradoxes Of The Heart And Mind: Three Case Studies In White Identity, Southern Reality, And The Silenced Memories Of Mississippi Confederate Dissent, 1860-1979, Billy Loper

Master's Theses

This thesis is meant to advance scholars understanding of the processes by which various groups silenced the memory of Civil War white dissent in Mississippi. It analyzes three case studies: F. A. P. Barnard’s 1860 trial for abolitionism, the transformation of community memory which surrounded Newt Knight in the early twentieth century, and Mississippi’s interaction with the Civil War through popular culture. These examples will reveal the cultural and discursive systems that have existed in the state for more than a century. This work argues that Mississippians silenced the memory of racial dissent throughout the state’s history because it conflicted …

"Let Thy Conscience Act Her Part": Republican Motherhood In Civil War Popular Song, Gianna Patchett

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the American Civil War, described by Christian McWhirter as a war fought to music, popular song played a significant role in the expression and processing of wartime emotions and ideologies. Civil War songs with lyrics written by women show feminine strength in tragedy, challenges due to societal expectations, and the day to day difficulties of wartime on the homefront. One concept that unites these themes is that of Republican Motherhood, an ideology developed in the Revolutionary War, but which continued to be prevalent throughout the 19^th Century. This paradigm places female experience in the context of duty, patriotism, …

The Tide Is Coming In: Fort Pulaski's Historical Relationship With Water, Sadie Ingram

Honors College Theses

Savannah, Georgia is the fourth busiest port in the United States, processing approximately 4.35 million standard shipping containers every year. The port’s protector Fort Pulaski towers among the coastal marshlands and estuaries of the Savannah River. Located on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, this strategic location allowed the fort to protect Savannah’s vital harbor. Built as part of the United States’ Third System plan to build fortifications along the eastern seaboard, construction of Fort Pulaski began in 1827 and finished twenty years later.

Water has played a pivotal role in the history of Fort Pulaski and …

The Challenge Of E. Pluribus Unum: Waterfront Workers During The Civil War In Buffalo, New York, Anthony E. Gil

History Theses

This work is pioneering in that it opens discussion and historical inquiry into events of civil unrest in the U.S., both during the Civil War and in 1860s Buffalo, New York. It is the position of this study that events of early civil unrest are boiling points in the development of our great melting pot. Indeed, the more historians explore and understand these moments in American history, the easier it is to see profound epochs relative to America's growing pains. And, although there are many epochs that tell the story of those growing pains, "The Challenge of E. Pluribus Unum: …

The Emergence Of Neurology During The American Civil War: The Delafield Commission's Impact On Military Medicine, Michaela Ahrenholtz

Honors Thesis

In 1855, three high ranking military officers organized as the Delafield Commission traveled across Europe during the Crimean War. They were tasked to consider, report, and upon their return, implement the advancements they observed from the militaries across the European continent. During their travels, the Delafield Commission evaluated changes in artillery, cavalry, and military medicine. Upon their return, the members of the Delafield Commission published their reports, and a year later the Civil War began. As the war continued, innovations from the Crimean War were implemented, including withing the Union Army Medical Department. Major medical reform was facilitated by Dr. …

Reams, Radicals And Revolutionaries: The 'Illinois Staats-Zeitung' And The German-American Milieu In Chicago, 1847-1877, Sebastian Peter Wuepper

Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes how a large, German-language newspaper, the Illinois Staats-Zeitung served the German-American immigrant community in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century. The German diaspora in the United States was not a secluded, separated, and isolated entity, but a node in a transnational network of cultural exchange that crossed national and natural boundaries. Newspapers contributed significantly to the creation and maintenance of this cultural sphere. The editors of the Staats-Zeitung were refugees of the failed 1848 democratic revolutions in Germany. In Germany they had been academics, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists. They brought their political convictions with …