Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The March Of The Union Armies: James Henry Lane, The Union, And The Development Of Total War On The Kansas-Missouri Border, Alex Lahasky

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

James Henry Lane was a giant of Kansas politics during the mid-nineteenth century. His leadership during the territorial crisis of 1855—commonly known as the “Bleeding Kansas” era—contributed mightily to Kansas’s entry as a free state in 1861. During the early stages of the ensuing Civil War, Lane’s political and military presence on the plains was ubiquitous; he served simultaneously as a United States Senator and a brigadier general of the Union Army. Lane’s activities during the first year of the war provide the focal point of the present study.

With Kansas under threat from secessionist elements in neighboring Missouri, Lane …

Is ‘Military Necessity’ Enough? Lincoln’S Conception Of Executive Power In Suspending Habeas Corpus In 1861, Evan Mclaughlin

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In May 1861, President Abraham Lincoln's decision to suspend habeas corpus in Baltimore following an attack on Federal troops as they marched through Baltimore on April 19th to answer Lincoln’s call to defend the Capitol. To complicate matters further, Congress was still in recess, so they could not legislate a solution to the growing insurgency. In order to check these actions, Abraham Lincoln authorized General Scott to suspend Habeas Corpus between Baltimore and Philadelphia. When John Merryman was arrested, detained, and denied habeas corpus, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issued an in-chambers decision, Ex Parte Merryman, to voice his …

The Poor Man’S Fight: Mercenary Soldiers In The Civil War: An Interview With William Marvel, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2018 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with William Marvel, an independent scholar of mid-19th-century American History. Marvel is the author of eighteen books, including most recently, Lincoln’s Mercenaries: Economic Motivation among Union Soldiers, which is due for release by LSU Press in the early fall of 2018. Some of Marvel’s additional publications include: Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton (UNC Press, 2015), A Place Called Appomattox (UNC Press, 2000), and Andersonville: The Last Depot (UNC Press, 1994), for which …

Hill, John W., 1834-1922 (Sc 3165), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3165. Compilation of military service and pension records of John W. Hill, Warren County, Kentucky. Includes chronologies of Hill’s Civil War service, 1864-1865, and of his disability pension application and subsequent requests for increases, 1888-1922. Also includes images of Hill, his wife, and selected documents filed in support of his application.

Two Southern Women Writers: The Civil War Journals Of Emily Jane Liles Harris And Mary Boykin Chesnut, Robert L. Wilson

Graduate Theses

Through the examination of primary texts, along with appropriate secondary criticism, I argue that Southern women during the Civil War were not the mythological “Southern Belle” that they have often been portrayed as, but that they were intelligent, strong, and passionate writers. I examine the farm journal of Emily Jane Liles Harris and contrast it to the private journal kept by Mary Boykin Chesnut, to explore the role that education and literacy, writing, and authorial voice played in women’s lives during the War. Close attention to the role education and background played in the lives of these women, the uniqueness …

John E. Davis (William H. Norman) -- A Galvanized Yankee In Utah, Kenneth L. Alford Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

An interesting and intriguing story about William H. Norman, who served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War as an infantry rifleman from Georgia, was captured by Union troops in December 1864 outside of Nashville, Tennessee, and was then incarcerated as a prisoner-of-war in Camp Douglas, Illinois. As a Confederate prisoner, the federal government gave him the option of remaining in the camp or renouncing his Confederate loyalty and enlisting in the Union Army. Like thousands of his fellow prisoners, he chose the second option and became a "galvanized Yankee." A few months later (after the end of …

You’Ve Got Mail: Throwback To The American Revolutionary War, Abigail K. Major

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

A collection of approximately 150 Civil War era envelopes, mainly produced by Philadelphia publisher James Magee as well as the King & Baird printers, with patriotic Unionist themes is located in Gettysburg College’s Special Collections & College Archives. Of particular interest are the “throwbacks” and references to the American Revolution. The “Glorious Old Hall of Independence,” a depiction of Bunker Hill, and Mount Vernon are only a few illustrations from the collection that demonstrate this American Revolution era theme. [excerpt]

Honor And Compromise, And Getting History Right, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly does not have a Ph.D. in history, although he does have two master’s degrees, in Strategic Studies (from the National Defense University) and in National Security Affairs from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. So perhaps it was simply that he believed what he said about the Civil War this past Monday on Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News ‘Ingraham Angle’ was so innocuous that he could also believe that it wouldn’t even become a blip on anyone’s radar screen. (excerpt)

Faust, Burton Sherwood, 1898-1967 (Mss 620), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 620. Correspondence, research notes, drafts, photographs, reference works and bibliographic material of Burton S. Faust relating to his studies of the chemical, historical and cultural aspects of saltpetre and of spelean saltpetre mining in the United States.

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

FA 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.

The Duration Of Sub-Saharan African Civil Armed Conflict Episodes, Christian Ilunga-Matthiesen

The Eastern Illinois University Political Science Review

The socio-economic question which this study intends to answer is one of global relevance. For quite some time now, civil wars on the African continent have been a major source of economic and social destruction resulting in excessive human suffering. The primary objective of this study will constitute the analysis of 32 armed conflict episodes across 17 countries between 1990 and 2014 throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Armed conflicts will be defined as the following: “a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a …

Hebron, John L., 1842-1914 (Sc 3154), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text typescript of letter (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3154. Letter, 26 October 1861, to his mother from John L. Hebron, serving with the 2nd Ohio Infantry at Camp Leslie Combs, West Liberty, Kentucky. He describes a recent engagement with Confederate troops, reports on the killed, wounded and local conditions in the aftermath, and criticizes Confederate battle skills. Expecting to spend the winter at Camp Dennison, Ohio, he expresses satisfaction with his warm clothing but complains of the lack of overcoats.

Waging Just Warfare During America’S Civil War: An Interview With Dr. D.H. Dilbeck, Ashley Whitehead Luskey

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2018 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Dr. D.H. Dilbeck, an historian of 19th-century American legal and religious history. Dr. Dilbeck received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Virginia. His first book, A More Civil War: How the Union Waged a Just War (UNC Press, 2016), was a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize. His most recent book, Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet is forthcoming from UNC Press in 2018. A former Assistant Professor of History at Oklahoma …

The Rhetoric Of The Civil War: Literary Devices Of The North And South, Kelsey Williams

Senior Honors Theses

While both Northern and Southern antebellum writers employed religious imagery for their persuasive purposes, their specific rhetoric differed: Timrod pictured the South romantically, as the revival of Camelot even after the Confederacy’s death; Stowe, heavily influenced by her personal background, enacted emotion accompanied by an appeal to ethics in her fictional apologetic for the end of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although history handed both authors the opportunity to affect the nation’s trajectory, only Stowe achieved this feat, and she owes her triumph over Timrod, the victory of the North over the South, to her emotional rhetoric concerning slavery. …

Messer, George, 1833-1863 (Sc 3138), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3138. Letters, 16 December 1862, 13 February 1863 and 6-7 June 1863, of George Messer to his wife Lottie in DeWitt County, Illinois, written while camped near Woodsonville in Hart County, Kentucky and at Camp Hobson, Glasgow, Kentucky. He describes his quarters (his “shebang”), a fire in Woodsonville that burned two hospitals, the remnants of a nearby battlefield, local troop movements, illness, and his finances. He also writes of contributing money to send a soldier’s remains home, and comments on his officers and on domestic matters.

Gordon, George W., 1802?-1862 (Sc 3144), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3144. Letter, 26 December 1861, of Captain George W. Gordon to his children. From Camp Bradley at Clarksville, Tennessee, he writes of his enlistment and command of a company in the 48th Tennessee. Mourning the “unnatural war” that is “desolating the Country,” he remarks on the large numbers of troops massing in Kentucky and the expectation of a “bloody conflict.” His pessimistic letter concludes that men may look only to God for mercy.

Buckner, Simon Bolivar, 1823-1914 (Sc 3143), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3143. Letter, 7 September 1907, of Simon Bolivar Buckner to John H. Weller, former commander of the Orphan Brigade. He suggests that at a forthcoming reunion, the Brigade recommend “the acquiring and improvement” of the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, and notes that an option has already been secured on part of the site. (The Davis Memorial Home movement was subsequently inaugurated at the reunion.)

In Gettysburg, The Confederacy Won, Scott Hancock

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

Almost every day, I ride my bicycle past some of the over 1,300 statues and monuments commemorating the Civil War in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where I live. They are everywhere. None of them are of black people.

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought over three days in July of 1863, is often considered the turning point of a war fought over the fate of slavery in America. Black people ultimately were the reason why over 165,000 soldiers came to this Pennsylvania town in the first place. But on the battlefield, as far as the physical memorials, they disappear. (excerpt)

The Buffalo Soldiers, Kenneth Estes Hall

Kenneth Estes Hall

Excerpt: Despite the great success of the Civil War epic Glory, the story of the black troops during and after the War is not well known. This lack of exposure to popular familiarity is especially true of the Buffalo Soldiers who served on the frontier in the late 19th century, chiefly but not exclusively in the Indian Wars.

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 …

Civil War In The Delta: Environment, Race, And The 1863 Helena Campaign, George David Schieffler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Civil War in the Delta” describes how the American Civil War came to Helena, Arkansas, and its Phillips County environs, and how its people—black and white, male and female, rich and poor, free and enslaved, soldier and civilian—lived that conflict from the spring of 1861 to the summer of 1863, when Union soldiers repelled a Confederate assault on the town. Scholars have been writing Civil War community studies since the 1960s, but few have investigated communities west of the Mississippi River. Historians also have written widely about Arkansas during the war, but there are no comprehensive studies of a single …

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)

Beninger, John, 1850-1922 (Sc 3133), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3133. Notebook containing original and copied poetry by John Beninger, a native of Ohio County, Kentucky. Beninger resided in Versailles, Kentucky, for a number of years, and several of the poems refer to people or places in that community. Beninger often mentions the source of his poem’s inspiration and the date he penned it. Mr. Beninger is buried in the McCord Cemetery in Ohio County, Kentucky.

Messer, George, 1833-1863 (Sc 3129), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and transcription (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3129. Letter, 26 March 1863, of George Messer to his wife Lottie in DeWitt County, Illinois. From Camp Joe Kelly (the name changed, as he notes, to Camp Hobson) near Glasgow, Kentucky, he describes camp life, including the clearing of timber and his duty in the cold and rainy weather. He also praises the hospital facilities and describes a joke played on an officer who returned to camp without a pass. Expecting the war to end soon, he also writes of matters relating to home.

Vance, Edward Richard, 1833-1902 (Mss 612), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 612. Correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs and family papers of Richard Vance, a Warren County, Kentucky native and U.S. Army officer. After his Civil War service, Vance spent his career at several posts in the South and on the frontier until his retirement in 1892.

Free Labor: The Civil War And The Making Of An American Working Class By Mark A. Lause (Review), Joanne Pope Melish

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cowing, Rufus Billings, 1840-1920 (Sc 3124), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3124. Letter, 21 February 1862, of attorney Rufus B. Cowing, New York City, to his mother. He encloses a letter from his brother (not included), who was then serving in the Union Army and would later be killed at the Battle of Chickamauga. Rufus notes his brother’s arrival in Bowling Green, Kentucky after “the enemy had run away.” Believing the war will soon end, he speculates on his brother’s future in business and writes of his own desire to be financially independent.

Loving, Hector Voltaire, 1839-1913 (Sc 3123), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text typescript (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3123. Letter, 31 July 1862, of Hector V. Loving, Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Harlan P. Lloyd, Angelica, New York. He tells his former schoolmate of his law study and practice since graduation from New York’s Hamilton College, and particularly describes the uproar in his home town of Bowling Green, Kentucky at the outbreak of the Civil War: secessionist “treason,” the Confederate occupation, and the rebuilding of the city afterward. He also refers to their classmate and law student Daniel Webster Wright as a “violent” secessionist.

"Cracks In The Melting Pot": Native Americans, Military Service And Citizenship, Brittany A. Kelley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper focuses on Native American military service in Euro-American Wars. It analyzes their reasons for fighting and compares those reasons to the reasons of other racial and ethnic groups. This paper explores how certain racial and ethnic groups are marginalized and “otherized” and how they occasionally attempt to assimilate into mainstream society through military service. Irish Americans and African Americans viewed the Civil War in this way, while Native Americans hoped they would be able to improve their individual situations. Native Americans fought for purposes of assimilation and citizenship in World War I, and while they were technically granted …

Messer, George, 1833-1863 (Sc 3118), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text typescript (click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3118. Letter, 23-24 May 1862 [sic], of George Messer, 107th Illinois Infantry, to his wife Lottie in DeWitt County, Illinois. From Camp Hobson, Glasgow, Kentucky, he reports on his health and the possibility of battle, and mockingly describes the two-men “dogtents” issued to the troops. He also discusses recent promotions and the prospects for a military draft, notes the arrival of an Indiana regiment decimated at the Battle of Perryville, and criticizes "shoulder strap gentlemen” who take credit for soldiers’ achievements.