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Full-Text Articles in History

Reverend Gideon Blackburn, Alice Jacobson Nov 2023

Reverend Gideon Blackburn, Alice Jacobson

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Gideon Blackburn (1772-1838) was a Presbyterian minister, missionary to the Cherokees, church planter, college president, and anti-slavery leader. His career in the ministry was not static, owing to his drive to evangelize as well as his pioneer restlessness to move further west into the frontier. Born in Virginia, Blackburn and his family moved into the area of east Tennessee while he was still a youth and where he converted at age 15. Following his theological education, in 1792 Blackburn moved to the Maryville, TN, area and served as an itinerant chaplain to Tennessee militia while pastoring two churches and planting …


Black Deathways: An African Methodist History, 1829-1916, Christina M. Varney Jan 2023

Black Deathways: An African Methodist History, 1829-1916, Christina M. Varney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study will focus on the transformations of death practices and the shifting roles of death workers from 1829-1916. The Postbellum portion of this study will focus on African Methodist communities in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee as practices and people moved West to the states of Montana, Colorado, and California. These practices experienced changes as a result of rising literacy rates, the establishment of Black churches, and from the movement of Black people within the South. More changes occurred with the creation of mutual aid societies and Black-owned funeral homes. Black funeral directors …


Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell Jan 2022

Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Using hermeneutical methodology, this paper examines some of the legal fictions that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh opinion is evaluated through the lens of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to determine the extent to which the Supreme Court incorporated genocidal principles into United States common law. The genealogy of M’Intosh is examined to identify influences that are not fully apparent on the face of the case. International jurisprudential interpretations of the legal definition of genocide are summarized and used as …


A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman Nov 2018

A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation re-contextualizes the Quakers’ history as anti-slavery pioneers by exploring the crucial economic role that the slave-based economies of the British West Indies played in establishing the Quakers as a powerful sect in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Atlantic world. Quakers were driven by their faith to foster a spirit of equality inside and outside of their meetings. They were among the first European religious sects to allow women to preach, to oppose violence and war, and, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth-century, to ban the practice of enslaving other human beings within their membership. Yet the Quakers …


The Relationship Between The Methodist Church, Slavery And Politics, 1784-1844, Brian D. Lawrence May 2018

The Relationship Between The Methodist Church, Slavery And Politics, 1784-1844, Brian D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The Methodist church split in 1844 was a cumulative result of decades of regional instability within the governing structure of the church. Although John Wesley had a strict anti-slavery belief as the leader of the movement in Great Britain, the Methodist church in America faced a distinctively different dilemma. Slavery proved to be a lasting institution that posed problems for Methodism in the United States and in the larger political context. The issue of slavery plagued Methodism from almost its inception, but the church functioned well although conflicts remained below the surface. William Capers, James Osgood Andrew, and Freeborn Garrettson …


The Devil In Cartagena: Slavery, Religion And Resistance In Seventeenth-Century Caribbean Colombia, Daniel James Dawson May 2018

The Devil In Cartagena: Slavery, Religion And Resistance In Seventeenth-Century Caribbean Colombia, Daniel James Dawson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examines the role of religion in African communities in seventeenth-century Caribbean Colombia, and the tensions between the system of racial and religious hierarchy imposed by the Catholic Church and Spanish authorities and the everyday religious life of free and enslaved Africans and their descendants. It will examine interactions between African religion and Christianity and African resistance to Spanish Catholic authority. It will examine Spanish-Catholic thought on African spirituality, and investigate the relationship between African subjects and Catholic authorities in the Spanish Atlantic. It explores the goals of Catholic authorities in relation to African subjects, and the various methods …


The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller Jan 2018

The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis interrogated the relationship between abolition and the evangelical revival in Britain through the life of John Newton. Newton, though not representative of every abolitionist, was a vital figure in the movement. His influence on Hannah More and William Wilberforce along with his contributions to the Parliamentary hearings made him a key aspect of its success. How he came to fulfill that role was a long and complex journey, both in terms of his religion and his understanding of slavery. He began his life under the spiritual direction of his pious, Dissenting mother, became an atheist by nineteen, and …


Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel Dec 2017

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …


The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll Jul 2017

The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll

Masters Theses

Eighteenth-century Methodist evangelism supported, perpetuated, and promoted slavery as requisite for a productive economy in the colonial American South. Religious thought of the First Great Awakening emerged alongside a colonial economy increasingly reliant on chattel slavery for its prosperity. The records of well-traveled celebrity minister and provocateur of the Anglican tradition, George Whitefield, suggest how Calvinist-Methodist evangelicals viewed slavery as necessary to supporting colonial ministerial efforts. Whitefield’s absorption of and immersion into American culture is revealed in his owning a plantation, portraying a willingness to sacrifice the mobility of the disfranchised for widespread consumption of evangelical thought. A side effect …


Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732-1809, Kylie L. Mccormick May 2016

Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732-1809, Kylie L. Mccormick

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1732 a philanthropic trusteeship was granted the charter to Georgia with the lofty goals of bringing aid to the impoverished in the British Empire and the persecuted Protestants of Europe. Within these goals was an emphasis on using the labor of indentured white servants, an unofficial ban on slavery, and a reluctance to allow Jewish colonists. To understand how both slavery and Judaism took hold in Georgia, this two part study explores the changing labor institutions through the lives of Benjamin Sheftall and his youngest son Levi—the two men who maintained the first Vital Records for Savanah’s Jewry. Benjamin’s …


Race, Rebellion, And Arab Muslim Slavery : The Zanj Rebellion In Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E., Nicholas C. Mcleod May 2016

Race, Rebellion, And Arab Muslim Slavery : The Zanj Rebellion In Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E., Nicholas C. Mcleod

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the ninth century, enslaved Africans from the east coast of Africa, called the Zanj, revolted for nearly fifteen years in southern Iraq against their Arab slave masters and challenged the social order of the Abbasid Empire. This thesis is a socio-historical investigation on the role that race played in starting the Zanj Rebellion of 869 C.E. It examines the Arab Islamic slave trade and the racial stratification experienced by blacks in the early centuries of Islamic history in conjunction with the Zanj Rebellion. The thesis applies a structural framework for analyzing race, to demonstrate the racialization process, prevalent racial …


“Servants, Obey Your Masters”: Southern Representations Of The Religious Lives Of Slaves, Lindsey K.D. Wedow Apr 2015

“Servants, Obey Your Masters”: Southern Representations Of The Religious Lives Of Slaves, Lindsey K.D. Wedow

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

This paper focuses on how representations of the religious lives of slaves, specifically their abilities to comprehend the Bible and flourish spiritually, became an issue that not only propelled the North and South toward the Civil War, but also perpetuated the conflict. Using original documents from the collections housed at Chicago’s Newberry Library, predominantly sermons written by proslavery ministers as well as documents published by missionary organizations, this paper explores the fierce defense of the institution of slavery mounted by proslavery Christians. Specifically, this paper’s interest is in how the representation of slaves by proslavery evangelical Christians as incapable of …


Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2015 Apr 2015

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2015

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.


The War Justified, Margaret T. Kidd Jan 2015

The War Justified, Margaret T. Kidd

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This article explores how Methodist ministers, particularly Richmond Christian Advocate editor Rev. James A. Duncan, justified their support of the Confederacy and slavery. Also discussed is the Address to Christians Throughout the World, written by Duncan and signed by ministers of various denominations. It was billed as the "Christian response" to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.


Slavery, Sacred Texts, And The Antebellum Confrontation With History, Jordan Tuttle Watkins May 2014

Slavery, Sacred Texts, And The Antebellum Confrontation With History, Jordan Tuttle Watkins

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the first six decades of the nineteenth century, America's biblical and constitutional interpreters waged their hermeneutical battles on historical grounds. Biblical scholars across the antebellum religious spectrum, from orthodox Charles Hodge's Calvinism to heterodox Theodore Parker's Transcendentalism, began to emphasize contextual readings. This development, fueled by an exposure to German biblical criticism and its emphasis on historical exegesis, sparked debate about the pertinence of biblical texts and the permanence of their teachings. In the 1830s, the resurfacing slavery issue increased the urgency to explore the biblical past for answers, which exposed differences between ancient and American slavery. Some still …


Whitaker, Francis J., 1916-1994 (Mss 406), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Aug 2012

Whitaker, Francis J., 1916-1994 (Mss 406), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 406. Correspondence, research notes and manuscript articles of Frances J. “Thomas” Whitaker, a Benedictine monk who lived and worked at St. Maur’s Priory, formerly the South Union Shaker Village in Logan County, Kentucky, from 1954-1988. He amassed a large collection of photocopied research material on the South Union community as well as other Shaker villages and museums in the United States. Also includes his research on various Catholic topics.


A Plan For The Abolition Of Slavery, Consistently With The Interests Of All Parties Concerned (London, 1828), C. S. Monaco Jan 1999

A Plan For The Abolition Of Slavery, Consistently With The Interests Of All Parties Concerned (London, 1828), C. S. Monaco

C. S. Monaco

Published anonymously during the resurgence of the antislavery campaign in Britain, Moses E. Levy's pamphlet, "A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery," stands without parallel. The appearance of this publication in 1828 London, established Levy as the first and only Jewish abolitionist author amid a plethora of mostly Evangelical stalwarts. The scope and magnitude of Levy's ideas exceeded the more modest attempts by a small cohort of Jewish antislavery advocates who appeared much later in the United States. The entire pamphlet is reproduced here and, for the first time, extensive annotations by C. S. Monaco places this work into historical …


Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 46, No. 2, Nancy Kettering Frye, Jean-Paul Benowitz, Amos Long Jr., John A. Milbauer Jan 1997

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 46, No. 2, Nancy Kettering Frye, Jean-Paul Benowitz, Amos Long Jr., John A. Milbauer

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• "An Uncommon Woman" in the Age of the Common Man: The Life and Times of Sarah Righter Major
• Maintaining Mennonite Identity: The Old Order Church in Pennsylvania and Virginia
• The End of an Era: The Last One-Room Public Schools in Lebanon County
• Pennsylvania Extended in the Cherokee Country: A Study of Log Architecture


Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 44, No. 1, Charles L. Blockson, Roland C. Barksdale-Hall, Jerrilyn Mcgregory, Terry G. Jordan Oct 1994

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 44, No. 1, Charles L. Blockson, Roland C. Barksdale-Hall, Jerrilyn Mcgregory, Terry G. Jordan

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• "A Missing Link": The History of African Americans in Pennsylvania
• The Twin City Elks Lodge: A Unifying Force in Farrell's African American Community
• The Greening of Philadelphia
• The "Saddlebag" House Type and Pennsylvania Extended