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Gendering Secession: Women And Politics In South Carolina, 1859- 1861, Melissa Develvis Apr 2020

Gendering Secession: Women And Politics In South Carolina, 1859- 1861, Melissa Develvis

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the writings and literature surrounding elite, white South Carolina women from 1859 and 1861 to trace their increasing political consciousnesses surrounding their state’s secession and the threat of civil war. Their diaries and letters reveal that though these women and their families were staunch supporters of South Carolina’s secession, women reacted to their new circumstances with fears and misgivings that their male counterparts would not, or could not, express. Elite women harnessed familiar and religious concepts to express political hopes and fears, creating a socially acceptable outlet through which to discuss current electoral politics previously considered improper. …


Complicating The Narrative: Using Jim's Story To Interpret Enslavement, Leasing, And Resistance At Duke Homestead, Jennifer Melton Oct 2019

Complicating The Narrative: Using Jim's Story To Interpret Enslavement, Leasing, And Resistance At Duke Homestead, Jennifer Melton

Theses and Dissertations

In the antebellum South, an enslaved person was more likely to be leased out than to be sold during his or her lifetime. Despite its ubiquity, leasing of enslaved people is rarely interpreted at historic sites and is not widely understood by the general public. In this project, I examine leasing and resistance to slavery in North Carolina through the lens of Jim, an enslaved man leased by Washington Duke at the property that is now Duke Homestead State Historic Site. While Duke is famous in North Carolina as founder of the American Tobacco Company, he was a yeoman tobacco …


Shifting Authority At The Confederate Relic Room, 1960-1986, Kristie L. Dafoe Jan 2015

Shifting Authority At The Confederate Relic Room, 1960-1986, Kristie L. Dafoe

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the Confederate Relic Room and its final years in the hands of the United Daughters of the Confederacy before the South Carolina state government fully took over the museum. This small, localized perspective on the organization shows that the UDC was still actively commemorating the Civil War well into the late twentieth century, which challenges the current historiography that consistently ends in the 1930s. By researching this museum, insight into how the UDC’s mission and public perception had changed can be gained. In order to fully examine the museum’s history in the late twentieth century, this thesis …


Before They Were Red Shirts: The Rifle Clubs Of Columbia, South Carolina, Andrew Abeyounis Aug 2014

Before They Were Red Shirts: The Rifle Clubs Of Columbia, South Carolina, Andrew Abeyounis

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that historians should reexamine the motivations of rifle clubs during Reconstruction by looking closely at what events the clubs held and the actual men who made up the organizations. The clubs from Columbia, South Carolina were more social and political organizations than otherwise given credit. Most of the men who joined the rifle clubs tended to be men who were too young to have fought in the Civil War and not bitter veterans trying to "redeem" the state. The clubs began years before the violent "Red Shirt" campaign of 1876-77, and were more focused on organizing balls …


"Newest Born Of Nations": Southern Thought On European Nationalisms And The Creation Of The Confederacy, 1820-186, Ann L. Tucker Jan 2014

"Newest Born Of Nations": Southern Thought On European Nationalisms And The Creation Of The Confederacy, 1820-186, Ann L. Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

When nineteenth-century southern nationalists seceded from the Union and created a southern nation, they sought to justify their actions by situating the Confederacy as one of many aspiring nations seeking membership in the family of nations in the middle of the nineteenth century. To support their argument that the Confederacy constituted a legitimate and independent nation, southern nationalists claimed nineteenth century European nationalist movements as precedents for their own attempt at nation-building, using the southern nation's supposed similarity to, or, at times, differences from, these European aspiring nations to legitimize the Confederacy. Such claims built on a long antebellum precedent …