History Commons^™

Stonewalls And Statues: A Personal Exploration Of Memorialization Culture Within The United States, Petra Mcdonnell-Ingoglia

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

A personal exploration of Confederate memorials and the Lost Cause narrative. How and who has created these memorials is integral in understanding the rise of racial hatred and racial violence in the U.S., and is rooted in the creation of Confederate culture and memorialization. This paper explores those topics while also trying to reckon with where we go from here and how we unravel the mythical narrative that has had such an impact on our society.

Independence, Slavery, And Freedom: Southern Women’S Thoughts During The Civil War, Bethany Susan Harper

Masters Theses

This study explores the complex relationship between southern women and their ideas of independence and freedom during the Civil War years. In addition, this study seeks to investigate how southern women’s attitudes regarding slavery changed from 1861-1865. With their husbands, brothers, and fathers serving in the war, southern women were forced to become the sole white authority figures on their estates. This reality shift made them come to understand just how dependent their independence was on slavery. Southern women believed that independence could only come to the Confederacy, and it was inconceivable to have a simultaneous future where the Confederacy …

No Tolerance For Cowards Or “Yankees:” The Letters Of Reuben Allen Pierson, A Confederate Officer, Erica L. Uszak

Student Publications

Confederate officer Reuben Allen Pierson was a single well-to-do Louisiana slaveholder. He enlisted early in the Ninth Louisiana Infantry, insisting that he joined the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to defend his freedom, family, and new country. He turned his back on the United States, convinced that his Northern counterparts were subhuman and dishonorable. This paper argues that Reuben Allen Pierson remained steadfast in his convictions about Southern duty and honor, arguing in the Confederacy’s favor even in bleak times. The writer will examine why he clung desperately to the Confederacy and how he was influenced by ideas of honor, …

Pro-Confederate Sympathy And Its Results In Northern Kentucky, Joel Shutt

Senior Honors Theses

During the Civil War, Kentucky was deeply divided in sentiment between Union and Confederate sympathies. Although these divides could be found anywhere, even within the smallest of towns, the population of some regions numerically favored one side or the other. Even so, there was always a vocal and active minority present, leading to political and even violent contention. This thesis seeks to understand the role that pro-Confederate sentiment played in northern Kentucky during the war. It will investigate how the region influenced the war and public sentiment statewide, and the nature of the conflict within. It will investigate geographic, social, …

Galvanized Yankees: Confederates In Union Service, Patrick O'Neil

Honors Theses

This museum exhibit explores the topic of the Galvanized Yankees, or U.S. Volunteers, who were regiments of captured Confederate soldiers that chose to take an oath of allegiance to the Union and served on the Western Frontier protecting settlers from Indian attacks. The former Confederate soldiers enlisted because it provided them an opportunity of freedom from the POW camps and an opportunity to earn a wage to provide for their families. One such soldier was James A.P. Fancher, a Confederate POW from Sparta, Tennessee. During their time in the West, the Galvanized Yankees patrolled to keep stagecoach and mail lines …

Robert E. Lee And Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Robert E. Lee was the most successful Confederate military leader during the American Civil War (1861–1865). This also made him, by virtue of the Confederacy's defense of chattel slavery, the most successful defender of the enslavement of African Americans. Yet his own personal record on both slavery and race is mottled with contradictions and ambivalence, all which were in plain view during his long career. Born into two of Virginia's most prominent families, Lee spent his early years surrounded by enslaved African Americans, although that changed once he joined the Army. His wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, freed her own …

Visual Culture Project: Confederate War Etchings: Searching For Arms By Adalbert Johann Volck, Lynn B. Hatcher

Student Publications

Adalbert Johann Volck’s 1861 sketch of Union soldiers, “Searching for Arms,” represents a substantial contribution to the narrative about gender relations during the American Civil War. This simple, small sketch offers the observer a window into the past. It is a collision of symbols and meaning—from gender to war to the household—all wrapped up in one image. This is a portrait sketch of a woman being invaded in her domestic, private sphere, revealing so much about gender relations during the time. The mistress herself seemed to embody a vast range of sentiments such as anger, fear, frailty, and strength, proving …

An End To Slavery In The Confederacy: One Of The Civil War's Greatest "What-Ifs", Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

A few weeks ago one of our readers posted a comment on one of our blog posts asking for a “best guess” as to when slavery would have ended in the South had the Confederacy been successful in winning its independence. There is, of course, no easy answer to this question, as counter-factual history is just that: not factual. However, the question is an important one that deserves attention and at the very least can be used to explore some ways in which slavery can be contextualized in the Civil War era.

[excerpt]

A Connecticut Yankee In Jeff Davis's Court, Jeffrey L. Lauck

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

For the past ten weeks or so, I have been interning at Richmond National Battlefield Park. The experience has been like no other. I began the summer with a few goals. First, I wanted to see if working for the National Park Service was everything that my fellow park geeks said it was. Second, I wanted to enrich my understanding of the Civil War by focusing my study on one particular community’s experience in the Civil War (Richmond). Third, as a born-and-raised New Englander, I wanted to see what it was like to spend a summer in Dixie. Finally, …

Yonder Stands Jackson Beyond Reproach, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

Yonder, he stands, a lone sentinel of stone amidst the fallow fields of Henry Hill. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, his nom de guerre earned here on the fields of First Manassas, rides tall in the saddle of his steed. The statue’s commanding presence on Henry Hill anchors a memory of that battle that emphasizes the triumph of Jackson, his brigade, and the Confederate army in the defense of Southern soil. It is an embodiment of idealized notions of Southern courage, honor, and martial spirit. At the same time, the monument serves to depoliticize Jackson and the Confederate war effort—yet in doing …

The Ideal And The Real: Southern Plantation Women Of The Civil War, Kelly H. Crosby

Student Publications

Southern plantation women experienced a shift in identity over the course of the Civil War. Through the diaries of Catherine Edmondston and Eliza Fain, historians note the discrepancy between the ideal and real roles women had while the men were off fighting. Unique perspectives and hidden voices in their writings offer valuable insight into the life of plantation women and the hybrid identity they gained despite the Confederate loss.

Ten Miles From Richmond, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

At the tiny crossroads town of Cold Harbor, Ulysses S. Grant hoped to crush Robert E. Lee's army and hasten the war's end. What happened instead would become one of his greatest regrets.

From Self-Sacrifice To Self-Preservation: The Changing Roles Of Southern Women During America's Civil War, Jennifer E. Edine

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

The Civil War is an event in American history that will continue to be discussed and analyzed for years to come. The conflict affected the entire population of the country, regardless of social class or race. One of the most important changes in southern society was the change in the roles and ideologies of southern women as a result of the war. Before the war, the South was a patriarchal society with prominent gender roles and ideologies on how the perfect Southerner should behave. Ideally, the Cavalier Man, filled with honor and chivalry, was meant to be in complete control. …

The Political War, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Pity Abraham Lincoln. Everything that should have gone right for the Union cause in the spring of 1864 had, in just a few weeks, gone defiantly and disastrously wrong.

For two years, the 16th president had toiled uphill against the secession of the Confederate states, against the incompetence of his luckless generals and against his howling critics from both sides of the congressional aisle. Finally, in the summer and fall of 1863, the course of the war had begun to turn his way. Two great victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg staggered the Confederates, and those were followed by a knockdown …

Class Conflict And The Confederate Conscription Acts In North Carolina, 1862-1864, Tyler Cline

Honors College

This thesis will analyze the effect that Confederate conscription policies during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1864 had on the social order that existed in North Carolina. Conflicts arose during the war between the slave-owning aristocratic class and the yeomen farmers who owned few slaves, if any, and thus were not dependent on the slave system in the pre-war era. A regional approach, exploring the impact of geography on social development, illustrates that the undermining of this social stability led to growing class-consciousness among the middle class farmers who dominated the Piedmont region of North Carolina. It will …

Montgomery: The Murals In The Dome, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

A broad sweeping portico looms behind the gay couple riding horses on a summer's afternoon. The man wears a brown coat and tall black top hat. The woman dresses in the finery of the turn-of-the-century. A hunting dog stands at attention as the horses stride across the plantation's spacious lawn. Back on the porch, a black "mammy" figure watches over a young girl. [excerpt]

Montgomery: Jeff Davis' Seal Of Solomon, John M. Rudy

Interpreting the Civil War: Connecting the Civil War to the American Public

Set into the marble steps of Alabama's Capitol building is a brass star. Gleaming against the white stone, the star stands at the top of the stairs on the Capitol's west face. The star reads, "Placed by Sophie Bibb Chapter Daughters of the Confederacy on the spot where Jefferson Davis stood when inaugurated President of C.S.A. Feb. 16. 1861." [excerpt]

"The Most Awful Problem That Any Nation Ever Undertook To Solve": Reconstruction As A Crisis In Citizenship, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Reconstruction is the step-child of the Civil War, the black hole of American history. It lacks the conflict and the personalities that make the Civil War so colorful; it also lacks the climactic feuds and battles, and dissipates into a confusing and wearisome tale of lost opportunities, squalid victories, and embarrassing defeats whose ultimate endpoint is the great American disgrace - Jim Crow. It lives with the short end of the historical stick for accomplishing too much, then accomplishing too little, with the result that almost the worst thing that can be said about someone in American history is that …

The Development Of A Legend: Stonewall Jackson As A Southern Hero, Andrew R. Chesnut

Senior Honors Theses

Throughout history, most individuals have lived their lives, and then faded into oblivion with little to remember them by. Relatively few receive credit for significantly affecting the course of human history and obtain appropriate remembrance in accounts of the past. For those whose memories endure, due to the unrepeatable nature of past events, history remains vulnerable to the corrupting influence of myths and legends that distort historical realities. Confederate Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-1863) serves as a prime example of an historical figure, who, though deserving of his place in history, has been subsequently distorted by biographers and memory. …

The Irish In The Civil War, W Dennis Keating

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In this article, I will discuss the role of the Irish in the Civil War focusing on some famous units, primarily on the Northern side but also some in the South. I will profile the three leading Irish-American military leaders of the war – Thomas Francis Meagher of the Irish Brigade, “Little” Phil Sheridan of the Union, and Patrick Cleburne of the Confederacy. While “Stonewall” Jackson was of Ulster Scots-Irish stock, I am not including him. Seven Union and six Confederate generals were Irish-born. And I will discuss the conflict between the Irish immigrants and the Negroes, which erupted in …

Wade Hampton: Conflicted Leader Of The Conservative Democracy?, Fritz Hamer

Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Apple Of Gold In A Picture Of Silver: The Constitution And Liberty, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

In the threatening winter of 1861, as the United States was being ~ inched ever- closer td the outbreak of civil war by the secession of the Southern states over the issue of black slavery, the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, opened up a confidential correspondence with a f6rmer Southern political colleague, Alexander Stephens of Georgia. Stephens had made headlines in November 1860, in a speech to the Georgia legislature, urging Georgia not to follow tlie South into secession. Lincoln sent him a friendly note, asking- for a printed copy of the speech-and perhaps warming Stephens to an invitation to …

The Great Valley And The Meaning Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

To understand the coming of the Civil War, then, we need to pick up the story before Fort Sumter and to carry it deeper than national events. We need to understand both the advocated of conflict and those who sought to avoid it regardless of the cost. We need to understand the communities people fought to defend, the institutions that held them together and that drove them apart.

"Becoming Southern: The Jews Of Savannah, Georgia, 1830-70, Mark I. Greenberg

Western Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

"Ambivalent Relations: Acceptance And Anti-Semitism In Confederate Thomasville", Mark I. Greenberg

Western Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Arkansas Secession Ordinance, 1861 May 6

Finding aids

This collection contains the document that authorized Arkansas's secession from the Union.