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Full-Text Articles in History

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 …


The Meaning Of The Civil War In Northern Religious Periodicals, 1865-1877, Jeffrey Mark Charles Joslin Aug 2019

The Meaning Of The Civil War In Northern Religious Periodicals, 1865-1877, Jeffrey Mark Charles Joslin

Masters Theses

The American Civil War had a profound effect on the minds of religious northerners during the Reconstruction Era that followed the war. Through church periodicals, members of the Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, and Seventh-day Adventist churches demonstrated and expounded the various meanings they understood the war to contain. This thesis examines each denomination‘s flagship newspaper in order to categorize, describe, and contextualize the major themes of meaning attributed to the war within each church. The major themes that emerge closely reflect each church‘s sense of identity and purpose, such as viewing the war as punishment from God, purification in creating …


Horse Racing During The Civil War: The Perseverance Of The Sport During A Time Of National Crisis, Danael Christian Suttle Aug 2019

Horse Racing During The Civil War: The Perseverance Of The Sport During A Time Of National Crisis, Danael Christian Suttle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Horse racing has a long and uninterrupted history in the United States. The historiography, however, maintains that horse racing went into hiatus during the Civil War. This simply is not true. While it is true that horse racing saw a decline in the beginning of the war, by the time the war ended, the sport had risen to similar heights as seen before the war. During the war, the sport was enjoyed by both soldiers and civilians. In the army, soldiers would often have impromptu camp races. As the war continued on, camp races became frowned upon by officers. The …


Soldaten Des Westens: An Analysis Of The Wartime Experiences Of Three German-American Regiments From The St. Louis-Bellville Region, John Sarvela May 2019

Soldaten Des Westens: An Analysis Of The Wartime Experiences Of Three German-American Regiments From The St. Louis-Bellville Region, John Sarvela

Master's Theses

During the Civil War, Germans from the Greater St. Louis region enthusiastically volunteered for service in the Union Army and filled the companies of three regiments examined here: the 30th and 43rd Illinois and 12th Missouri Volunteer Infantry Regiments. This thesis argues that German-American soldiers serving in these regiments joined the army to save the Union and end slavery. Once mustered into service, they experienced less nativism within the Union Army of the Tennessee than Germans in the Union Army of the Potomac. In contrast to the predominantly German 43rd Illinois and 12th Missouri, the …


'We Are Abolitionizing The West': The Union Army And The Implementation Of Federal Emancipation Policy, 1861–1865, Scott Ackerman May 2019

'We Are Abolitionizing The West': The Union Army And The Implementation Of Federal Emancipation Policy, 1861–1865, Scott Ackerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project provides a new history of the implementation of federal emancipation policy by the Union armies during the Civil War. It examines five geographic regions occupied by the Union army—the Mississippi River Valley, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and Kentucky—focusing on the activities of officials whom I term the “middle managers” of federal emancipation policy. Though often overlooked by historians, officers such as Union army Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, Commissioner for the United States Colored Troops George Stearns, and Major William Sidell were specifically designated by the Lincoln administration to superintend the implementation of emancipation policy in …


Civil Neighbors To Violent Foes: Guerrilla Warfare In Western Virginia During The Civil War, Lauren Michelle Milton Jan 2019

Civil Neighbors To Violent Foes: Guerrilla Warfare In Western Virginia During The Civil War, Lauren Michelle Milton

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

“Civil Neighbors to Violent Foes” researches the effect of guerrilla warfare in West Virginia during a national war and statehood movement, and the impact that emotions had on the people of the state. When President Lincoln won the election in 1860, secession was inevitable and war a likely possibility. At the time, West Virginia was still a part of Virginia, but old state political divisions, combined with the current national political divisions, fueled the fire for a new state, separate from Virginia and loyal to the Union. It would take West Virginia two years from the time delegates began holding …


Breaking And Remaking The Mason-Dixon Line: Loyalty In Civil War America, 1850-1900, Charles R. Welsko Jan 2019

Breaking And Remaking The Mason-Dixon Line: Loyalty In Civil War America, 1850-1900, Charles R. Welsko

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Between 1850 and 1900, Americans redefined their interpretation of national identity and loyalty. In the Mid-Atlantic borderland of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia this change is most evident. With the presence of a free state and slave states in close proximity, white and black Americans of the region experienced the tumult of the Civil War Era first hand. While the boundary between freedom and slavery served as an antebellum battleground over slavery, during the war, the whole region bore witness to divisions between the Union and Confederacy as well as to define what loyalty and nation meant. By exploring …