United States History Commons^™

[Introduction To] In The Presence Of Mine Enemies: Civil War In The Heart Of America, 1859-1863, Edward L. Ayers

Bookshelf

Winner of the Bancroft Prize: Through a gripping narrative based on massive new research, a leading historian reshapes our understanding of the Civil War.

Our standard Civil War histories tell a reassuring story of the triumph, in an inevitable conflict, of the dynamic, free-labor North over the traditional, slave-based South, vindicating the freedom principles built into the nation's foundations.

But at the time, on the borderlands of Pennsylvania and Virginia, no one expected war, and no one knew how it would turn out. The one certainty was that any war between the states would be fought in their fields and …

Columbine School Massacre, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

On 20 April 1999, in one of the deadliest school shootings in national history, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Jefferson County, Colorado, killed twelve fellow students and a teacher and injured twenty-three others before committing suicide. Eric Harris, age eighteen, and Dylan Klebold, age seventeen, used homemade bombs, two sawed-off twelve-gauge shotguns, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic rifle, and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol in a siege that began shortly after 11 A.M.

Sacco & Vanzetti Case, Eric S. Yellin, Louis Foughin

History Faculty Publications

Nicola Sacco, a skilled shoeworker born in 1891, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler born in 1888, were arrested on 5 May 1920, for a payroll holdup and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts. A jury, sitting under Judge Webster Thayer, found the men guilty on 14 July 1921. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on 23 August 1927 after several appeals and the recommendation of a special advisory commission serving the Massachusetts governor. The execution sparked worldwide protests against repression of Italian Americans, immigrants, labor militancy, and radical political beliefs.

Sabotage, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

A term borrowed from French syndicalists by American labor organizations at the turn of the century, sabotage means the hampering of productivity and efficiency of a factory, company, or organization by internal operatives. Often sabotage involves the destruction of property or machines by the workers who use them. In the United States, sabotage was seen first as a direct-action tactic for labor radicals against oppressive employers.

Teapot Dome Oil Scandal, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

In October 1929, Albert B. Fall, the former Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, was convicted of accepting bribes in the leasing of U.S. Naval Oil Reserves in Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

The Effect Of Slavery On Southern Farmland Values In The Antebellum And Postbellum Era, Brandon Devlin

Honors Theses

In the past 30 years, the legacy of African-American slavery has experienced a transformation in historical perspective. Morality aside, several historians have suggested that the accepted views regarding slavery need revision, particularly in an economic sense. Utilizing cliometrics, census records, diaries, and first-hand accounts of slavery in the South, economic historians such as Robert Fogel and Stanley Engennan have made a compelling case for the viability and profitability of slavery by exposing the nuances of the system that historical generalities often ignore. Of course, words like "viable" and ''profitable" do not necessarily mean "virtuous"or even "preferable", but it does imply …