Digital Commons Network^™

The Great Awokening, Samuel C. Smith

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

The Great “Awokening”[1]

“Were you to see him in his most violent agitations, you would be apt to think that he was a madman just broke from his chains.”—Boston Evening Post on James Davenport, Aug. 2, 1742.

“I'm actually not a fan of the word 'woke.' I think the connotation of that means being socially aware, which is a beautiful thing to be. But it does not take into account being self-aware.”—India Arie

Most of my historical research has been on The First Great Awakening, an eighteenth-century revival movement that played a major role in shaping the …

The Colonial Marginalization Of Filipino And Filipino American Soldiers In The Us Army During World War Ii, Corey Joseph Tinay

Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the structural paradigms in place within American society as multifaceted tools of colonialism and how they impacted the experiences of minority and colonized soldiers in the United States Army during the Second World War. The history is analyzed through the postcolonial lens, observing factors in place such as; denial of place in history, identity, and recognition of service. The research questions that this thesis addresses are as follows: What are the colonial implications in the experience of Filipino and Filipino American soldiers experience during the Second World War? Are colonial soldiers treated as more expendable than white …

History Of The Labor Party In The United States, Jacob Bilsky

History Honors Papers

In a period when “labor-based parties” in Europe had reached their “own ‘end of history’” with the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Keynesian consensus, influential union organizer Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Organization led a bold effort to build a workers’ party independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties in the United States from 1991 until his death in 2002. While the Labor Party never made its way into mainstream politics, it represented an important moment for organizing left of the Democratic Party in the United States. This thesis …

Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, The Jewish Plight, And The Founding Of Israel, John F. Sears

Purdue University Press Books

Refuge Must Be Given details the evolution of Eleanor Roosevelt from someone who harbored negative impressions of Jews to become a leading Gentile champion of Israel in the United States. The book explores, for the first time, Roosevelt’s partnership with the Quaker leader Clarence Pickett in seeking to admit more refugees into the United States, and her relationship with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who was sympathetic to the victims of Nazi persecution yet defended a visa process that failed both Jewish and non-Jewish refugees.

After the war, as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations, Eleanor …

The “Age Of Rock” Versus The “Rock Of Ages”: Naturalism, Social Darwinism, And Fundamentalism In The Scopes Monkey Trial, Bessie Blackburn

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Greek mythology once predominated the highest forms of culture known to man. Myths of how fire came to be in the hands of humans, or how the peacock got its spotted feathers were beloved cultural tales of origins.[1] With the decline of the ancient cultures, new ones blossomed in their place. However, the question of origin has remained a pertinent, central question of each culture, no matter how modern. The question of origin dictates who a person believes himself to be, where he believes himself to be going, and what he believes himself to be doing. The question of …

The Law And The Household: Criminal Courts In Early Twentieth Century Rockingham County, Jennifer Taylor

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines the early twentieth century as a period of transition for rural, southern communities where the state began to increase its authority in matters of the family and the household. This prompted a transition from traditional patriarchal authority to state paternalism. Using the criminal court case records from the Rockingham Criminal Court, it is possible to evaluate the rural population’s reaction to this transition. Certain populations, particularly women, were willing to use the law as a place to find justice against male power, while men continued to perpetuate traditional ideas about masculinity and informal, violent retribution as a …

The Southern Limit Of Timucua Territory, Ripley P. Bullen

Florida Historical Quarterly

According to a popular belief the area south of Tampa Bay was the domicile of the Calusa Indians. Whatever the origin of this dogma, it is likely connected with the fact that Narvaez and De Soto supposedly landed in Timucua Indian territory. How far south of Shaw’s Point this territory may have extended has never been delineated. Historically, north Florida east of the Aucilla River was inhabited by Timucua, and south Florida, south and west of Lake Okeechobee, by Calusa Indians. Archaeological evidence suggests that regional differences in material culture had existed for about 1,500 years before the coming of …

Graveyard For Britons, West Florida, 1763-1781, Robert R. Rea

Florida Historical Quarterly

Today it is known as the Miracle Strip, and every spring its long white beaches beckon to sun-starved multitudes who flock to that stretch of coast centering upon Pensacola to the east and Mobile to the west. There lie warmth, relaxation, recreation, and health. Few of today’s sun-worshipers remember that Pensacola was once the swampy, fever-infested capital of British West Florida, and that Mobile was known as a “graveyard for Britons.”

Florida In The Balance: The Electoral Count Of 1876, Jerrell H. Shofner

Florida Historical Quarterly

For a few weeks following the 1876 election, Florida’s role in national affairs was greater than the state’s four electoral votes would normally warrant. With the presidency depending on one electoral vote and the Florida election in doubt, both the Democratic and Republican parties concentrated attention on the electoral count in Tallahassee. The activities of influential “visiting statesmen” representing the national parties affected the decision of the state canvassing board and caused temporary excitement in Florida. After their departure and the ultimate resolution of the election dispute, political affairs in the state returned to normal with little permanent influence from …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Reviews of Smith, The Death of Slavery: The United States, 1837-1865, by David L. Smiley; Massey, Bonnet Brigades, by Elsie M. Lewis; Current, Three Carpetbag Governors, by Mary Elizabeth Massey; Tawes, Coasting Captain: Journals of Captain Leonard S. Tawes Relating His Career in Atlantic Coastwise Sailing Craft from 1868-1922, by K. Jack Bauer; Boswell, The America: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Yacht, by Edward A. Mueller; Hill, Southern Churches in Crisis, by Byron S. Hollinshead; Thompson (ed.), Perspectives on the South: Agenda for Research, by Hugh T. Lefler; Greene, A Lifetime with the Birds: An Ornithological Logbook, by …

A View Of Celi's Journal Of Surveys And Chart Of 1757, John D. Ware

Florida Historical Quarterly

The San Francisco de Asis was a xebec, one of a class of relatively small three-masted sailing vessels used around the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. Her fore and mizzenmasts were lateen rigged, and her mainmast was square rigged, having three sails - main, lower main, and upper mainsails. This type was frequently outfitted with oars for use in calm water, but there is no indication that this vessel was so equipped.

Little Steel’S Labor War In Youngstown, Ben J. St. Angelo

Madison Historical Review

During the 1930s, in response to growing labor discontent, the United States Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Championed by President Franklin Roosevelt’s as an equalizing measure in the American workplace, the NLRA received vigorous opposition from powerful leaders in multiple industries. This article examines an outbreak of violence between workers and agents of management at Republic Steel in Youngstown, Ohio during the spring and summer of 1937 when workers attempted to organize—emboldened by new rights granted to them in the NLRA. It demonstrates the life and death consequences that marred labor relations in the United States. Disputes …

A Distinction Without A Difference: Vietnam, Sir Robert Thompson, And The Policing Failures Of Vietnam, Mark J. Rothermel

Madison Historical Review

The scholarship analyzing the failure of the American involvement in Vietnam began even before the war finished. Whether the Orthodox School which considered the war unwinnable or the revisionist which argued there was a path to victory for the Americans, there have been libraries of tomes arguing who or what was to blame for the American defeat. An increased amount of scholarship recently has been written regarding the influence of British officer Sir Robert Thompson and his attempt to advise both the South Vietnamese and American war efforts.

Thompson, who gained fame as one of the key leaders for the …

All About Flowers : James Vick's Nineteenth-Century Seed Company, Thomas J. Mickey

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A nineteenth-century entrepreneur’s bold, innovative marketing helped transform flower gardens into one of America’s favorite hobbies.

“There is much that is hard and productive of sorrow in this sin-plagued world of ours; and, had we no flowers, I believe existence would be hard to be borne.” So states a customer’s 1881 letter—one of thousands James Vick regularly received. Vick’s business, selling flower seeds through the mail, wasn’t unique, but it was wildly successful because he understood better than his rivals how to engage customers’ emotions. He sold the love of flowers along with the flower seeds.

Vick was genuinely passionate …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Reviews of Gregory and Strickland, Sam Houston With the Cherokees, 1829-1833, by Frank Laumer; Ringold, The Role of the State Legislatures in the Confederacy, by Daisy Parker; Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865-1877, by Phillip S. Paludan; Evans, Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstruction on the Lower Cape Fear, by Daniel W. Hollis; Krueger, And Promises to Keep: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 1938-1948, by Ralph F. de Bedts; Helm, Hurricanes: Weather at its Worst, by Wyatt Blassingame; Plowden, Those Amazing Ringlings and Their Circus, by Marian Murray; Tarrant, James Branch Cabell: The Dream and the Reality, by …

Florida Politics And The Tallahassee Press, Thomas S. Graham

Florida Historical Quarterly

In 1849, the editor of the Tallahassee Floridian & Journal, one of the state’s leading newspapers, recommended the compilation of Florida’s news journals so that future historical researchers would be furnished with “extensive and otherwise unattainable data for correct history of opinions and events." Today the common use of newspaper materials in the writing of history has amply validated the perceptiveness of the editor’s foresight, and while the newspapers of the ante-bellum era have proved useful in writing history, they have also been found to be fascinating and worthy of study in themselves. The Floridian & Journal and its foremost …

Key West And The New Deal, 1934-1936, Durward Long

Florida Historical Quarterly

Historians often point out that the depression which began for the rest of the United States in 1929, started in Florida much earlier. The final collapse of the real estate boom in Florida in 1926, was followed by serious fiscal difficulties for units of government-local and state-as well as for private citizens. Even nature seemed to conspire against the economic well-being of the state. The devastating hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 were followed by the invasion of the Mediterranean fruit fly in 1929, to add to the deepening financial and economic distress which many Florida communities were suffering in the …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Reviews of Schell, De Soto Didn’t Land at Tampa, by Luis Rafael Arana; Austin, Frank M. Chapman in Florida: His Journals and Letters, by John D. Pennekamp; Douglas, History of Dunedin, by Walter P. Fuller; Forshay and Micken, Lure of the Sun: A Story of Palm Beach County, by Donald W. Curl; McPhee, Oranges, by Baynard Kendrick; Wagner and Taylor, Pieces of Eight: Recovering the Riches of a Lost Spanish Treasure Fleet, by Hale G. Smith; Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, by Charles W. Arnade; Corkran, The Creek Fontier, 1540-1783, by John K. Mahon

Trabue, Alias Punta Gorda, Vernon E. Peeples

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida Southern Railway in 1885-1886, constructed a line from Bartow Junction to Charlotte Harbor, and a new town, Punta Gorda, sprang up at the southern terminus of what was then the southernmost railroad in the United States. Punta Gorda’s beginning enbroiled its settlers and leading citizens in a controversy that raged for many years.

British And Indian Activities In Spanish West Florida During The War Of 1812, Frank L. Owsley, Jr.

Florida Historical Quarterly

When Britain lost control of Florida in 1783 to Spain, many English merchants and public officials, especially the governors of Jamaica and New Providence, did not consider the loss of Florida as permanent. They continued an extensive legal and illegal trade with the Indians in Florida and the southern United States. The mouth of the Apalachicola River and the area around it comprised one of the main seats of this commerce, especially the illegal part. In line with their objectives of regaining control of Florida, these various British officials and merchants sent such filibusterers as William Augustus Bowles, who plotted …

Notes On The Medical History Of Key West, 1822-1832, E. Ashby Hammond

Florida Historical Quarterly

The years 1818 to 1823 were unquiet times in the northern Caribbean. The Latin nations of the area were either stabilizing their newly gained independence or preparing for further expressions of defiance against their Iberian overlords. In any event there was neither time nor the resources for organizing a military patrol of the waters extending from Venezuela to Tampa Bay, from Yucatan to Puerto Rico. Piracy was virtually unrestrained, and wrecking, considered by some observers to have been an only slightly more honorable enterprise, went unregulated. Shortly after John W. Simonton had acquired the island, then known as Cayo Hueso, …

Federal Expedition Against Saint Marks Ends At Natural Bridge, Edwin C. Bearss

Florida Historical Quarterly

In the last year of the Civil War, the Union forces took advantage of their seapower to carry the conflict to sections of Florida that had heretofore escaped the ravages of war. Operating from bases which they had seized along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the state, Union columns would strike deep into the interior and fall back before the Confederates could rally a force strong enough to intervene. Raiding parties were likewise put ashore from transports. If they ran into serious opposition, the raiders would fall back to the beach, where they would be covered by the great …

A Footnote On Rene Laudionniere, Charles E. Bennett

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Fort Caroline National Memorial, a facility of the National park Service near Jacksonville, includes the reconstructed sixteenth century fort and an interpretive museum, the latter containing priceless American and European artifacts. Fort Caroline, established by the French in 1564 under the leadership of Rene Laudonniere, was then the only European settlement in the territory which is now the United States. It was conquered in 1565 by Spanish forces under Pedro Menendez d’Aviles, who founded Saint Augustine, the country’s oldest city.

Suwannee River Steamboating, E. A. Mueller

Florida Historical Quarterly

Stephen Collins Foster's famous song, “Way Down Upon the Suwannee River,” has probably done more than anything else to elevate this relatively minor Florida river to a position of fame that it otherwise would not have achieved. Now the official state song of Florida, it was written in 1851 while Foster was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had originally decided to title it, “Way Down Upon The Pee Dee River,” but fortunately he changed his mind, and, as the story goes, examined a map and discovered the name of the little-known Florida river. Foster had certainly not seen the Suwannee when …

Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco) In The Seminole Wars (Part I), Kenneth W. Porter

Florida Historical Quarterly

If a group of informed Americans were asked to name a Seminole chief, it is likely that most of them would reply “Osceola.” If asked to recall a second Florida Indian, at least a majority of those responding would name “Billy Bowlegs.” The second choice would be more accurate, for Osceola was a Seminole only by adoption - being by birth a Red Stick Creek from Georgia or Alabama who came to Florida at about the age of ten. He was not a chief by hereditary right, whereas Billy Bowlegs, to use his common white-man’s nickname, was what an army …

The Narrow Waters Strategies Of Pedro Menendez, Paul E. Hoffman

Florida Historical Quarterly

In a letter to Philip II from Cadiz on December 3, 1570, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Adelantado of Florida and Captain General of the Armada for the Guarding and Security of the Coasts, Islands, and Ports of the Indies, said that he planned to “place myself in the Bahama Channel where he [Jacques Sores, considered to be one of the best French corsairs and at the time at large in the Caribbean] could not come out without my seeing him.” Menendez recognized that the control of the Bahama Channel was essential for the security of the Caribbean. He said that …

Knowing China, Losing China: Discourse And Power In U.S.-China Relations, Shankara Narayanan

University Scholar Projects

The U.S. government’s 2017 National Security Strategy claimed, “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”[1] Three years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the U.S. foreign policy community’s discursive shift towards Realist competition with China, with officials from the past three presidential administrations coming to view China as a threat to democratic governance and America’s security posture in Asia. The discourse underpinning the U.S.-China relationship, however, remains understudied. During key moments in the relationship, U.S. policymakers’ Realist intellectual frameworks failed to account for Chinese nationalism, suggesting a problem embedded within …

Knowing China, Losing China: Discourse And Power In U.S.-China Relations, Shankara Narayanan

Honors Scholar Theses

The U.S. government’s 2017 National Security Strategy claimed, “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”[1] Three years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the U.S. foreign policy community’s discursive shift towards Realist competition with China, with officials from the past three presidential administrations coming to view China as a threat to democratic governance and America’s security posture in Asia. The discourse underpinning the U.S.-China relationship, however, remains understudied. During key moments in the relationship, U.S. policymakers’ Realist intellectual frameworks failed to account for Chinese nationalism, suggesting a problem embedded within …

The Saints And The State : The Mormon Troubles In Illinois, James Simeone

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

A compelling history of the 1846 Mormon expulsion from Illinois that exemplifies the limits of American democracy and religious tolerance.

When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as Mormons) settled in Illinois in 1839, they had been persecuted for their beliefs from Ohio to Missouri. Illinoisans viewed themselves as religiously tolerant egalitarians and initially welcomed the Mormons to their state. However, non-Mormon locals who valued competitive individualism perceived the saints‘ western Illinois settlement, Nauvoo, as a theocracy with too much political power. Amid escalating tensions in 1844, anti-Mormon vigilantes assassinated church founder Joseph Smith and …

The Southern Boundary Commission, The Chattahoochee River, And The Florida Seminoles, 1799, Jack D. L. Holmes

Florida Historical Quarterly

When the pressure of European affairs mounted during 1795, Spain’s Minister of State, the erratic Manuel de Godoy, was persuaded to sign the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney Treaty) with the United States in an effort to neutralize that power in the approaching struggle with the English. Whatever its utility to Spain in Europe, this treaty marked the beginning of the end for Spain’s North American empire by yielding control over the Mississippi and by surrendering the strategic posts north of the thirty-first parallel and east of the Mississippi.