Digital Commons Network^™

The Loeb And Leopold Trial, Daniel Hanson

A with Honors Projects

In 1924, Nathan Leopold, Jr., and Richard Loeb, two privileged and intelligent students from the University of Chicago, initiated a plan to kidnap and hold for ransom a boy from a wealthy neighboring family, all the while intending to kill him. The sensational trial that followed, in which Clarence Darrow delivered a 12-hour closing argument for life imprisonment rather than the death penalty, would have implications far broader than the crime itself. This trial became the focus of the nascent culture war brewing in the 1920’s, a culture war that pitted radically different philosophies against each other in a battle …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War 2013

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

Complete issue downloadable as a PDF.

The Armendárizes: A Transnational Family In New Mexico And Mexico, Samuel E. Sisneros

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Although the Armendáriz surname is uncommon in New Mexico today, the Armendáriz family was important in New Mexico during the early to mid-1800s, with key political, diplomatic, and social links to Texas; California; Washington, D.C.; and Mexico. The lives of the Armendárizes attest to the long and constant movement of people, trade, and politics along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (the Royal Road of the Interior) and to theformation of a binational region. From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border and Chihuahua City to Mexico City, the Armendáriz family legacy demonstrates that New Mexico has …

Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn

Akron Law Faculty Publications

People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …

Firing Point: Patrol Torpedo Boats During World War Ii, Joshua J. Schick

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

At the beginning of American involvement in the Second World War the United States Navy developed a new class of vessel that had a tremendous impact during World War II. This vessel was the Patrol Torpedo boat. Originally designed to conduct torpedo attacks on enemy surface vessels, the PT boat successfully adapted multiple roles in addition to being a torpedo attack craft. The versatility of the Patrol Torpedo boat during World War II serving in these various roles and as an element of the US Navy has not been recognized by recent scholarship. Using primary sources from the National Archives …

Stansbury, Edgar Bryant, 1906-2009 (Mss 438), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 438. World War II diary kept by Edgar Bryant Stansbury, 1942, as well as articles by Stansbury, his thesis about industrial arts in Kentucky high schools, a scrapbook about his sports participation at Western Kentucky University, and several other items related to his experiences in World War II.

"Never Draw Unless You Mean To Shoot": Theodore Roosevelt's Frontier Diplomacy, Duane G. Jundt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Visualizing War, Alexandra C. Ward, Natalie S. Sherif, Andrew W. Egbert, Peter S. Carmichael

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Curators Andrew Egbert, Natalie Sherif, and Alexandra Ward have designed an experience that allows us to consider why these images resonated with such power for Civil War Americans. In doing so, they have shifted the gallery experience away from a truth-seeking mission, giving us instead a platform from which to move beyond questions of whether visual culture was realistic or not. They offer us a chance to explore the emotional and intellectual connections that sustained Americans long after the shouts and cheers in rushing to arms had faded. [excerpt]

New Deal Leftists, Henry Wallace And "Gideon's Army," And The Progressive Party In Montana, 1937-1952, Hugh T. Lovin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many forces occupied America's sociopolitical terrain to the left of New Dealers who dominated U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's administration of the 1930s. Some fastened themselves temporarily to the New Dealers' coattails. Ideologically motivated, others touted their special panaceas for ending the Great Depression that had begun in 1929, and certain of the mainstream Democratic Party's expatriates added to this cacophony by pursuing their own agendas. Comprised principally of the Democratic Party's out-of-power people, another group wanted to restore Roosevelt's reforming to its 1933-34 height, change the federal government's thrust to the leftward in. certain particulars, and impose New Deal-style reform …

Ethj Vol-50 No-2

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Occupation Of Nacogdoches, Robert L. Jones, Pauline Jones

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

My War: 1944-1945, Max S. Lale

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

“Savages” In The Service Of Empire: Native American Soldiers In Gorham's Rangers, 1744–1762, Brian D. Carroll

History Faculty Scholarship

Gorham's Rangers, initially an all-Indian ranger company, was instrumental in Britain's conquest of Nova Scotia (Acadia) during the eighteenth century. In the process of uncovering that story, the essay assesses New England Indians’ role in shaping colonial frontier warfare as well as the impact of military service on Native American communities.

Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth And The Rise Of Popular Premillennialism In The 1970s, Cortney S. Basham

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

How people think about the end of the world greatly affects how they live in the present. This thesis examines how popular American thought about “the end of the world” has been greatly affected by Hal Lindsey’s 1970 popular prophecy book The Late, Great Planet Earth. LGPE sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in the 1970s and greatly aided the mainstreaming of “end-times” ideas like the Antichrist, nuclear holocaust, the Rapture, and various other concepts connected with popular end-times thought. These ideas stem from a specific strain of late-nineteenth century Biblical interpretation known as dispensational premillennialism, which …

The Professionalization Of The American Army Through The War Of 1812, Robert L. Heiss

History Theses

The American military tradition stretches back to the militia of England. The English colonists brought a tradition of militia service and a fear of standing armies to America. Once in America, the colonies formed their own militias, using them for defense and then later for offensive operations. At the time of the American Revolution the American colonies had to combine the militia with an army. The fear of a standing army hindered the Continental Army, and then later the American Army, from being an effective force. By the time of the American Civil War, this had changed. There was a …

Motivations Of Civil War Soldiers From Western New York, Justin T. Howell

History Theses

The American Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in the history of the United States. Over 620,000 lives were lost during this war. Yet, what motivated volunteer soldiers to fight so valiantly for so long is the focus of this paper. After reading over 100 individual diaries and letters from volunteer Civil War soldiers from Western New York, who fought on the Union side, I have concluded that certain motivations influenced soldiers more than others to keep fighting. Motivations of the thrill of combat, adventure, and hatred of the enemy served as the initial motivations for Western New York Civil …

"It Was Awful, But It Was Politics": Crittenden County And The Demise Of African American Political Participation, Krista Michelle Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast scholarship that exists discussing why Democrats sought restrictive suffrage laws, little attention has been given by historians to examine how concern over local government drove disfranchisement measures. This study examines how the authors of disfranchisement laws were influenced by what was happening in Crittenden County where African Americans, because of their numerical majority, wielded enough political power to determine election outcomes. In the years following the Civil War, African Americans established strong communities, educated themselves, secured independent institutions, and most importantly became active in politics. Because of their numerical majority, Crittenden's African Americans were elected to county …

The Prevention Of Victory: How The U.S. Government Crippled Support For The Iraq War, Jacob M. Petrarca

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

A history of how the beginning stages of the War in Iraq were handled so poorly, from its misleading onset to the ill-fated concept of De-Ba'athification and the horrors at Abu-Ghraib and how the subsequent public out lash led to the impossibility for a positive outcome.

The Silent Arms Race: The Role Of The Supercomputer During The Cold War, 1947-1963, David Warren Kirsch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the central features of the Cold War is the "Arms Race." The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist republics vied for supremacy over the globe for a fifty-year period in which there were several arms races; atomic weapons, thermonuclear weapons and various kinds of conventional weapons. However, there is another arms race that goes unsung during this period of history and that is in the area of supercomputing. The other types of arms races are taken for granted by historians and others, but the technological competition between the superpowers would have been impossible without the historically …

Review Of Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History By Julie Courtwright, Ted Binnema

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The scholarly literature on the history of fire has proliferated over the last generation or so, but until now we have lacked a general history of prairie fire. Julie Courtwright fills this gap. She explains that she hopes "to open a wider discussion of prairie fire and to foster recognition of its environmental and social influence on the Great Plains, thereby broadening the larger history of fire and of the American West." That statement of purpose hints at the intended contributions of the book; Courtwright does not offer many interpretations and arguments that will surprise those familiar with the scholarly …

Indians And Empires: Cultural Change Among The Omaha And Pawnee, From Contact To 1808, Kurt E. Kinbacher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Great Plains is in the middle of everywhere. It has been crossed and recrossed for tens of thousands of years. Because of its central location, the region served as a historical laboratory where people were "forever imagining new environments and trying to muscle them into being." In what is now the state of Nebraska-the very center of the middle-divergent groups of Native Americans claimed vast territories and created dynamic cultures. Among these peoples were the Omaha, who settled on the Missouri River, and the Pawnee, who lived in the Platte Valley. Four empires--Spain, France, Great Britain, and the United …

The Pacific War Crimes Trials: The Importance Of The "Small Fry" Vs. The "Big Fish", Lisa Kelly Pennington

History Theses & Dissertations

In the post-World War II era, the Allied nations faced multiple issues, from occupying the Axis countries and rebuilding Europe and Japan to trying war criminals for atrocities committed prior to and during the war. War crimes trials were an important part of the occupation process and by conducting the trials, the Allied nations hoped not only to punish war criminals, but to provide examples of democratic principles to the former Axis powers and deter future wartime atrocities. When considering war crimes trials, it is most often Nuremberg that comes to mind, and it is Nuremberg that has dominated much …

Lobos Y Perros Rabiosos: The Legacy Of The Inquisition In The Colonization Of New Spain And New Mexico, C. Michael Torres

Student Papers (History)

No abstract provided.

Slavery And Empire: The Development Of Slavery In The Natchez District, 1720-1820, Christian Pinnen

Dissertations

“Slavery and Empire: The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720- 1820,” examines how slaves and colonists weathered the economic and political upheavals that rocked the Lower Mississippi Valley. The study focuses on the fitful— and often futile—efforts of the French, the English, the Spanish, and the Americans to establish plantation agriculture in Natchez and its environs, a district that emerged as the heart of the “Cotton Kingdom” in the decades following the American Revolution. Before American planters established their hegemony over Natchez, the town was a struggling outpost that changed hands three times over the course of the …

Buffalo, New York’S Citizen Soldiers: Personal Histories Of Combat, Trauma, And Returning Home After The Second World War, Drew H. Lewandowski

History Theses

Buffalo, New York’s Citizen Soldiers: Personal Histories of Combat, Trauma, and Returning Home after the Second World War

This thesis focuses on interviews from nine World War Two veterans who are from Buffalo, New York and the immediate surrounding areas. Included are three infantry men from the European theatre, including one paratrooper. Three who served in the Pacific theatre, including one medical officer, a medic, and one man served in the occupation of Japan. The remaining three served in the Air Corps in Europe, one pilot, one bombardier, and one fighter pilot.

Through extensive interviews, both written and filmed, this …

Furnish The Balance: The 1863 Roots Of Hard Strategy In The American Civil War, Angela Maria Riotto

Master's Theses

Scholars consider U.S. Major General William T. Sherman's 1864 Meridian campaign as the origin of hard war strategy during the American Civil War. While Sherman's 1864 expedition is a clear demonstration of hard war, it did not begin there. Rather, U.S. Major General Ulysses S. Grant's planned and Sherman's implemented destruction of Jackson, Mississippi in May 1863 was their first use of hard war and is key to understanding the Union's acceptance of hard war strategy. Chapter I and Chapter II of this thesis explore the Army of the Tennessee's march to Jackson and Sherman's destruction of the city, along …

Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, And Africans In Colonial Mississippi Valley, Sonia Toudji

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the Social relations between …

The Nation Before Taste: The Challenges Of American Culinary History, Andrew P. Haley

Faculty Publications

Food is material and familiar, and because it is, we are often overconfident about our ability to understand the culinary past. It is easy to believe that if we can discover the recipe for some forgotten dish, the history of the dish becomes intelligible. When it does not, it tempts those who consume culinary history to impose modern sensibilities on our predecessors. The Nation before Taste" argues that historians and museum curators must be especially vigilant when presenting the history of food. Reviewing a series of historical challenges that stemmed from studying the United States in the late nineteenth and …

Missions, Republicanism, And Anti-Catholicism: The Ideological Origins Of The Methodist Church’S Support For The Mexican-American War, Luke Clay Schleif

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Methodist Church’s support of the Mexican-American War arose from its commitment to the missionary endeavor and spreading the gospel. The self-imposed mission of the Methodists to evangelize the nations and their commitment to the United States war with Mexico cannot be understood without taking into account two other developments. Of first importance was the Church’s adoption of republicanism. By the 1840s, the Methodist Church accepted republicanism as the best form of human government and inextricably linked it to Protestant Christianity. Protestant (or biblical) Christianity was now not only necessary for salvation but was also a necessary component for political …

A Sequence Of Unfortunate Events: Why The Lost Colony Collapsed, Kate Jesse

Young Historians Conference

The era of colonization of the Americas began in 1492 with Columbus. However, it is not until the Roanoke Colonies in 1584 and 1587, that England attempted to claim part of this new land for itself. However, both colonies failed. The first ended when the inhabitants returned to England after a year on Roanoke Island while the second, known as the Lost Colony, mysteriously disappeared. This paper examines the causes of the second Roanoke Colony's failure as the combined results of the inability of John White to resupply the colonists quickly and the unfortunate location of the colony near Algonquians …