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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Adventus: The Great Coming Of 1862, John M. Rudy Dec 2012

Adventus: The Great Coming Of 1862, John M. Rudy

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

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a weekend in Harpers Ferry helping to interpret that amazing place for the National Historical Park's annual Christmas 1864 event. One of the greatest joys of my desk job in interpretive training is getting back out into a parkscape to test out new ideas and practices. This time it gave me the chance to experiment out in the field, wearing the olde-timey clothes of the 1860s and discussing how hammers, anvils and black labor won the war through the U.S. Quartermasters Depot at Harpers Ferry. The event is amazingly fun and infinitely powerful …


Secular Damnation: Thomas Jefferson And The Imperative Of Race, Robert Forbes Dec 2012

Secular Damnation: Thomas Jefferson And The Imperative Of Race, Robert Forbes

Robert P Forbes

Race, we are told, is a “social construction.” If this is so, Thomas Jefferson was its principal architect. Jefferson consciously framed his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia, to check the rising status of Africans and to combat growing critiques of slavery from America’s European friends. Jefferson did this by importing the slaveholder’s sense of slaves as chattel into an Enlightenment world view, providing a metaphysical foundation for prejudice by transmuting the traditional Christian concept of the saved vs. the damned into material and aesthetic terms. Recasting in quasi-scientific language the ancient doctrine of the mark …


Secular Damnation: Thomas Jefferson And The Imperative Of Race, Robert P. Forbes May 2012

Secular Damnation: Thomas Jefferson And The Imperative Of Race, Robert P. Forbes

Torrington Articles

Race, we are told, is a “social construction.” If this is so, Thomas Jefferson was its principal architect. Jefferson consciously framed his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia, to check the rising status of Africans and to combat growing critiques of slavery from America’s European friends. Jefferson did this by importing the slaveholder’s sense of slaves as chattel into an Enlightenment world view, providing a metaphysical foundation for prejudice by transmuting the traditional Christian concept of the saved vs. the damned into material and aesthetic terms. Recasting in quasi-scientific language the ancient doctrine of the mark …


Strange Collection (Mss 42), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives May 2012

Strange Collection (Mss 42), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 42. Correspondence, 1864-1878 (8); journal, 1852-1883; scrapbooks (2); Manuscript: “House of Madison and McDowell in Kentucky,” 1888; family genealogical data; slave records; etc., of Agatha (Rochester) Strange, 1832-1896, a lifelong resident of Bowling Green, Kentucky.


Slavery And Empire: The Development Of Slavery In The Natchez District, 1720-1820, Christian Pinnen May 2012

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 …


Kingdom Comin': The Largest Slave Rebellion In U.S. History, John M. Rudy Mar 2012

Kingdom Comin': The Largest Slave Rebellion In U.S. History, John M. Rudy

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

Over at Present in the Past, Michael Lynch recently posted a provocative question and accompanying video about slave revolt. It got the wheels in my head turning. It also helped that Monday night was my first lecture scheduled on my course syllabus to dig into the "political war." My mind's been swimming with concepts of violence and resistance, freedom and slavery.


A Letter Of Man: "And What Is 'Truth'?", John M. Rudy Feb 2012

A Letter Of Man: "And What Is 'Truth'?", John M. Rudy

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

Have you seen the letter making the rounds on the internet? It's been tough not to see the letter in the past week or so. And it certainly is powerful and meaningful. Jordan Anderson has struck a chord with modern audiences nearly 150 years after he dictated a snide and sarcastic letter to his former master. Reading over the former slave's word, it feels like he tailored his tone for the tongue-in-cheek, breezy style of the virtual world. [excerpt]