History Commons^™

Direct Responsibility: Caspar Weinberger And The Reagan Defense Buildup, Robert Howard Wieland

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the life of Caspar Weinberger and explains why President Reagan chose him for Secretary of Defense. Weinberger, not a defense technocrat, managed a massive defense buildup of 1.5 trillion dollars over a four year period. A biographical approach to Weinberger illuminates Reagan’s selection, for in many ways Weinberger harkens back to an earlier type of defense manager more akin to Elihu Root than Robert McNamara; more a man of letters than technocrat. And yet Weinberger, the amateur historian, worked with budgets his entire public career. Essentially, Pentagon governance is the formation of a military budget that proscribes …

Loyalist Or Patriot: The Precarious Position Of Edmund Randolph, 1774-1786, Tanisha Jean Staten

Master's Theses

On May 29, 1787, Governor Edmund Randolph took the floor of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia with a radical plan for a new federal government. Randolph was a key member of the influential Virginia delegation which paved the way for United States' Constitutionalism. An examination of his early life, legal career, and politics offers a new lens with which to view the emergence of American constitutional ideology. Building off the work ofT.H. Breen, who argues that Virginia's landed gentry inhabited a distinct culture, this work illuminates the dynamics of these elites who were absolutely pivotal in shaping a new sense …

Debating The Ideal Soviet Woman: Public Discussions Of Gender And Morality In Khrushchev's Russia, Chelsea Jo Miller

Master's Theses

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union's 1961 Third Party Program and its "Moral Code of the Builder of Communism" dictated that Soviet society would be transformed into a Communist utopia over the course of twenty years. As part of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's larger reform program, the "Moral Code" detailed the ideal characteristics of future Communists while also outlining their relationships with each other, the collective, and the state. Recently, scholars such as Deborah Field and Susan E. Reid have begun to address the tensions between public and private life that characterized this period. Both find that the state …

From Servitude To Freedom: Gender, Labor, And Domestic Relations, Elizabeth Michelle Talbot

Master's Theses

In the sugar parishes of Louisiana, enslaved people endured high mortality rates and declining populations at the height of the harsh slave regime in the mid-twentieth century. This resulted from regional disease, brutal working conditions, and a skewed sex ratio where enslaved men consistently outnumbered enslaved women. Following emancipation, freedwomen attempted to rebuild their families and community amid the tumultuous environment that defined the sugar parishes. This thesis utilizes Freedmen's Bureau records, American Missionary Association correspondence, census data, and local newspapers to argue that freedwomen sought to gain control over their labor, bodies, relationships, and children in the postbellum era …

Just Good Advice: The American Advisors In The Vietnam War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Honors Theses

This thesis uses government documents and post-combat interviews to explore the effectiveness of the American Advisory effort during the Vietnam War. This study focuses on the war in 1963 and 1964 before American ground forces entered the war and the advisory effort changed to include supporting American forces. By analyzing the reasons given by each advisor for his successes and failures, the American military could learn why the initial advisory effort failed, and why some American advisors could not work well with their counterparts in the Vietnamese leadership.

Chapter One examines the advisory effort as a whole before and during …

Second Families Of Virginia: Professional Power-Brokers In A Revolutionary Age, 1700-1790, Wesley Thomas Joyner

Dissertations

Between 1700 and 1790, a diverse assortment of merchants, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, and various other specialists forged a prominent position in Virginia that was integral to the colony’s planter-elites. These professionals complicated Virginia’s social hierarchy and affected numerous decisions planters made on personal business ventures, urban development, military conflicts, and political policies. Consequently, as Virginia planters struggled to maintain a sense of socioeconomic dominance, political influence, and familial solidarity, this upper-middling, professional contingent forced planters to compromise their seemingly exclusive modes of behavior. Accounting for the perspectives of professionals and planters, this study addresses how and why this occurred, as …

Victims Of Liberty: Virginia's Response To Loyalists And Loyalism In Williamsburg, 1770-1781, Stephanie Anne Seal

Master's Theses

In June, I 776, when Richard Henry Lee proposed a discussion about independence at the Second Continental Congress, ideas about political loyalty and royal ism in Virginia changed drastically. Almost overnight, there was a general consensus throughout most of the colony on the creation ofa Virginia exceptionalism: the idea that Virginia- as the largest, richest, and most populous colony- should be the leading voice of the upcoming American Revolution. This thesis argues that the ways Virginians perceived their place in the Revolutionary struggle was, in many ways, mirrored in their treatment of loyalists in the state. By examining publications on …