History Commons^™

The Peculiar Institution On The Periphery: Slavery In Arkansas, Kelly Eileene Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Slavery grew quickly on the western edge of the South. By 1860, more than one quarter of Arkansas's population was enslaved. While whites succeeded remarkably in transplanting the institution of slavery to the trans-Mississippi South, bondspeople used the land around them to achieve their own goals. Slaves capitalized on the abundance of uncultivated space, such as forest and canebrake, to temporarily escape the demanding crop routine, hold secret parties and religious meetings, meet friends, or run away for good. The Civil War created upheaval that undermined the slave regime but also required those African-Americans still in bondage to carefully navigate …

Engineering Victory: The Ingenuity, Proficiency, And Versatility Of Union Citizen Soldiers In Determining The Outcome Of The Civil War, Thomas F. Army Jr

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation explores the critical advantage the Union held over the Confederacy in military engineering. The skills Union soldiers displayed during the war at bridge building, railroad repair, and road making demonstrated mechanical ability and often revealed ingenuity and imagination. These skills were developed during the antebellum period when northerners invested in educational systems that served an industrializing economy. Before the war, northern states’ attempt at implementing basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices directed at mechanics and artisans, and the exponential growth in manufacturing all generated a different work related ethos than that of the South. Plantation …

The Effects Of The Nat Turner Slave Revolt On The Health And Welfare Of 19th-Century Slaves In Southeastern Virginia, Jeffrey Clifford Auerbach

Master's Theses

The Nat Turner Slave Revolt stands as a major turning point in the history of American slavery and represents a fundamental shift in the master slave relationship. This event shattered the previous paternalistic view and caused a fundamental reorganization of slave life. Included in this reorganization was a shift in the subsistence practice, moving away from morenutritious food grown by the slaves themselves to poor quality rations provided by the masters. This change in subsistence practices dealt a serious blow to the nutritional health of those living in the area surrounding the revolt.

By examining stature recorded in the County …

Contemporary Slavery: A Historical Perspective, Keilah Creedon

Honors Theses

While awareness is spreading about the 29 million people around the world who are currently enslaved, there is often a lack of understanding about what slavery is like today versus our common conception of slavery under the transatlantic slave trade. After exploring the connection between the abolition of slavery in the past and the introduction of coercive labor practices under colonial rule, I explain how slavery never truly ended and elaborate on the most common forms of contemporary slavery found today. This includes a case study focused on coercive labor in cocoa production. Using a solution oriented approach, I address …

Spartacus The Liberator: Modern Reception Of An Ancient Narrative, Charlotte Lehman

Honors Theses

Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator who led the rebels of the Third Servile War, is one of the most widely known figures of Ancient Rome. Despite the lack of ancient sources describing him, Spartacus has become popular in modern society. After being held as a slave in a gladiator training school, Spartacus inspired a revolt in which almost 100,000 slaves stood before several Roman legions and won. Before being subdued by the praetor Marcus Licinius Crassus, the escaped slaves won many battles against the powerful Roman army. Spartacus’ story has been adapted in novels, films, and even ballets. This thesis examines …

Love And Marriage: Domestic Relations And Matrimonial Strategies Among The Enslaved In The Atlantic World, Tyler Dunsdon Parry

Theses and Dissertations

"Love and Marriage: Domestic Relations and Matrimonial Strategies Among the Enslaved in the Atlantic World" argues that the cultural and sociopolitical dimensions of slave marriage were primary issues for diasporic Africans, abolitionists, and proslavery apologists whose lives were intertwined by the cultural and economic connections that framed the Atlantic World throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Through analyzing the interplay between legislation, cultural practice, and political discourse in the early periods of colonial slavery, I first show how matrimonial patterns from Atlantic Africa and Britain were re-imagined by diasporic Africans enslaved in Bermuda, the British West Indies, and colonial …

From Swamps To Swamping: The Usage And Perceptions Of Swamps By African-Americans In Antebellum And Postbellum Arkansas And Louisiana, Tessa Annette Neblett Evans

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This project is a landscape study that examines how different members of the antebellum and postbellum community in Arkansas and Louisiana perceived and used the swamplands, and how this changed over time. This project suggests that the swamps played an absolutely crucial role for individual slaves and free blacks both before and after the Civil War. Unlike Europeans and the white community who viewed the swamps as static, physical spaces on the plantation without value, African-Americans viewed them as fluid places filled with value. Religious practices were often performed near swamps, and even so-called aberrant religions practices, like voodoo, happened …

Representations Of Rebellion: Slavery In Jamaica, 1823-1831, Paul Brown

All Theses

This thesis examines slavery in Jamaica between 1824 and 1831, primarily through the lens of rebellion and rebellious conspiracy. This study is largely based on legal documents, namely the criminal trials of slaves produced after the discovery of conspiracy plots to rebel in 1824 and the outbreak of a large-scale slave insurrection in 1831. While previous historians have provided rich analyses of the origins and causes of slave rebellions, this study attempts to disentangle the various representations and ideas of rebellion among slaves and slaveholders in Jamaica, and their larger implications for slavery in the British West Indies. I suggest …

Slavery, Sacred Texts, And The Antebellum Confrontation With History, Jordan Tuttle Watkins

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the first six decades of the nineteenth century, America's biblical and constitutional interpreters waged their hermeneutical battles on historical grounds. Biblical scholars across the antebellum religious spectrum, from orthodox Charles Hodge's Calvinism to heterodox Theodore Parker's Transcendentalism, began to emphasize contextual readings. This development, fueled by an exposure to German biblical criticism and its emphasis on historical exegesis, sparked debate about the pertinence of biblical texts and the permanence of their teachings. In the 1830s, the resurfacing slavery issue increased the urgency to explore the biblical past for answers, which exposed differences between ancient and American slavery. Some still …

A Briny Crossroads Salt, Slavery, And Sectionalism In The Kanawha Salines, Cyrus Forman

Dissertations and Theses

The Kanawha Salines are a place whose history challenges conventional narratives and popular assumptions about slavery and freedom in the antebellum South. The paradoxical nature of slavery in this locale can be seen in the identity of the first documented people forced to labor in the salt works. A half century before enslaved Africans were imported to this region, European women and their families were kidnapped, enslaved, and marched to the salt mines by Native Americans: “In 1755, the Indians had carried Mary Ingles, her newborn baby, and others as captives....to this spot on the Kanawha to attain a salt …

Carving Canaan From Egypt’S Land: Free People Of Color In Kentucky’S Ohio River Valley, 1795-1860, Brandon Wilson

Theses and Dissertations--History

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Southerners of color flocked to northern free soil by the droves. Seeking refuge from a slaveholding society intent on subordinating those of African descent, many established new homes in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and places north. Many others, however, carved their own lands of freedom within the slaveholding South. This study explores the free Southerners of color who maintained communities in Kentucky’s borderland, occupying a purgatorial position between freedom and slavery. Maneuvering the anti-black laws and sentiments of their society, the individuals in this study remained rooted in a slaveholding society, despite relative proximity …

"For Divers Good Causes And Considerations" : Manumission Practices Of Albany, Ny Slaveholders, 1799-1824, William Angelo Meredith

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

On March 29, 1799, the New York State Legislature received notice that the state's Council of Revision had approved, "an Act for the gradual abolition of Slavery." The bill changed slavery in such a way that children born to slaves after July 4, 1799, became free upon reaching the age of twenty-five for females and twenty-eight for males. Given the monumental change produced by this legislation, historians have linked passage of the gradual abolition bill to an increase in slave manumissions. While the gradual abolition bill may have prompted slaveholders to consider manumission, it was not the overall motivating force …

The F Street Mess : Southern Power In The Antebellum Senate And The Passage Of The Kansas-Nebraska Act, Alice Elizabeth Malavasic

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

The Surprising Role Of Legal Traditions In The Rise Of Abolitionism In Great Britain's Development, Robert Michael Buchsbaum Iii

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The abolition of British slavery in the 19th century raises the question of how the British achieved antislavery against colonial opposition. While historical theories have focused on economic, political and religious factors, no account of abolition is complete without a thorough investigation of the history of evolving British legal traditions. This thesis analyzed a number of British homeland court cases and antislavery laws. English legal traditions established principles of freedom long before abolition in Britain, and then upheld them in respect to blacks on British soil in the 18th century. On the other hand, these traditions exposed a void in …