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2011
2007, Master of Arts Thesis - Virginia Commonwealth University
This thesis examines the home front experiences of middle class white women living in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War. The experiences of women in Winchester were unique because of Winchester's proximity to both the Union and Confederate capitals. Although the majority of WInchester's women were Confederate supporters, a significant minority of the population remained loyal to the Union. Winchester's citizens divided status was further complicated by numerous occupations of the town by both armies. This thesis argues that in order to cope with wartime hardships, women's concepts of patriotism changed as home front morale waned. While early in the war women's patriotism reflected their support of the military, as the war progressed women began defining themselves as either Unionists or Confederates in order to maintain a sense of self. These wartime identities centered on the legitimacy of a particular cause and the vilification of the "enemy," thereby creating a clear line between good and evil to help women cope with the death and destruction of war. Winchester's various wartime occupations, however, undermined women's emotional justifications for war as contact with soldiers humanized the enemy and skewed the battle lines.
2017
This article re-examines the nature of loyalty during the American Civil War. It argues that Confederate nationalism was only one of multiple influential and dynamic loyalties that influenced civilians and soldiers by focusing on the extensive illegal trade in cotton and other goods between Confederate civilians and Union forces in the Federally-occupied southern state of Mississippi from 1862-1865.
2003, The American Historical Review
2006
SLAVEOWNERS AND SOUTHERN SOLDIERS: THE MILITARY PARTICIPATION OF THE SLAVEHOLDING COMMUNITY IN CIVIL WAR LUNENBURG COUNTY, VIRGINIA GLENN SEILER CANDIDATE FOR DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND MAY2006 PROFESSOR ROBERT C. KENZER Before the final shot of the Civil War rang out, the phrase "a rich man's war, poor man's fight" was well embedded in the psyche of Confederate citizens. Many historians credit such perceptions with ultimately condemning the Confederacy to failure. While numerous government policies seemed to emphasize a sense of protection toward the men of affluent Southern families, Confederate leaders disputed such claims. To the common Southerner the rich did not contribute in an equitable share of the fighting and often sought personal gain while the masses endured hardships. There can be no doubt internal class dissent plagued the Confederacy from the very start. In almost every instance it was the wealthy slaveowner who was the target o...
Again, I don't usually upload reviews here, but this is another important book, and some may be interested in what I have to say.
Journal of Historical Biography
2011
2008, Journal of American History
On July 25, 1863, eight men were executed by Texas State Troops near the frontier settlement of Bandera, Texas. This paper examines the events leading up to the execution, the incident, its aftermath, and the historical memory of the event. I argue that the Bandera hangings reveal the difficulties experienced by Confederate and state authorities as they attempted to maintain their authority over dissidents in western Texas. After the war, the context of the Bandera incident was largely forgotten, and it became subsumed by the "Wild West" historical memory that many Texans embraced in the early-twentieth century.
From the publisher: This highly original work explores a previously unknown financial conspiracy at the start of the American Civil War. The book explains the reasons for the puzzling intensity of Missouri’s guerrilla conflict, and for the state’s anomalous experience in Reconstruction. In the broader history of the war, the book reveals for the first time the nature of military mobilization in the antebellum United States.
This is the full layout of the exhibit at the Huntington Library (West Library Hall 2012).
2011
2001, Unpublished BS (Honors) thesis
2020
The Shylock stereotype was behind Union General Ulysses S. Grant's reasons for ordering General Order Number 11, on December 17, 1862, expelling "Jews as a class" from areas of Northern occupied former Confederate states Tennessee, Mississippi, and the Border State of Kentucky. General Order Number 11 stands out in American history as the first instance of a policy of official anti-Semitism on a large scale. At the time, prominent Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise called it an "outrage, without precedent in American history." During the Civil War, loyalty was a significant issue, especially in the three Border States. All three states, Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky, had issues of dual-loyalty. Grant's Order was directly related to Southerners' Northern suspicions of those on the Border States about where their loyalties lied during the war. Jewish loyalties were always questioned throughout history more because the nation feared their devotion was to their co-religionists as opposed to their country. These two issues of loyalty collided and resulted in the worst incident of anti-Jewish prejudice in American history until that point.
This article in the Journal of Southern History argues the following: (1) that secessionists in the antebellum South wanted Cuba & other Latin American acquisitions after leaving the Union; (2) that the Confederate Constitution encouraged such territorial growth; (3) that Rebel president Jefferson Davis loaded his administration with expansionists; (4) that to avoid fighting a two-front war, Confederate leaders quickly suppressed imperialistic initiatives once the Civil War erupted; (5) that, ironically, Confederates became so desperate for their independence that during the Civil War they even welcomed European intervention in Latin America if that would facilitate winning their war against the Union (even accepting violations of the hallowed Monroe Doctrine if necessary).
2016, Journal of the Civil War Era
2009, The Journal of Southern History
Popular histories and Lost Cause mythology like to portray the American Civil War as a war with pitted two dichotomous entities against each other, with the South being defeated not for a lack of national unity, but purely by the industrial might of the Union. Such portrayals are fallacies and underestimate the challenges the Confederacy had on the home front, as wartime hardships fostered Unionist sympathies amongst much of the common populace of the South. While initially fragmented and localised, Southern Unionism would transform into an active and malignant campaign against the vested interests of the Confederacy. Disaffection was expressed in many forms, all of which damaged the ability of the South to wage war. This essay will examine the classist dimensions within the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War and how strife between planter and common whites manifested itself as an inner Civil War of sorts. It will examine the immediate socio-economic context arising from the Secession Crisis and how it would contribute to Confederate wartime policy and everyday experiences. Next, the main reasons for dissent and Unionism to take hold will be outlined. How Unionist dissent actually expressed itself will be examined, and how successful it actually was. Finally, the role of women and slaves in the Unionist effort will be touched upon, and how dissent became a tool of empowerment that allowed them to move beyond their antebellum societal roles, redefining their immediate localities, identifies and the greater South itself.
2019, Masters Thesis
Of all the actors in the American Civil War, marginalized groups have been vastly underrepresented on the commemorative landscape. Cherokee soldiers were among the minorities who contributed to both the Union and the Confederacy, and up to the present time, there has not been a completed study which surveys the extent of that participation and how it is interpreted to the public. It is important to present history as a complete narrative, and a detailed list of these significant sites can only benefit that endeavor. Spatial technologies also provide new tools to employ within public history, allowing increased access of the story to a wider audience. This thesis will therefore act as a preliminary survey and will attempt to fill a gap in nineteenth century historiography by incorporating memorials, historical markers, and other interpretive materials on the commemorative landscape into an interactive geographic information system. https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/handle/mtsu/6146
Southern Jewish History 17 (2014), pp. 91-130
This article uncovers significant economic links between antebellum Virginia and southeastern Brazil. Consumer demand in Rio de Janeiro for high-quality Richmond flour led to the collapse of small-time gristmilling throughout the state, as the largest, most technologically-advanced flour mills in the nation arose along the banks of the James River in the future capital of the Confederacy. Rural deindustrialization dovetailed with new, elite-driven concerns over the malarial effects of standing water, as well as a desire to expand wheat acreage, spurring the drainage of thousands of acres of abandoned millponds. Thus, the continuing entanglements of a slavery-centered Atlantic economy transformed the rural landscape of piedmont Virginia in the twenty years before the Civil War.
Talk given at Shenandoah Civil War Associates Civil War Institute (June 2018)
2020
For American Jewry fighting in American wars was a way to deter anti-Jewish prejudice and the charges of disloyalty or dual loyalty. The charge of disloyalty motivated American Jewry to express their loyalty to America, especially in wartime more than their Christian neighbors. The accusation was the main reason Jews in the North and the South shied away from separate organizations, associations, hospitals, and military companies during the Civil War. The Civil War was a special situation where the question of loyalty and disloyalty applied to almost everyone in the Border States and Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The burden was greater for the large number of recent immigrants that took and fought for the Union and a lesser extent for the Confederacy. In 1860, 15 percent of the American population was recent immigrants. Part of the charge of dual loyalty or disloyalty was to accuse American Jewry of not enlisting in the military and fighting American wars. During the Civil War Christians in both, the Union and Confederacy accused Jews of not fighting in the war, although 10,000 Jews enlisted on both sides.
2019
This paper is based on a chapter from my doctoral thesis, and is not currently published. However, I have sent it in booklet format to the various historical organisations, museums, and other places who so generously assisted me in my archival research. The paper's introduction also includes some contextual information which did not appear in the original thesis. As it is an unpublished work, please do not cite it without my permission.
2013
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Date of Award Spring 2013 Document Type Thesis Degree Name Master of Arts (MA) Department Department of History Abstract Education in the 19th century relied heavily on school texts in order to teach American children the moral and civic responsibilities they must possess in order to become productive members of the American republic. After declaring secession, Confederate cultural nationalists took up the cause of educating the school children in the Confederate States of America in the moral and civic responsibilities determined important to the preservation of their new nation. Southerners had felt disenfranchised by the northern press and believed their children learning from these schoolbooks became weakened in their southern identity. Though some southerners were espousing the need for their own school presses before secession, it was not until the split between North and ...
Forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review (2017) After the Civil War, the South faced a problem that was almost entirely new in the United States: a racially diverse and geographically integrated citizenry. In one fell swoop with emancipation, millions of former slaves were now citizens. The old system of plantation localism, built largely on the feudal control of the black population by wealthy white planters, was no longer viable. The urgent question facing both those who sought to reform and those who sought to preserve the “old South” was: What should local government look like after emancipation? This article tells the story of the struggle over the answer to that question. At the center of that struggle is an untold legal history of local government reform during Reconstruction. In the years immediately after the Civil War, idealistic Yankee reformers went south with the explicit aim of remaking the “fabric of southern culture” by rebuilding the South in the image of their northern homes. Specifically, in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, these reformers rewrote state constitutions to replace the plantation and county court with townships modeled on the New England town. Southern conservatives resisted the new townships, understanding them as foreign impositions targeted to destroy their old way of life. Within a decade they had dismantled the new townships and built the foundations of a new Jim Crow local order rooted in the county and approximating a return to the plantation. By telling this new history, this article contributes to present scholarship in at least two ways. First, the story highlights a binary struggle between “communitarian” localism embodied in the civic participation of the New England town and “proprietary” localism, embodied in the private power of the plantation owner. This struggle was framed with crystal clarity during Reconstruction, but it remains a powerful analytic tool for understanding today’s debates and struggles over local government. Second and relatedly, this history reveals the extent to which racial anxiety shaped and continues to shape local institutions. The communitarian township experiment was fueled by a vision of racial equality—and the white supremacist response to it was fueled by resentment and resistance to that vision. When we think about localism and racial inequality, we tend to think about the responses to school desegregation in the mid-twentieth century when racial resentment and fear during the “Second Reconstruction” drove white flight and contributed to resegregation through suburbanization. This article shows that we may be looking at the wrong Reconstruction. In fact, the pathologies of local government, racial segregation, democracy, and protection of property were framed after the Civil War, in the crucible of a direct conflict between utopian racial egalitarianism and white supremacy.
1988
The violent military struggles and acute partisan conflicts that engulfed the population of Missouri during the U.S. Civil War present something of a paradox to scholars seeking to fit this "border" state neatly into political-economic explanations of the mid-nineteenth century U.S. crisis. If the war was indeed the consequence of a growing divergence between the free-labor North and the slave-labor South, why did the conflict take on its most markedly "civil" form precisely in Missouri, a state where the social formation largely failed to exhibit the sharp dichotomy that characterized the nation-state as a whole?
Louisiana’s Red River region was shaped by and founded on the logic of racial power, the economics of slavery, and white supremacy. The alluvial soil provided wealth for the mobile, market-driven slaveholders but created a cold, brutal world for the commoditized slaves that cleared the land and cultivated cotton. Racial bondage defined the region, and slaveholders’ commitment to mastery and Confederate doctrine continued after the Civil War. This work argues that when freedom arrived, this unbroken fidelity to mastery and to the inheritances and ideology of slavery gave rise to a visceral regime of violence. Continuity, not change, characterized the region. The Red River played a significant role in regional settlement and protecting this distorted racial dynamic. Racial bondage grounded the region’s economy and formed the heart of white identity and black exploitation. Here, the long arcs of mastery, racial conditioning, and ideological continuities were deeply entrenched even as the nation underwent profound changes from 1820 to 1880. In this thesis, the election of 1860, the Civil War, and emancipation are not viewed as fundamental breaks or compartmentalized epochs in southern history. By contrast, on plantations along the Red River, both racial mastery and power endured after emancipation. Based on extensive archival research, this thesis considers how politics, racial ideologies, and environmental and financial drivers impacted the nature of slavery, Confederate commitment, and the parameters of freedom in this region, and by extension, the nation. Widespread Reconstruction violence climaxed with the Colfax Massacre and firmly cemented white power, vigilantism, and racial dominance within the regional culture. Freedpeople were relegated to the margins as whites reasserted their control over Reconstruction. The violent and contested nature of freedom highlighted the adherence to the power structure and ideological inheritances of slavery. From bondage to freedom, the Red River region remained unreconstructed.
- Colin Woodard History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
2020, California History
California once housed over a dozen monuments, memorials, and place-names honoring the Confederacy, far more than any other state beyond the South. The list included schools and trees named for Robert E. Lee, mountaintops and highways for Jefferson Davis, and large memorials to Confederate soldiers in Hollywood and Orange County. Many of the monuments have been removed or renamed in the recent national reckoning with Confederate iconography. But for much of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, they stood as totems to the "Lost Cause" in the American West. Despite a vast literature on the origins, evolution, and enduring influence of the Lost Cause myth, little is known about how this ideology impacted the political culture and physical space of the American West. This article explores the commemorative landscape of California to explain why a free state, far beyond the major military theaters of the Civil War, gave rise to such a vibrant Confederate culture in the twentieth century. California chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) carried out much of this commemorative work. They emerged in California shortly after the organization's founding in Tennessee in 1894 and, over the course of a century, emblazoned the Western map with salutes to a slaveholding rebellion. In the process, the UDC and other Confederate organizations triggered a continental struggle over Civil War memory that continues to this day.
2005, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography