Search

Although common schooling began to take off in the northern United States around the 1830s, it did not gain great momentum in the South until the postbellum period. Spanning this lengthy Common School era, this article explores the role white supremacy played in both the development and the impediment of schooling for the masses in the southern United States. Through analysis of archival and other primary and secondary data sources, the ways in which white supremacist ideology and actions shape-shifted throughout this time in history are mapped and expounded upon. This includes the rhetorical strategies and actions carried out by southern school reformers and opponents within their speeches, editorials, sermons, and addresses to maintain or amplify white power. Prominent Common School figures who held residency within the former Confederate States of America such as William Henry Ruffner and J.L.M. Curry, as well as lesser-known educational advocates and opponents of education are highlighted. This article begins with some of the arguments that were made both for and against education of slaves, for or against common schooling of white children, and proceeds into many of the large-scale schooling efforts of the postbellum period, all analyzed through the lens of white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Micheal O'Brien's works on the 19th century southern intellectual history. It discusses his books "Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860" and "Henry Adams and the Southern Question". Topics include O'Brien's approach to historical intellectual studies and his views on slavery, economy, education and politics in Southern states.

The author reflects on her personal experience of working with historian Micheal O'Brien and discusses O'Brien's book "An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-67". She discusses his works on the 19th century southern intellectual history, O'Brien's approach to historical intellectual studies and his consideration of readers in the making of the text.

The article profiles life and works of historian Michael O' Brien, discussing his focus on antebellum Southern states. It discusses his works including books "The Idea of the American South, 1920-1941" and "Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860" and his cosmopolitan mode toward historical inquiry.

The article focuses on social conditions of middle class or poor white people in 19th century Southern society, discussing Georgia governor George W. Towns' proclamation for arrest of William H. Sterling for the murder of Jonathan Glanton in Upson County in 1848. Topics include Frank L. Owsley's study "Plain Folk of the Old South", historian F. N. Boney's works on Georgia's poor whites and Daniel Hundley's study "Social Relations in our Southern States".

The article discusses various aspects of U.S. Civil War documents and archives containing information about the former Confederate States of America (Confederate) Army as of 2016, and it mentions the Southern Historical Society organization's efforts to collect and preserve historical documents which explain the Confederate's version of the war. "The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies" documents compilation and sectional reconciliation are assessed.

The article discusses the depiction of Spartan women as the symbol of ideal female citizenship in the U.S. North and South prior to the U.S. Civil War as reflected in the publication of several 19th century essays by U.S. writers and educators. The article also discusses the significance of classical education in the curriculum of U.S. schools, particularly in Southern states, the education of females in the U.S., and gender roles in the U.S. during the 19th century.

Biographies are presented on the 19th century U.S. Southern photographers of Mobile, Alabama Chauncey Barnes and Harry E. Wallace, which includes information on their careers, their photographic works and daguerreotypes. An overview of their photography studios, including in regard to the role Barnes' slaves played in taking care of his studio, is provided.

The article discusses a daguerreotype portrait of Richmond, Virginia, St. Paul's Episcopal Church then-pastor Rev. Dr. Charles Frederick Ernest Minnigerode that appeared on the U.S. television network Public Broadcasting Service program "Antiques Roadshow." According to the article, the portrait was taken by photographer William Abbott Pratt. The article discusses early photography in Richmond and the U.S. South, Pratt's career in Washington, D.C., prior to his removal to Richmond, and the significance of the relationship between Minnigerode and law professor Nathaniel Beverley Tucker.

The article presents a speech by University of Delaware professor of history Peter Kolchin, delivered on November 14, 2014, at a meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta, Georgia, in which he discussed the emancipation of slaves in U.S. southern states during the 19th century as compared to the emancipation of slaves throughout the world, particularly to the emancipation of Russian serfs. He discussed the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Civil War.

An essay is presented concerning the work of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, author, orator, and poet Alexander Beaufort Meek, particularly regarding the history of the U.S. southwestern frontier and his influence upon 19th century American literature. It examines Meek's career as an orator, politician, and poet, the influence of the frontier on his writing and public life, and his conception of a southern literary tradition based upon intellectualism and natural aesthetic appreciation. It also discusses several of Meek's works including "The Red Eagle: A Poem of the South."

The article looks at pro-slavery sentiments in Brazoria County, Texas, from the mid-19th-century to the end of the U.S. Civil War. Particular focus is given to evidence drawn from local newspapers. According to the author, resident slaveholders made arguments similar to those in other Southern states, including religious, economic, and racist defenses of slavery and arguments about legality and property rights. It is suggested that these arguments were directed at fellow slaveholders.

Frederick Law Olmsted is widely admired by historians of the nineteenth-century United States and generally regarded as the single most important commentator upon slavery and the South. He toured the southern states in the early 1850s and published a series of reports in the New York Daily Times and the New York Daily Tribune. These articles were subsequently revised and compiled into three books, but it was their publication as a single, edited volume, The Cotton Kingdom (1861), which had the greatest impact. This article revisits perhaps the central insight provided by Olmsted: his criticism of the southern work ethic and the South's reluctance "to work industriously and steadily." It does so within the context of current scholarly interpretations of capitalism in the late antebellum South, where most scholars have taken issue with Olmsted's view, presenting instead a dynamic and hard-working southern workforce. Why did Olmsted take such an overly critical view of the southern work ethic? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the residents of U.S. Southern States' efforts to prevent railroad trains from passing through their towns in the later 19th century so as to prevent the yellow fever epidemic from spreading there. An overview of Southern cities' municipal governments' instituting of quarantines, including in Jacksonville, Florida, is provided. The role that yellow fever played in the Southern States' economic conditions, including the impact of quarantines on railroad travel, is discussed.

The history of postal service during the Civil War is surprisingly underdeveloped, and little is known about the Confederate Post Office Department. It labored under a strict mandate to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency, to which all other service rationales were subordinate. This policy, in conjunction with a multitude of war-related privations, hampered the Department's ability to foster the substantive or reliable circulation of information, complicating the process of democratic nation-building in which postal services have historically played an important role. After examining reports of the Confederate Postmaster General, coverage of postal operations in Southern newspapers, scholarship in state and local historical publications, and the study of philately, the implications of the Confederacy's fixation on the economic performance of its postal service might well serve as a cautionary tale as the practices of modern media policymaking evolve along similar lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With all the new information uncovered about the growth of baseball prior to the establishment of the National Association in 1871, comparatively little attention has been paid to the spread of the game in the Southern United States. Using newspaper articles and army records, the author presents the early history of Southern baseball, a history that in most respects parallels the more publicized growth of baseball in the North. Southern baseball, the author contends, should not be viewed as a footnote to Northern baseball, mentionable only when Northern teams played there, but rather as a regional adoption of the game, as important as the baseball played during this era in the Midwest or West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of the legal system by newly freed slaves after the American Civil War. The author points out that during the beginning of the Reconstruction period, former slaves made prompt use of the legal system in gaining rights and freedoms. The author points out that many other rural areas avoid the capricious of courts in favor of alternate "conflict resolution." She explores the variety of data in both the Antebellum South, as well as post Civil War to attempt to explain the reasons behind such a phenomena.

Explores the underground economy of the rural South through an investigation of slaves' unlawful trade with poor whites in the antebellum Carolinas. Important place the poor whites occupied within slaves' underground trading networks; Argument that while anxious slaveholders found such economic cooperation inimical to a society stratified on the basis of race, the calculated, rational nature of slave-poor white exchange blunted its potentially subversive character; Analysis of court records, census returns, slave narratives, and other sources; Several factors that helped determine the likelihood of illicit slave-poor white commerce.

Explores the links among hard, steady labor in field and household, evangelical faith, and a belief in a simple way of life joined to a gospel of work in antebellum South. Centrality of work and its importance for slaves and plain-folk families in southern U.S.; Debate over the spirit of capitalism and the nexus of capitalism and religion generated by Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"; Protestant ethic's emphasis on the moral obligation to work to glorify God and the methodical use of every God-given moment of time; Intensity of religiosity in early New England and the concept of work as God's calling; Doctrine of allurement and southerners' penchant for leisure and idleness; Existence of flawed work ethics; Honorable work and respect for independence; Prescription for a happy life from years of hard labor; Labor-saving devices; Role of women in the success of yeoman establishments.

Evaluates the lives of slaves and non-planter whites by historians in the antebellum South of the United States, while highlighting the story of a character called Snell, on relations between common and planter white men in 1821. Excerpts from the newspaper story; Speculation about Snell's background; Details on the attitudes of common whites in Tallahassee in 1842.

Educated Southerners, especially members of the planter class, combined classicism with romanticism to create a self-definition that distinguished them from Northerners and validated their social and economic institutions. Continuation of this world-view depended upon maintaining a distinctly Southern education. Resentment at perceived subversive Northern influence in Southern schools spawned a literary nationalism which made text-books emblematic of Southern distinctiveness and independence. The Confederate movement to produce Southern classical textbooks aimed primarily at the secondary level failed, despite the efforts of William Bingham and others. Defeat did not end Southern literary aspirations and the movement revived soon after the Civil War. The major contribution of the Southern textbook movement was the encouragement of scholarly activity among Southern classicists who contributed to the rise of American classical scholarship in the late-nineteenth century. Prominent among these was ex-Confederate Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, who postponed higher pursuits in Greek study in order to produce elementary Latin texts for Southern schools.

An obituary is presented for Dickson Davies Bruce Jr., an American historian who specialized in the 19th-century South.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to Sylvia L. Hilton's review of the book "Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803," by David E Narrett which appeared in the February 2016 issue.