This work is a study of white Texans' attitudes toward their role in the federal Union and their right to secede from it during the antebellum period. The central question of the study is why did people so strongly Unionist in 1846 became so strongly secessionist by 1861. In tracing this significant shift in Texans' sentiment, the author especially emphasizes the racial attitudes of white Texans, their emotional defense of the institution of slavery, and their strong conviction that the Negroes, if emancipated, would destroy white society. Of special importance to this study is the relationship of Texans' racial attitudes to their attitudes toward the Union.

This investigation resulted from a pilot research paper prepared in conjunction with a graduate course on the Civil War. This study suggested that the Federal blockade of the Confederacy may not have contributed significantly to its defeat. Traditionally, historians had assumed that the Union's Anaconda Plan had effectively strangled the Confederacy. Recent studies which compared the statistics of ships captured to successful infractions of the blockade had somewhat revised these views. While accepting these revisionist findings as broadly valid, this investigation strove to determine specifically the effectiveness of Admiral Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron. Since the British Foreign Office maintained consulates in three blockaded southern ports and in many Caribbean ports through which blockade running was conducted, these consular records were vital for this study. Personal research in Great Britain's Public Record Office disclosed valuable consular reports pertaining to the effectiveness of the Federal blockade. American consular records, found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. provided excellent comparative reports from those same Gulf ports. Official Confederate reports, contained in the National Archives, various state archives and in the published Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies revealed valuable statistical data on foreign imports. Limited use was made of Spanish and French consular records written from ports involved in blockade running. Extensive use was made of Senate and House documents in determining Federal blockade policy during the war. The record of the Navy's enforcement of the blockade was found in The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. The contemporary reports of Union and Confederate governmental officials was found in James D. Richardson's respective works on The Messages and Papers, and in the published diaries of Gideon Welles and Gustavas Fox. Contemporary newspapers and first hand accounts by participants on both sides provided color and perspective. In evaluating the performance of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, a review of the international laws governing blockading was undertaken, emphasizing America's traditional posture regarding the blockades of other nations. Under Gideon Welles, the Federal navy became a powerful and efficient force, although the navy's enforcement of the blockade often resulted in serious diplomatic embarrassment, especially from maritime incidents occurring near the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Nearby Matamoros, Mexico virtually became an international trade mart for Confederate cotton and imports. However, much contraband trade was conducted through blockaded Gulf ports such as Galveston, Texas. It is concluded that the West Gulf Blockading Squadron performed only satisfactorily at best. This did not result so much from innate limitations as from outside factors. Among the latter were the open door at Matamoros, the Lincoln administration's diplomatic timerity and national policies that authorized a type of cotton trade with the south. Further, the better vessels were assigned land campaign priorities. The statistics of the cotton trade in this portion of the Confederacy show that cotton exports were significantly high. Most of these exports egressed via Matamoros, but a high percentage existed through blockaded Gulf ports. The fact that 10,000 bales of cotton left the heavily guarded port of Galveston in the last six months of the war indicates the inefficiency of the West Gulf Blockade. It appears that the West Gulf Blockade was effective enough to create scarcity but never effective enough to seriously interdict the flow of trade. That the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy was largely sustained by imports underscores the blockade's limited effectiveness.

In July 1936, units of the Spanish military, backed by a collection of domestic right-wing elements and by fascist governments elsewhere in Europe, staged a rebellion against the legally constituted national government that had been elected five months previously. The governing bloc, an ideologically broad coalition of liberal republicans, Marxists, and anarchists known as the People's Front, embodied the strategy formulated by Stalin and the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow to stem the advance of international fascism and mitigate the danger it posed to the Soviet Union and, by extension, the communist movement and the global radical working class it represented. During the destructive and bloody civil war that ensued, the Comintern sponsored recruitment of anti-fascist volunteer fighters from around the world. Before the war ended, nearly 3,000 Americans had surreptitiously traveled to Spain to defend its republican government. This thesis addresses the question of how these volunteers came to develop an allegiance to their global political and social movement strong enough to motivate them to risk death in what they perceived to be its defense against fascism. Drawing on the theoretical formulations of political scientists Benedict Anderson and David Malet, this thesis will demonstrate that over the course of a century, radical proletarian internationalism developed into a community of working-class revolutionaries, mostly within or allied to communist parties, whose shared ideological formulations and sociopolitical aspirations bound them together, irrespective of nationality. American members of that global community - whose numbers and influence had recently expanded in the context of the Great Depression and the People's Front strategy of liberal-left conciliation - had their perceptions and priorities about the Spanish crisis shaped by the American communist press. Examination and analysis of its coverage of the political, social, and military dimensions of the conflict there will demonstrate it to have been copious and persistent, imparting unmistakably to its readership the centrality of the Spanish people's struggle against fascism in the defense of the global working class, whose political and social survival was at stake. The thesis will argue, in the context of the contentious historiography of American communism, that although the messages conveyed to American proletarian internationalists via the communist press reflected policies and priorities determined in Moscow and designed to serve the interests of the Soviet state, American anti-fascists were for the most part well informed ideologues whose decisions reflected both the concerted influences of their movement's leadership as well as their own deep commitments to a more equitable world.

This thesis examines the homefront experience of middle class, white women living in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War. The experience of women in Winchester was 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 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 homefront 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.

Historic cartographic sources, historical accounts, and ethnographic and archaeological data are used help reconstruct past settlement patterns and land uses that together acted to shape the changing cultural landscape of the Virginia Commonwealth University Walter and Inger Rice for Environmental Studies (Rice Center). The Rice Center is located in Charles City County along the north bank of the James River between Richmond and Williamsburg. Presented is a baseline description of the present day condition of the Rice Center property. This is followed by a detailed account of the physiographic and ecological changes that occurred along the Lower James River since the end of the Pleistocene. A cultural context section summarizes the prehistory and history of the Rice Center setting from when humans are first known to have arrived approximately 11,500 years ago through present day. Land use and land use impacts are then analyzed within the chronological/cultural units detailed in this cultural context section. This information is synthesized and applied to a time line reconstruction of the Rice Center environment. While the naturally occurring changes to the Lower James River setting are detailed, emphasis of this study is on how human land use helped shape the Rice Center environment through time.

This paper crafts a narrative about how elite, white Richmond women experienced the fall and rebuilding of their city in April and May 1865. At first, the women feared the entrance of the occupying army because they believed the troops would treat them as enemies. However, the goal of the white occupiers was to restore order in the city. Even though they were initially saddened by the occupation, many women were surprised at the courtesy and respected afforded them by the Union troops. Black soldiers also made up the occupying army, and women struggled to submit to black authority. With occupation came the emancipation of slaves, and this paper also examines how women adjusted to new relationships with freed blacks. By the end of May, white women and white Union soldiers bonded over their attempt to control the black population, with some women and soldiers even beginning to socialize.

La présente étude porte sur l'expression de la mémoire féminine dans les fictions traitant de la guerre civile espagnole(1936-1939) et du franquisme. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux oeuvres publiées depuis la fin de la dictature (1975) jusqu’en 2010, en français (Agustin Gomez-Arcos et Mercedes Deambrosis) et en espagnol (Dulce Chacón, Carme Riera, Josefina Aldecoa, Jesús Ferrero, Marifé Santiago Bolaños et Ángeles Caso).Nous nous attachons d’abord à l’étude globale des représentations des expériences féminines de la guerre et de la répression. Dans l’écriture des violences subies comme dans celle des luttes et résistances, la double dimension politique et de genre émerge. L’analyse se resserre ensuite sur les représentations du traumatisme, entre manifestations pathologiques et tentatives de ritualisation. Nous montrons à cet égard comment le récit peut assumer une fonctionrituelle.La « poétique du traumatisme » mise au jour dans le corpus d’étude qualifie des réalisations formelles diverses, rassemblées en trois ensembles, correspondant à autant de lieux possibles d’ancrage du traumatisme : le rapport générationnel, le corps et la voix. Une attention spéciale est accordée à la figure de la victime. Des phénomènes tels que la répétition et la délinéarisation, apparaissant à divers niveaux du récit, éclairent le rapport que les fictions entretiennent avec le passé ainsi que leurs positions éthiques et politiques dans le présent de la démocratie / The current study explores the expression of women’s memory in literary works dealing with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Francoism. It focuses on the fictional narratives published between the end of the dictatorship (1975) and 2010, in French (Agustin Gomez-Arcos and Mercedes Deambrosis) and Spanish (Dulce Chacón Carme Riera, Josefina Aldecoa, Jesús Ferrero, Marifé Santiago Bolaños and Ángeles Caso).The thesis first conducts a global analysis on the representations of women’s experiences of war and repression. In thewriting of violence, struggle and resistance, the double political and gendered dimension emerges. The research focuses subsequently on the trauma representations, between pathological manifestations and ritual attempts, and shows how narrative can assume a ritual function.The « poetics of trauma » characterises various formal realisations, divided into three groups. Each of them embodies a possible space for the inscription of trauma : the generational link, the body and the voice. Special attention is given to the figure of the victim. Phenomena such as repetition and delinearisation, that appear at various levels, clarify the relationship that fictional narratives build with the past as well as their ethical and political positions in the democracy

This Bachelor’s thesis explores the relationship between borders, boundaries and migration, and their effect on identity making from a diasporic perspective. The study focuses on notions of national, regional, cultural, tribal and ethnic identity, and set in relation to the influence borders and boundarieshave on these processes. It investigates this topical realm within the specific conditions of the Angolan-Namibian border, following the developments from the era of colonization, independence struggle and decolonization and the transformation of Angola and Namibia into self-asserting and sovereign states, in which it focuses on the identity making of the Angolan diaspora residing in the border town of Rundu, northern Namibia. In doing so, it sets out to investigate the connection between macro variables and processes such as colonialism, the Cold War in Africa, and independence movements, to micro processes focusing on the living conditions and experiences of border residents. The study aims at a holistic approach drawing from theoretical developments within border and boundary studies stemming from disciplines such as political geography and anthropology, along with migration studies and social psychology. The results suggest that differing dominant conditions of the Angolan and Namibian states in terms of historical and political development, living conditions and the manifestation of the border and political assertion of the nation-states, has indeed helped to inform and construct different social categories and identities. In terms of the Angolan diaspora, the results indicate that migrants acquiring Namibian citizenships and thereby rights, did redefine their national identity to a greater extent than those denied documentation as their agency has become curtailed, leaving this group in an identity-limbo. The main contribution of this study is an investigation of what the border-migration-identity nexus means in terms of the Angolan diaspora and the Kavango region.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / David A. Graff / Cotton was the most important commodity in the economy of the industrialized Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, as vital then as petroleum is today. It was widely believed that a prolonged interruption of the cotton supply would lead not merely to a severe economic depression, but possibly to the collapse of Western Civilization. Three quarters of the world’s cotton supply came from the Southern states of the United States. When the American Civil War erupted and cotton supplies were cut off, the British Cotton Supply Association was faced with the difficult task of establishing cotton cultivation in other locations. In order for the effort to succeed, the British had to obtain and distribute millions of pounds of American cotton seeds. The United States government, the Illinois Central Railroad, and a number of organizations and individuals cooperated to obtain the necessary seeds that the British had to have. American farm equipment manufacturers assisted by designing, making, and distributing portable cotton gins and other implements needed by cotton growers overseas. U.S. consuls overseas sometimes assisted the Cotton Supply Association with seed and equipment distribution. This dissertation is about the implementation of the grand economic strategies of the United States and Great Britain. It is also about the people who implemented those strategies on the ground, people as diverse as Union agents who went into Confederate territory to procure cotton seeds, farmers in Illinois, British consuls who distributed seeds grown in Illinois to farmers in the Ottoman Empire, and English colonists who flocked to Fiji with high hopes of becoming cotton planters. It attempts to measure the impact of the cotton boom and subsequent bust that resulted from the American Civil War on societies around the world.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / A religious revival movement occurred in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The revivals began to appear with some regularity at the end of 1862 and continued until the end of the conflict. Union soldiers also widely adopted Protestant evangelical values during this time of religious enthusiasm. Two groups in particular played a pivotal, yet often unheralded, role in the substantial growth of religious fervor among northern soldiers during the Civil War: Union military chaplains and the United States Christian Commission. The thesis of this work is that Union chaplains and the United States Christian Commission developed a close and effective wartime partnership that significantly facilitated their ability to promote Protestant evangelical Christianity among Union soldiers during the Civil War. This wartime association substantially aided their efforts to advance their theological and moral views among the troops. Union chaplains and Commission representatives gained considerable influence over the army’s spiritual and moral environment during the war and were primarily responsible for initiating the widespread revivals that occurred within the Union Army. Although they began the conflict as two distinct organizations, Union chaplains and the Christian Commission collaborated with increasing frequency as the war progressed. Their affiliation brought a number of advantages to each organization and significantly increased their ability to promote their evangelical beliefs with the soldiers. This dissertation contributes to studies on religion and the Civil War by analyzing the religious leadership provided by Union chaplains and the Christian Commission and explains how they shaped the Union Army’s religious environment during the war.