This dissertation considers the transformation of the United States Navy from a defensive-minded coastal defense navy during the first century of this nation's history into an offensive-mindset, risk taking navy in the very early stages of World War II. More precisely, since none of the most significant leaders of the U.S. Navy in World War II were commissioned prior to the Spanish-American War and none participated in any significant offensive operations in the First World War, this dissertation examines the premise that education, rather than experience in battle, accounts for that transformation. In evaluating this thesis this dissertation examines the five carrier battles of the Second World War to determine the extent to which the inter-war education of the major operational commanders translated into their decision processes, and the extent to which their interaction during their educational experiences transformed them from risk-adverse to risk-accepting in their operational concepts. Thus the title for my dissertation: Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way. Almost all of the top-level leaders of the U.S. Navy in World War II had two things in common. They invariably graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy from 1904 through 1912, and from the U.S. Naval War College from 1923 through 1937. Thus none had any experience in the Spanish-American War, and, due primarily to lack of many opportunities for offensive action in the First World War, few had any real experience of consequence in that war either. The question that obviously springs to mind, then, is how did these top naval leaders, brought up in the culture of a Navy that had been developed as a coastal defense Service during the first hundred years of its existence, develop a risk-taking, offensive attitude without any real opportunity to refine the skills necessary for offensive operations save in the classroom? That has become the central theme around which this dissertation has been structured. In the formative stages of their education at the Naval Academy something profoundly influenced the Midshipmen in inculcating a long-term commitment to naval service. Though several formative events surround their socialization in the military, one in particular seems to stand out. That would be the realization of the position of the United States as a player on the world stage emanating from President Theodore Roosevelt's ordering of the "Great White Fleet" around the world in a cruise that marked the emergence of the United States in global politics. That event solidified in the Annapolis Midshipmen the realization of the role the U.S. Navy would of necessity play as America emerged from a survival instinct for isolation from European and world involvements to active participation in world affairs. Moreover, fortified by the naval theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Officer candidates at Annapolis realized the geo-strategic implications of that participation. Of necessity, the U.S. Navy would spearhead U.S. global involvement, and by virtue of their eminent commissioning and potential for leadership positions in that Navy, their own destinies would be tied to that of United States global engagement. Several authors have speculated as to what accounts for the success of the U.S. Navy in World War II -- and particularly in the early stages of that war. Luck, naval war gaming at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, breaking of Japanese naval codes, and Divine Intervention have all been postulated as credible rationale for that success. Though all of these were important -- none can adequately account for the aggressive, risk-accepting decisions that the top U.S. Naval operational leaders were able to embrace. The institutionalized naval educational process stands out as enabling in their relationship to decisive decision and action and fundamental understanding among the leaders interacting in combat of what they could expect from those fighting with them. Foremost among these is the so-called "Green Hornet," -- so named because of the color of its binding, which provided an extremely concise and rote method for approaching and analyzing a problem and formulating a sound course of action appropriate to the situation at hand. Hence the actual title of the "Green Hornet," -- Sound Military Decision. The main thesis explored in this dissertation is that education rather than experience best accounts for U.S. Navy success in operations in World War II, and that Sound Military Decision can be appropriately established as the main element of that education which produced the success enjoyed. This thesis is evaluated by analyzing the naval decision process in the five carrier battles of the Second World War: The Battle of the Coral Sea; The Battle of Midway; The Battle of the Eastern Solomons; The Battle of Santa Cruz; and The Battle of the Philippine Sea. The institutions of higher education of the various Services today have deviated significantly and unacceptably from the successful approach they maintained during the inter-War period. Today's education for Officers is very descriptive with respect to theory, operational art, doctrine, technology, techniques and tactics, as opposed to a much more proscriptive and interactive (among students) approach employed between the World Wars. It is hoped that the research completed for this study might be a catalyst for consideration of a return to an approach to education that will more fully capture the essentials of confidence-building between and among students and promote unconventional thinking (in the current parlance, thinking "outside the box") that can refine approaches to warfare before rather than in the midst of battle. From a historical standpoint, this study is unlike any done previously in terms of both scope and methodology. Experienced editors of naval publications indicate that no one has previously published a book which covers all five carrier battles of the Second World War. All five carrier battles have been mentioned in books, but only briefly attendant to campaigns taking place on land. In terms of methodology, dissection of the naval decision process in battle in relation to specific educational objectives previously instilled in the naval leadership, this study is believed to be applicationally unique. Thus this study has been conducted in appreciation of the possibility of making a unique scholarly contribution to the field of Military History, and also Military Education. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History, in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: June 27, 2005. / Midway, Guadalcanal, Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, World War II, Aircraft Carriers / Includes bibliographical references. / James Pickett Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; William J. Tatum, Outside Committee Member; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member; Donald D. Horward, Committee Member; James Sickinger, Committee Member.

Florida's child welfare movement, a broad coalition of clubwomen, legislators, labor activists, and civic reformers, worked tirelessly to ensure that the right to a protected childhood was guaranteed to all of Florida's future citizens. These Progressive reformers, embracing new ideas about charity, the causes of poverty, and family life, turned to legislation to protect children when society could not, and their efforts culminated in the passage of Florida's comprehensive Child Labor Law in 1913. Florida's child labor campaign was part of both a regional and a national movement to eradicate the practice of manipulating children in industry and the street trades. Despite its inclusion in this broader movement, Florida's anti-child labor coalition was unique. Unlike their Southern neighbors, Floridians shied away from the rhetoric of "race suicide." Speaking on behalf of child labor legislation, they emphasized the social and moral disadvantages of child labor rather than its repercussions for race relations. This grew out of Florida's distinct pattern of economic development: Florida was among the last Southern states to industrialize, and that industrial sector did not include the textile mills notorious for child labor abuses across the South. Florida's child laborers primarily consisted of African Americans and Southern and Eastern European immigrants working in canneries along the Gulf Coast and Cuban and Italian immigrants laboring in the cigar industry of South Florida. Both of these industries employed a much smaller number of child workers than manufacturers in Florida's neighboring states. Florida's child labor legislation thus served two distinct purposes: it was both a preventative measure designed to protect Florida's children from the kinds of exploitation taking place in neighboring states and a means of pressuring those states to pass similar legislation. This thesis, an examination of the politics of Florida's child labor movement, highlights the ways in which the national child labor platform could be adapted to succeed in different states, while it reaffirms the diversity of both Progressive reform and Progressive reformers in the early twentieth-century South. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2009. / Date of Defense: June 25, 2009. / Southern Labor, Progressivism / Includes bibliographical references. / Elna Green, Professor Directing Thesis; Maxine Jones, Committee Member; Jennifer Koslow, Committee Member.

No description available.

In this dissertation I analyze the reception of Josephus in Ethiopia by way of the Hebrew Sefer Yosippon, its Latin sources, and its subsequent Arabic translations. I provide the first English translations and comparative analysis of selected passages from the Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic texts that transmit Josephus’s Jewish War. The first part of this project provides an introduction to four texts that play important roles in the transmission of Josephus’s Jewish War from first-century Rome to fourteenth-century Ethiopia: the fourth-century Latin De Excidio Hierosolymitano, the tenth-century Hebrew Sefer Yosippon, the twelfth-century Arabic Kitāb akhbār al-yahūd, and the fourteenth-century Ethiopic Zena Ayhud. After discussing the critical issues related to these texts, the second part of the dissertation presents a detailed comparison of the receptions of the famous story of Maria found Josephus’s account of the siege of Jerusalem. I pay close attention to the redactional changes made by the author of each text and note the ideological, cultural, rhetorical, and historical factors that lie behind the various editorial activities. Ultimately my research seeks to contribute to our understanding of the way in which non-western cultures receive the historiographical traditions of the classical period. In doing so, it will highlight the uniqueness of understudied literary and historiographical traditions that flourished in the medieval period. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 17, 2017. / Ethiopic Studies, Josephus, Reception, Sefer Yosippon / Includes bibliographical references. / David B. Levenson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Peter P. Garretson, University Representative; Matthew J. Goff, Committee Member; Nicole E. Kelley, Committee Member.

John McClellan was among the original founders of the Sioux Falls town site in Dakota Territory in the year 1857. During his lifetime, McClellan never spoke much about his family or his origins. After amassing considerable wealth selling land in the 1870s and 1880s, McClellan died in an elevator accident in 1899. His death left open the question of who would inherit his money and property. Three groups of claimants came before the local courts with the belief that John McClellan was, in some way, their relative. After eighteen years of litigation, none of the claimant parties could prove that the man who died in Sioux Falls was their relative by the name John McClellan. As a result, the courts escheated McClellans estate to the state of South Dakota. Given the evidence presented by the claimants, the question remains as to whether or not this was the correct decision. By utilizing the archived materials from the McClellan estate trial, the two Sioux Falls newspapers of the day, and various other documents from throughout the United States, it was possible to thoroughly reexamine the cases presented by all three of the trials claimant parties. The research material showed that each claimant had a relative named John McClellan, and all of their documented family stories seemed to fit the pattern of the Sioux Falls mans life. However, there were no solid means by which any of the three parties could prove that their relative was the same man who died in Sioux Falls in 1899. By recreating the story of John McClellans life from numerous archival materials, and by reexamining the evidence brought forward during the estate trial, it is clear that the state of South Dakota was correct in its ruling that John McClellan died intestate. Ultimately, each claimant was mistaken in the identity of the John McClellan in Sioux Falls. This is the first time the story of John McClellans life, as well as the estate trial following his death, has been told in detail.

This paper examines attitudes toward wilderness in the Chesapeake from 1650 to 1787. Traditionally scholars have argued that responses to wilderness during this time period were more ideological than pragmatic, but this paper argues the opposite, using as case studies four accounts by Chesapeake residents: The Discovery of New Brittaine (1650), by Edward Bland; The History and Present State of Virginia (1705), by Robert Beverley, The History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (1728), by William Byrd II; and Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), by Thomas Jefferson. Religious and intellectual views were not the primary influences of these responses; instead, settlers assessed wilderness according to the material value of its resources. This mode of evaluation perhaps stemmed from the pressures of a tobacco economy.

This project examines the restoration histories of beavers (Castor canadensis), moose (Alces alces americana), and wild canines (Canis spp.) within the Adirondack Highlands of northern New York. Devastated by the depredations of nineteenth century woodsmen, the populations of these large mammals rebounded during the twentieth century. Numbering fewer than ten in 1895, the Adirondacks remnant beaver population recolonized the regions lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers over the next twenty-five years, assisted by the presence of prime habitat, a state-enforced moratorium on beaver trapping, and timely reinforcements. Hunters shot the last of the Adirondacks moose near Raquette Lake in 1861. Moose began returning naturally to the region during the second half of the twentieth century, dispersing into the Adirondack Highlands from the resurgent woodlands of Vermont. More than four hundred now inhabit northern New York. While the Adirondacks wolves outlasted the regions moose, bounty-hunters had successfully eliminated canine predators by the early 1890s. But in the next four decades rapidly expanding coyote populations hybridized with wolves as they extended their range eastward around the Great Lakes. Capable of traveling through regions largely impermeable to wolves, coyote hybrids served as hardy vessels of wolf genetic material, interjecting wolf DNA from Canada back into the Adirondack Highlands. The entry and continued evolution of wolf-coyote hybrids within the Adirondack ecosystem thus represents a genetic, if not a physical, restoration. These unique restoration histories together illustrate the considerable resilience of the Adirondack ecosystem and its large mammal species, while providing valuable context for future rewilding efforts within the Northeastern woodlands.

This project examines the creation of Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana in 1910, and argues that the effort to create Glacier National Park included a class struggle between a small group of elite, upper-class proponents of the park (including George Bird Grinnell, Louis Hill, and the merchants of Kalispell, MT) and lower-class, local citizens who relied on the resources of the West Glacier area for subsistence. Traditionally, the historiography of the American conservation movement and national parks presents the creation of Glacier and other preserved areas in a very triumphant tone. Histories of national parks often read as exultant tales, where enlightened conservationists and prescient administrators saved pristine landscapes of sublime beauty from misuse and destruction at the hands of greedy exploiters. However, these types of histories present an incomplete narrative concerning the creation of Glacier and other national parks. While Glacier was, and continues to be, a picturesque area of the country, the lands that now exist as Glacier National Park were never truly pristine or uninhabited. Native Americans have lived, hunted, and enjoyed this area of present-day Montana for thousands of years. Beginning in the late 19th century, white settlers and homesteaders began moving into the Glacier area, in search of viable farmland and attracted by the vast natural resources available in the region. Both the Blackfeet Indians, who lived in the eastern areas of the present-day park, and white settlers in the western lands of Glacier, relied on the bountiful timber, water, and game for survival. The effort to create Glacier National Park in 1910, an endeavor led by a small group of wealthy, Eastern conservationists, challenged and eventually ended the subsistence practices of these local residents. The history of the creation of Glacier National Park provides an opportunity to examine the issue of class conflict as it relates to the conservation movement and offers a valuable historical context for evaluating modern public lands debates.

This thesis examines the founding and development of Pinesdale, Montana. Established by the Mormon fundamentalist leader Rulon Allred and his group in 1961, the town served as a haven for those practicing polygamy as well as an opportunity for group members to live a Mormon form of communalism known as the United Order. Compelled by the social upheaval and shifting cultural standards in the United States and instability in international affairs during the Cold War era, the fundamentalists considered the two practices to be essential to Christian perfection and preparation for a biblical Apocalypse and Millennium. But as a sect comprised of individuals who broke away from the Latter-day Saint Church, dissension continued to characterize the group, compromising communal efforts. The conflict between communalism and individualism in the community recalled an archetypical American struggle that can be traced to Puritan communities and seen repeated in the history of the American West. Like other groups in the West, Pinesdale wanted to preserve its autonomy, but when it sought self-government by incorporating as a city, it became dependent upon the American government. This pushed the community further into the mainstream, a tendency accelerated by the loss of an apocalyptic paradigm at the end of the Cold War. The story of Pinesdale here contributes to a growing scholarship of communalism in America and ethnic groups in the West that is more inclusive and less exceptional, and demonstrates how American the community had been in the context of the postwar period.

As a result of the Indian slave trade in the American Southwest, a group of detribalized Indians emerged in New Mexico during the Spanish colonial period. These Indians came to be known as the genízaros and, through the process scholars call ethnogenesis, developed their own identity by incorporating Hispano-Christian cultural practices while preserving their native ways. The genízaros were products of a widespread and lucrative trade in Plains Indian captives and, as such, they represented various tribes, including Apaches, Navajos, Comanches, Kiowas, Pawnees, Utes and Wichitas. The term genízaro emerged as a caste label during the Spanish colonial period and usually refers to members of these Plains Indian groups who were captured in the Indian wars and raiding expeditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in turn sold to New Mexicans as servants to be instructed in Hispanic customs and baptized as Christians. The genízaro experience in New Mexico was an ongoing practice of cultural reinvention in the interest of self-preservationa practice consistent with the cultural survival and legacy of other Native Americans in the region. As individuals, genízaros underwent social and cultural transformations upon leaving their native communities and entering Hispanic society through servitude. The extent to which these individual experiences produced a shared genízaro consciousness and legacy to survive and become a distinctly genízaro culture is the story that unfolds here.