Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / As the United States descended into war in 1861, the religious leaders of the nation were among the foremost advocates and recruiters for both the Confederate and Union forces. They exercised enormous influence over the laity, and used their sermons and periodicals to justify, promote, and condone the brutal fratricide. Although many historians have focused on the promoters of war, they have almost completely ignored the Disciples of Christ, a loosely organized religious movement based on anti-sectarianism and primitive Christianity, who used their pulpits and periodicals as a platform for peace. This study attempts to merge the remarkable story of the Disciples peace message into a narrative of the Civil War. Their plea for nonviolence was not an isolated event, but a component of a committed, biblically-based response to the outbreak of war from many of the most prominent leaders of the movement. Immersed in the patriotic calls for war, their stance was extremely unpopular and even viewed as traitorous in their communities and congregations. This study adds to the current Disciples historiography, which states that the issue of slavery and the Civil War divided the movement North and South, by arguing that the peace message professed by its major leaders divided the movement also within the sections. In fact, by the outbreak of war, the visceral debates that occurred among the Disciples leadership did not center on the issue of slavery, constitutionality of secession, or even which belligerent was in the right. The chief point of contention was whether a Christian, based on New Testament precepts, could participate in war. The nonviolent leaders thought that their peace message derived from the New Testament would be the one thing that would preserve unity in the brethren. In reality, it became the primary source of division.

This dissertation examines how progressive era social scientists thought about African American workers and their place in the nation’s industrial past, present, and future.Progressives across the color line drew on a common discourse of industrial evolution that linked racial development with labor fitness. Evolutionary science merged with scientific management to create new taxonomies of racial labor fitness. I chart this process from turn of the century actuarial science which defined African Americans as a dying race, to wartime mental and physical testing that acknowledged the Negro as a vital -albeit inferior- part of the nation’s industrial workforce. During this period, African Americans struggled to prove their worth on the shop-floor, the battlefield, and the academy. This thesis contends that the modern Negro type- African Americans as objects of social scientific inquiry- which came of age in the post-World War Two era, was born in the draft boards, factories, trenches, hospitals, and university classrooms of the Progressive Era.

Les pratiques reliées à l'alimentation des esclaves de la Louisiane française nous renseignent sur les conflits et les solidarités entre les groupes sociaux, et à l'intérieur de ces groupes dans une société de frontière esclavagiste. Le premier chapitre traite des deux stratégies principales des Blancs par rapport à l'alimentation des esclaves : préserver leurs esclaves et limiter leur rôle dans l'économie. Le deuxième chapitre traite du rôle des esclaves dans l'économie alimentaire comme travailleurs spécialisés et comme producteurs et distributeurs de ressources alimentaires; ces rôles leur permettent d'obtenir davantage d'autonomie dans la société coloniale. Les différentes stratégies des esclaves pour obtenir davantage d'autonomie sont à l'origine de conflits et de solidarité au sein de la population servile. / By studying practices related to slave food in French Louisiana, we learn more about solidarities and conflicts between social groups and within these groups in a slave frontier society. The first chapter is about two main strategies of whites related to slave food: to preserve the slave population and to control their participation in the economy. The second chapter is about the roles of slaves in the food economy, as specialized workers and as producers and distributors of food; these roles enable them to gain more autonomy within the colonial society. The different strategies of slaves in the area of food are at the heart of conflicts and of solidarity between them.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Derek S. Hoff / In the years immediately after World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that he did not want to run for office. However, the general, persuaded by the efforts of Citizens for Eisenhower groups, reversed his decision before the 1952 election. The new politician did not take an easy path to the White House, however, as Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the leading conservative Republican, fought to represent the GOP. Eisenhower aligned with the moderate faction, the party’s traditional source of power, and joined the Republicans during the early stages of a civil war in the party. From the time Eisenhower received the presidential nomination in 1952 until his death in 1969, he committed himself to leading the GOP and establishing moderate, not conservative, Republicanism as the party’s ideology. However, this aspect of Eisenhower’s political career has largely been ignored by historians. The analyses of Eisenhower that focus on his presidency, rather than his military career, concentrate on policy decisions, omitting the president’s role as party leader during a transformative era. This oversight not only skews Eisenhower’s legacy but also renders analyses of the conservative revolution in American politics incomplete. Before conservative Senator Barry Goldwater secured the Republican nomination in 1964, a very important moment that augured —but did not guarantee — the future triumph of the conservative wing, Eisenhower worked to stop his campaign. Had Eisenhower succeeded, the GOP and American politics could have followed a much different trajectory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Utilizing documents from throughout Eisenhower’s political career, this study argues that although Eisenhower failed to halt conservatism, he influenced the course of the GOP. During the 1950s and 1960s, Eisenhower helped revitalize the party, improved the party’s organization, and contributed to conservatism’s delayed ascendancy. Furthermore, Eisenhower merits recognition as a party leader who worked tirelessly on behalf of moderate Republicanism, not just as a man with impressive coattails for Republicans to cling to during elections.

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 / Donald J. Mrozek / This study analyzes the effect of the Army Air Forces’ wartime experience on the selection and training of aviation cadets and the steps taken by the Army Air Forces to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities. Over the course of the war, the US Army Air Forces suffered over 54,000 accidents in the continental United States. These accidents accounted for over 15,000 fatalities, the equivalent of a World War Two infantry division. As a result of this wartime experience the Army Air Forces began instituting and enforcing stricter safety measures and emphasizing safety in all phases of training. By the end of the war, the Army Air Forces had transitioned from an organization with loose standards for selection, training, and safety to one with formal procedures for all three. In the process, the Army Air Forces established a new culture of professionalism for the US Air Force.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / After the Second World War, the leaders of the Department of the Army (DA) worked to inform those in the service that they had a duty to help the American people understand what the Army was doing to provide security for the nation. Their goal was for the public to have, at a minimum, the same amount of understanding of the Army as it had during World War II. To achieve this goal they believed that the officer corps had to be convinced that explaining to the public what the service was doing was in the best interest of the Army. The effort of the leaders to convince the officer corps was conducted by two primary means. First, the leaders made many public statements announcing that the Army would continue to inform the American people. Second, they added a requirement for those setting the curricula at the senior two schools of the service to provide instruction about the program that the Army had, which had three sub-programs, to update the American public. Between AY 1947 and 1989, the leaders continued to talk about the importance of informing the public. However, those approving the curricula at the two Colleges of the Army placed decreasing emphasis on educating students about what public affairs was and how to conduct it. This assertion is based on three primary findings. First, there is a clear decrease in the number of hours allocated to teaching about public affairs. Second, over the course of this period students were provided with fewer chances to apply what they were learning. Third, the coverage of the instruction went from covering at least two of the components of the Army’s program to at best only one. In the end a gap is clearly visible between what the leaders of the Army were saying regarding the importance of educating officers about public affairs and what was included in the curricula of these two schools: deeds did not match words.

Master of Arts / Department of History / James E. Sherow / Whether as a “progressive” or an anti-New Dealer, Casement was always primarily concerned with creating a stable business climate for the beef industry––even though his ideas on methodology changed. Beginning in the 1920s, he argued for the preservation of republican virtue through the language of eugenics. Eugenics may be broadly defined as “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding.” During the Progressive era, Casement primarily supported structural reforms such as conservation and federal regulation of industry. After WWI he became increasingly concerned with the moral direction of the country and believed that stricter individual responsibility—encouraged by limited government—along with eugenic-inspired reforms were necessary to restore the country’s republican virtue. In Casement’s view, the New Deal inaugurated a governmental takeover of private property through unfair taxes for wealth redistribution and production controls that sapped individual initiative, thereby weakening an already weakened populace—especially in the agricultural sector.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Charles W. Sanders / Americans during the first half of the nineteenth-century were obsessed with expansion. God had bestowed upon them an innate superiority in nearly all things. American settlers were culturally, economically, racially and politically superior to all others. But how accurate are such statements? Did a majority of Americans support such declarations? The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Americans wrote and read about expansion. Doing so reveals that for every citizen extolling the unique greatness of Americans, one questioned such an assumption. For every American insisting that the nation must expand to the Pacific coast to be successful there was one who disdained expansion and sought to industrialize what territory the nation already possessed. Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century were of many minds about expansion. The destiny of the United States was anything but manifest. Using a wealth of nineteenth century newspapers this dissertation demonstrates that the concept of Manifest Destiny was far less popular than previously imagined. Newspapers were the primary source of information and their contents endlessly debated. Editors from around the country expressed their own views and eagerly published pertinent letters to the editor that further detailed how Americans perceived expansion. While many people have often read John O’Sullivan’s rousing words he was not necessarily indicative of American sentiment. For every article espousing the importance of acquiring Florida to deny it to the British there was one deriding the notion because they felt Florida to be nothing but a worthless swamp filled with hostile Indians. American justification and opposition to territorial expansion followed no grand strategy. Instead, its most fascinating characteristic was its dynamic nature. In the Southwest expansionist proponents argued that annexation would liberate the land from Papist masters, while opponents questioned the morality of such a conquest. Encouraging or discouraging territorial expansion could take on innumerable variations and it is this flexible rhetoric that the dissertation focuses upon. The debate that raged in the public forum over expansion was both heated and fascinating. The voices of both pro and anti-expansionists were crucial to the development of antebellum America.

The United States emerged from the Second World War determined to play a leading role in the maintenance of international order. Increasing levels of tension between the United States and the forces of communism after 1945, however, slowly forced a redefinition of what might be more distinctly termed America's "global" responsibilities, such that by 1961 John F. Kennedy declared that the United States would "pay any price. . .in order to assure the survival and success of liberty." An identifiable Cold War consensus took shape based on the assumption that it was America's responsibility to lead, protect, and defend, the "free-world." Since America was effectively waging a battle to ensure the successful spread of its own values, the Cold War consensus also served to severely limit debate—dissent essentially implied disloyalty. By the mid-1960s, however, the Cold War consensus began to crack and a debate over American foreign policy began to emerge. That debate is the focus of this dissertation, which looks at the opposition to Cold War policies which emerged in the Senate, most notably among the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee --many of whom had once played a role in developing the very foreign policies they now protested. The war in Vietnam provided the focal point for much of the dissent, but the foreign aid program also became heavily criticized, as did America's NATO policy, particularly the size of the American military presence in Europe. More important, however, Senate dissenters came to question the United States' very position as the principle defender of the free world. They did not dispute the idea that America had a significant role to play in the global arena, but they did not believe that role should consist of being the world's policeman, the self-appointed arbiter of other’s affairs, and the keeper of the status quo. Because of their views, the so-called dissenters were labelled as "neo-isolationists." They saw themselves the true "internationalists," however, believing that the Cold War had led to confusion between internationalism and indiscriminate global involvement.