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This thesis examines the diary of Ellen Wallace, a woman who lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, during the American Civil War. A diligent diarist, Ellen recorded not only the workings of her farm and household, but also her interactions with slaves, her worries about secession, and her shifting views on President Lincoln, emancipation and the war itself. At the start of the war, Ellen was a staunch Unionist. By war's end, she was a Confederate. This thesis will examine the factors that contributed to Ellen's changing political ideals and how she sought to reconcile her opposing beliefs. Ellen occupied a role rarely discussed in Civil War scholarship: not a member of the southern paternalist society, or a northern abolitionist. Ellen was a slave‐owning woman who supported the Union cause.

This thesis is a study of Hamilton P. Bee and his role in the American Civil War. Bee was first a Texas brigadier general, in charge of a state militia district, and then a Confederate brigadier general, in command of the Western Sub-District of Texas. His duties included administration, diplomacy, and combat. As commander of the area from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, Bee had to cope with Unionist sentiment, regulation of trade – especially the control and impressment of cotton -- border unrest, relations with Mexico and France, and Federal invasion of the Rio Grande border and occupation of the coast. He also took part in the Confederate action against Nathaniel Banks's Red River Campaign into Louisiana in 1864 and participated in the battles of Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Monett's Ferry. Bee proved to be a competent administrator and an excellent diplomat, but no combat general. He ran his sub-district and the cotton trade about as well as anyone could have, and through his arrangements with the cotton owners was the only one who arrived at a viable method whereby the government obtained the needed cotton. His extradition agreement with the Mexicans and his dealings with them kept the peace on the border. But he had no experience in combat, and, when the Union forces invaded Texas at Brownsville, he panicked and ran. His actions in the battles in Louisiana showed him to be courageous and level-headed in the heat of battle, but were still indicative of his inexperience. After Richard Taylor accused him of letting Banks escape and relieved him of duty, Bee could do little to regain public confidence even though he was not at fault. He spent the remainder of the conflict in Texas and at war's end fled to Mexico to escape Unionist wrath. Since Bee was involved in all the major issues of the Trans-Mississippi, a study of his career offers a key to understanding the problems and difficulties in Texas and the failure of the area to live up to its potential to aid the Confederate war effort.

The Industrial Revolution created sweeping cultural and technological changes in 19th century American society. During this era, nursing evolved from an unskilled to a skilled form of work. Changes in manufacturing, communication, and transportation occurred differentially in America, which favored the growth of different regional economies. Sectionalism erupted into the first modern war in American history. The Civil War created the conditions in which nursing, medicine, and the hospital formed organizational structures, roles, and boundaries that would later form the template for the modern healthcare system. The purpose of this research was to study how the context and culture of mid-nineteenth century American life affected the evolution of nursing during the Civil War, and the later affect it would have on skilled nursing knowledge, roles, education, and practice. The overall goal of the work is to contribute to the body of research on parallel historic processes that had an influence over the formation of early skilled nursing practice and the evolution of the nursing role. The effect of parallel processes associated with the Industrial Revolution and the advent of modern warfare on the development of skilled nursing were the particular focus of this research. A social history methodology was utilized to examine texts and discourse from the Civil War period. It was found that advances in transportation, communication, and manufacturing were both integral to the advent of modern war and modern nursing, and that the advent of these was highly integrated. It was also found that the industrialization of the hospital in response to wartime was highly influential on the development of skilled nursing programs later in the century. The role that nurses would take in the postbellum hospital, however, reflected the mass media image of nursing generated during the war rather than actual wartime practice.

In scholarship on the Civil War there is generally a lack of emphasis placed upon the significance of transatlantic diplomacy. However, much of the literature that is devoted to this subject does little to draw the importance of diplomatic and domestic histories together. This thesis uses British Foreign Office papers to discuss the role of Her majesty’s consuls, and the importance of resident persons of British nativity, especially within the Confederacy, during the war. It argues that the struggle between the Union and the new Confederacy affected diplomatic relations not only in the geo-political sense, but directly and personally through the fate of foreign individuals residing within America. Political theory and the semantics of ideology will be cross-examined against British, Confederate and Union government documents and correspondence in order to develop a deeper understanding of the flexibility and malleability of the concept of sovereignty, and its role in Civil War diplomacy.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, the United States (the Union) already had international diplomatic status, whereas the Confederate States of America wanted foreign recognition of its independence. The two governments sent agents and propagandists across the Atlantic, in particular to Great Britain to support their objectives. The Confederacy and the Union used various avenues, including rallies, talking with members of Parliament, and publications to convince the British that supporting the Confederacy was the correct action to take. The Union’s most well-known weapon emerged in January 1863: the Emancipation Proclamation. From the moment President Abraham Lincoln announced in September 1862 that he would emancipate slaves in the rebelling states, the nature of the American Civil War as viewed by the British changed. It could no longer be viewed simply as a war for southern independence, for it became more explicitly about the maintenance or abolition of slavery. For the British, slavery was a moral issue that they would never countenance. <br>The propagandists battled not just over slavery and its moral implications but also over supplies, and the propaganda battle climaxed over a material issue, that of the 1862 Florida and Alabama incidents when the Confederacy sneaked the ships out of Britain. The Union had tried desperately to convince the British government to stop the ships from sailing, but the British government allowed them to sail. Union outrage over the ships, subsequent military victories and the Emancipation Proclamation ultimately outweighed the efforts of Confederate diplomats and propagandists to gain open international recognition and support. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / History / MA / Thesis

This dissertation explores the efforts of northern soldiers’ relief organizations in bringing Union veterans home and aiding them during and after the Civil War. Part One focuses on the wartime work of the United States Sanitary Commission’s Special Relief Department in Washington, which dealt with a humanitarian crisis caused by neglect on the part of the U.S. Army as the city became choked with wounded, ill, or destitute discharged soldiers unable to get home. Employing antebellum missionary tactics, its workers relieved suffering where found but also forged vital and innovative bureaucratic mechanisms to move men homeward. By 1864, the Special Relief Department stood poised to spearhead a national system of soldiers’ homes. The Sanitary Commission leadership backed away from this challenge not out of a simple faith in American self-sufficiency, as they professed, or indifference, as many scholars suggest, but because they were daunted by mounting evidence of widespread poverty among soldiers and a societal problem beyond their reach. The withdrawal of the Sanitary Commission did not leave a vacuum as sometimes claimed. Part Two examines relief efforts in the Boston area. Previous scholarship has asserted that northern civilians turned their backs on suffering endured by discharged soldiers. On the contrary, a decentralized yet complex and multilayered network of private charities and state and local government programs saved lives and mitigated suffering. Some groups of veterans were indeed marginalized, due not to civilian antipathy towards veterans but to long-standing prejudices on the part of veterans and civilians alike against foreigners and the poor that were exacerbated by the Panic of 1873. As the Grand Army of the Republic joined the decentralized aid system, they cultivated the image of the noble discharged soldier to garner respect. Consequently, they played a major role in cementing the concept of the “unworthy” veteran in the public mind, stripping destitute veterans of the aura of the “discharged soldier.” Diverse methodologies sparked debate between aid workers who based their efforts on emerging social science and those religion-based antebellum models. This project explores this complex discourse and the varied strategies employed to assist the discharged soldier.

"A Battle of Wills" examines the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the American Civil War. By investigating the reactions to events such as battles and political happenings that occurred among the soldiers of the Confederacy's primary army we can see how the end of the Civil War unfolded for these men. The Army of Northern Virginia was the Confederacy's main hope for independence and the vehicle through which its identity flowed. Victory or defeat of that army would dictate the outcome of the Civil War. This thesis argues that by examining the fluctuations in morale, optimism, and hope among these soldiers through their letters and diaries, along with a proper historical context of when they were writing, can provide us a better understanding about the end of the Civil War. The ending was not predetermined or inevitable and this is evidenced in the writings of the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the war. / Master of Arts / “A Battle of Wills” examines the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the American Civil War. By investigating the reactions to events such as battles and political happenings that occurred among the soldiers of the Confederacy’s primary army we can see how the end of the Civil War unfolded for these men.

This dissertation examines American Civil War tourist spaces in order to describe how epideictic rhetoric has distinct spatial functions that affect the identity of tourists. Through an analysis of three Civil War spaces in Virginia--Lexington, Appomattox Court House, and the Museum of the Confederacy--I argue epideictic space is a locus of invention that has the performative power to create community, public memory, and a vision of the future through the movement of bodies in space. Through a consubstantial ethos established between space and audience, epideictic creates kairotic space and time by collapsing past, present, and future in order to create a narrative history with which the community can identify. This study traces rhetoric related to the Confederate flag, slavery, nationalism, and reconciliation through an analysis of the Civil War spaces in which these discourses are embodied. I suggest that creating a productive rhetoric of blame starts through connecting blame, such as remembering slavery, to the materiality of space and through creating narratives of responsibility that connect memory to a vision of the future. / Ph. D.