<p> The following examines the complexities of slavery in Maryland in the antebellum period and argues that as a result of Maryland's geographic location as a border between North and South, Maryland slaveholders desperately clung to the institution and attempted to shape their world into a slave society, regardless of the fact that slavery had long been dying out as an economic necessity. In the process, they called for federal protection of fugitive slave property, subscribed to a strict code of white southern conduct, and attempted to weed out any threat to slavery&mdash; mainly the state's large free black population. This concept is intended to argue against the idea that Maryland was a middling ground where ties to slavery were somehow weak or insignificant as a result of economic forces. As the Civil War approached, Maryland slaveholders in fact hardened the institution at the expense of Maryland's African American population.</p>

<p> The year 1968 marked the turning point from the nonviolent direct action characterized by Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement to the militant violence of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) and other clandestine organizations in America. Disillusionment with the US political system, coupled with the increased police brutality and repression against people of color and anti-war demonstrators, cemented the need for new, militant organizing tactics for many in the New Left. Numerous white, middle-class individuals turned toward militant action and found opportunities to challenge their white privilege and fight against imperialism in clandestine organizations such as the WUO, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and New World Liberation Front (NWLF). Using the increase in armed actions against the state by clandestine organizations as its focus, this thesis utilizes a cultural history approach to illuminate the convergences of race, class, and gender in constructing an authentic and legitimate revolutionary identity for white, middle-class women, exposing the meaning of violence for revolutionary radicals. This thesis argues that, due to the social stigma attached to the performance of violence by white women of good upbringing, these women in clandestine organizations borrowed from marginalized groups they deemed authentic revolutionaries, established a usable past to familiarize themselves with revolutionary activism and armed struggle, and relied heavily on Third World models of revolutionary women. </p><p>

<p> For decades prior to National Prohibition, the &ldquo;liquor question&rdquo; received attention from various temperance, prohibition, and liquor interest groups. Between 1880 and 1920, these groups gained public interest in their own way. The liquor interests defended their industries against politicians, religious leaders, and social reformers, but ultimately failed. While current historical scholarship links the different liquor industries together, the beer industry constantly worked to distinguish itself from other alcoholic beverages. </p><p> To counter threats from anti-alcohol groups, beer industry advocates presented their drink as a wholesome, pure, socially and culturally rich, and economically significant beverage that stood apart from other alcoholic beverages, especially distilled spirits. Alongside these responses, breweries industrialized, reflecting scientific and technological innovations that allowed for modern production, storage, and distribution methods. </p><p> Despite popularity and economic successes, the beer industry could not survive the anti-saloon campaigns, the changing nature of the American economy and taxation, political ambitions of the anti-liquor interests, and the influence of the First World War, which brought with it anti-German sentiments. This thesis will uncover the story of the American beer industry&rsquo;s attempt to adjust to several threats facing it and how beer was ultimately condemned to the same fate as wine and spirits when National Prohibition went into effect. </p><p>

<p> The Vermont state constitution was the most revolutionary and democratic plan of government established in America during the late eighteenth century. It abolished adult slavery, eliminated property qualifications for holding office, and established universal male suffrage. It invested broad power in a unicameral legislature, through which citizens might directly express their will through their elected representatives. It created a weak executive with limited power to veto legislation. It mandated annual elections for all state offices, by which the people might frequently accept, or reject, their leaders. It thus established a participatory democracy in which ordinary citizens enjoyed broad access to power. It was, in the words of Ethan Allen, government based on &ldquo;true principles of liberty and natural right.&rdquo; </p><p> Over the course of the revolutionary period, furthermore, the people of Vermont defended their democratic system against repeated attempts to weaken it. The constitution included a mechanism by which, every seven years, a Council of Censors would be elected which had the power to propose revisions to the plan of government. Constitutional conventions met in 1786 and 1793 to consider these recommendations, and though the delegates accepted a number of minor revisions, they rejected innovations that would have significantly altered the state&rsquo;s system of participatory democracy. In this sense, the experience of Vermont during this period differed from that of other states, which had by the end of this period established systems that concentrated power in the hands of a limited number of citizens. </p><p> The people of Vermont established this form of government for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most important factor was that Vermont was a rural, agrarian and backcountry region, populated by small subsistence farmers with a common set of interests and grievances. Here, and elsewhere across America during this period, small farmers often clashed with political and economic elites over issues of taxation and the conditions of land ownership. When confronted with policies they perceived to be unjust, they often rose up to defend their interests. However, unlike other rebellions during this period, the New Hampshire Grants insurgency succeeded, and led to the establishment of an independent state. Moreover, the grievances that motivated these backcountry insurgents included political dimensions. Subsistence farmers demanded a greater voice in the governments that had promulgated policies they perceived to be unjust. Living under more democratic forms of government, they realized, would enable them to enact laws that promoted their interests. </p><p> This study informs our understanding of the American Revolution in a number of ways. For one, events in Vermont demonstrate the importance of internal divisions and conflict in the Revolution. Rural farmers challenged the land-owning and mercantile elite of New York, and won. In the process, they created the most revolutionary and democratic constitution in America. Vermont thus went further than any other state in fulfilling the promise of the Revolution. Ironically, however, this very achievement illustrates the limits of the Revolution. In other states, common people continued to face significant restrictions on their access to power. Universal suffrage for white males, for example, was not achieved until the mid-nineteenth century, and slavery was not abolished until 1865. Perhaps, then, the Revolution is best understood not as a watershed event that radically changed American society, but rather as one episode in a much longer continuum of change. </p><p> This study also seeks to change Vermont&rsquo;s place in the historiography of the Revolution. As an independent republic, unrecognized by any outside power, historians often treat it as an anomaly. As a result, it is often neglected. Vermont, however, deserves to be taken seriously. Though it was not formally recognized by other states, its government exercised full authority and sovereignty within its borders. Its constitution, furthermore, embodied the purest expression of radical republican ideals in America at the time. It was a singular achievement of the American Revolution. Rather than be relegated to the shadows, therefore, Vermont deserves to be at the forefront of the discussion. By doing so we may more clearly understand the nature of the American Revolution itself, with all its achievements, limitations, and contradictions.</p><p>

<p> Historic house museums (HHMs) are contradictory spaces, private places made public. They (often) combine the real with the reproduction. Drawing from object reverence, taxonomy, and tableaux over a century and a half of practice, the American HHM arrives in the present as a Frankenstein's monster of nostalgia. </p><p> Chamounix Mansion has been a youth hostel since 1964. It has also been a historic house museum, though when it became one and when&mdash;if&mdash;it ever stopped being one is an open question. Chamounix is a space where the past, present, and future all share space, as guests move through historic spaces, have conversations about anything or nothing at all, and plan their next day, their next destination, their next major life move. It is a place that seems fertile for meaning-making. It also provides a fascinating case study of what HHMs have been and what they might become. </p><p> The Friends of Chamounix Mansion employed the methods of other HHMs as it tried to achieve recognition as an HHM in the 1960s, but by the 1980s, they began claiming the hostel&rsquo;s usage as another form of authenticity. </p><p> As HHMs face a variety of challenges today, and seek to make meaning with visitors and neighbors alike, the example of Chamounix Mansion offers a case study of how embracing usage might offer new directions for meaning-making.</p><p>

<p>This thesis traces the evolution of Holocaust commemoration and memorialization in New Orleans, Louisiana. It situates Holocaust commemoration in New Orleans into a national context and explains that Holocaust remembrance in the early decades after WWII was largely regulated to the small survivor community that developed in the city. It locates the political career of white supremacist and Holocaust denier David Duke in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a defining catalyst for a shift in Holocaust remembrance in the city. It shows that while Holocaust commemoration was present in the city pre-Duke, it was not as prevalent after Duke?s successful election to the House of Representatives in 1989. The New Orleans Jewish community not only used Holocaust commemoration as a response to Duke?s racist and anti-Semitic ideology, but also expanded commemoration to include pedagogical initiatives and memorialization. This thesis further explores these efforts to explain that Holocaust commemoration and memorialization was used to both remember the Holocaust and address larger issues of racism and intolerance in order to incorporate a broader demographic into commemorative events. It aims to illuminate Jewish commemorative culture in New Orleans that has not been fully investigated, evaluate Holocaust memorialization in New Orleans and situate it in a broader national context in order to explore its unique aspects, and finally, it seeks to add to our understanding of how collective memory develops amongst diverse groups.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Vermonters crafted a shared regional identity rooted in the physical geography of the state. In particular, Vermonters located the source of all that they found to be unique about themselves in the state's mountainous topography. Vermonters borrowed universal ideas about environmental determinism and applied them to the specific geography of the state in a way that cast the Vermont environment as exceptional, the virtues associated with the local topography quite specific to place. The regional virtues born of the local environment included a fierce independence (exemplified by the history of early Vermont); a love of liberty; solid common sense; and a strong bond to family and community. By stressing what was unique about place, Vermonters hoped to remedy what they viewed as the misdirected set of values increasingly guiding the daily lives of their neighbors and children. Vermonters invested in the idea of place particularly wanted to redirect attention back toward the immediacy of the home environment and away from the lure of other regions, in particular new farming lands opening to the West. In a collective effort to stem that tide of out-migration, Vermonters defined the regional environment as home and found domestic virtues in the natural world surrounding them. It was hoped that promoting the idea of environmental domesticity would instill an emotional attachment to place among those who might otherwise be tempted by the promise of starting over in an easier landscape. Environmental domesticity offered a softened image of the region as a place where community mutuality trumped individual ambition and where finding happiness in a life that honored the limitations of the environment was encouraged. That definition of place, like any such definition, carried the most weight when framed in opposition to what and to where it was not. Without explicitly calling for environmental conservation of the natural spaces of home, regionalists nonetheless hoped that strengthening emotional as well as physical bonds to the local environment would ensure not only the survival of the community as they imagined it, but also the continued viability of the lands that bound the community physically in place. As ideally imagined, the Vermont community was a landscape of vibrancy as well as contentment, one in which families would thrive and in which there would be both room and resources enough for successive generations to share in that feeling of hominess toward the natural environment. Finally, while the effort to define an environmental sense of place was strongest in Vermont, other states expressed similar faith that they embodied certain moral virtues for which they credited the local geography. In particular, the White Mountains of New Hampshire—though isolated in one section of that state—held both a dominant physical and imaginative presence throughout the state. Like their Vermont neighbors, residents of New Hampshire believed that the mountains had instilled in them certain virtues—in particular, a collective love of liberty—and so they, too, offered positions on moral issues by invoking the natural landscape. This study of place focuses on Vermont but considers aspects of environmental identity that were strongly shared by the wider region of northern New England.

“Selling Sobriety” explores the uneasy symbiosis between the antebellum temperance movement and a distinctly American commercial culture. Entrepreneurs used the reform to reshape and legitimize public amusements, especially among those influenced by evangelical Protestantism who thought of themselves as the moral middle. Morally suspect forms of entertainment became the media through which temperance morality was inculcated. The dissertation examines three forms of commercial entertainments—temperance fiction, temperance speaking, and temperance theater. “Selling Sobriety” uses George B. Cheever's 1835 story, “Inquire at Amos Giles' Distillery,” to establish the sources of temperance imagery and the limits to clerical cultural authority. Cheever's story was part of a split between orthodoxy and Unitarianism in Salem, Massachusetts. The minister was tried for libel and gained the support of Justin Edwards, a founder of the American Temperance Society, and William Lloyd Garrison. The career of John Gough suggests the theatricalization of temperance and the popularity of the temperance narrative. The reformed drunkard Gough gained notoriety by relating his past at Washingtonian experience meetings, beginning in Worcester, Massachusetts. Wrenched by both the Market Revolution and delirium tremens, Gough was promoted by John Marsh of the American Temperance Union. In 1845, the National Police Gazette discovered an intoxicated Gough in a house of prostitution. William H. Smith's temperance melodrama, The Drunkard, opened in 1844 at Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. The play defused the antitheatricalism of many Americans and was also presented in P. T. Barnum's dime museum. It appealed to middle-class women who had hitherto avoided theaters. T. S. Arthur's career points to the links between temperance and a rapidly changing publishing industry. A fixture of domestic literature and Sarah Josepha Hale's Godey's Lady's Book, Arthur published the bestselling Ten Nights in a Bar-room in 1854. Arthur's novel sets up a Manichaean battle between Demon Rum and domesticity, between the bottle and the book. Alcohol was one means by which Americans formulated evil during a time of economic and theological optimism. “Selling Sobriety”argues that antebellum temperance was popular culture. Entrepreneurs used the reform as a wedge to open up new public spaces in American cultural life.

This dissertation examines activist movements on the left in Massachusetts in the decade and a half after the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The study focuses on three movements that were particularly strong in Massachusetts: the movement against nuclear energy in the latter half of the 1970s; the campaign for a nuclear weapons freeze between the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s; and the Central American solidarity movement which campaigned against United States intervention in Central America during the 1980s. Massachusetts became a stronghold of all three of these movements and played an important role in transforming them into national movements. The movements against nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and U.S. intervention in Central America demonstrate an altered continuity from the radical protest movements of the 1960s and challenge the notion that activism on the left faded away with the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, soldiering on only in fragmented “identity” politics. The movements against nuclear power, the arms race and U.S. intervention in Central America grew out of the radical politics of the 1960s and sought to learn from the successes and excesses of that decade. In varying degrees, these movements sought to blend the radical perspectives of the New Left, the moral witness and non-violent direct action of the civil rights movement, and the new values and lifestyle of the counterculture. New movements growing out of the 1960s such as feminism and environmentalism further shaped the trajectory of these post-1960s movements, which sought to go beyond the self-destructive revolutionary militancy of the late 1960s student New Left to create broader based movements which pursued the universal vision of the 1960s left through community based activism. In so doing, these movements had a significant impact on mainstream liberals in Massachusetts, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O'Neill and Governor Michael Dukakis. The confluence of strong activist movements and powerful liberal politicians in Massachusetts made it certain the state would have a significant impact on national politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

Abstract not available