When the Southern states began to secede from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, the South expected Kentucky to join them. The North also worked hard to keep Kentucky in the Union. The state originally took a stance of neutrality but in September 1861, chose to remain with the Union. Still, Kentuckians remained greatly divided over the matter. Many men from this Union state chose to go south and fight for the Confederacy, often against the wishes of their community, family, and friends. These joined the Confederate army for a number of different reasons. Some fought due to their hatred of Abraham Lincoln and in defense of states' rights, or slavery. Others simply sought the adventure that only army life could provide. In true southern form, many of these men enlisted in the army in defense of honor. Others remained loyal to their state and country as they enlisted in the Union army. These men did so out of a deep devotion for and love of their country. They did not fight to rid the United States of slavery, but rather to preserve United States. Because of this, the Emancipation Proclamation had a great impact on all Kentuckians and their stance on the war. Whether they fought or not, the Civil War affected every citizen of Kentucky in one way or another. Even the men who chose not to fight at all and the women who were left behind were still held strong opinions on the war, which are briefly covered in this paper. Many families were divided within the state and Kentucky soldiers often found themselves fighting against their cousins, fathers, brothers, and boyhood friend.

This thesis examines the way Ann Radcliffe positions herself and her female gothic heroines in both public and private spheres, while registering Briton's fears about the threat of patriarchy and politics of transgression stemming from the French Revolution. Late eighteenth-century Britain's cultural revolution and print changed the way Britons produced and consumed literature. This thesis argues that women like Radcliffe contributed to the formation of public opinion through their writing without abandoning the domestic sphere. In separate discussions of <italic>The Romance of the Forest</italic> (1791) and <italic>The Mysteries of Udolpho</italic> (1794), this thesis argues that Radcliffe existed both privately as marginal to literature and public debate and publically since she simultaneously entered those same public debates. Without abandoning the domestic sphere, Radcliffe entered the public sphere by appropriating the male-originated female gothic genre and unsettling masculinist hierarchies and assumptions, including those assumptions about gothic fictions and novels as inherently inferior literary genres, just as readers of novels and gothic literature were deemed inferior consumers of print.

"Kathleen Mavourneen" is an Irish ballad published in 1835 by Louisa Macartney Crawford, poet and contributor to Captain Frederick Marryat's London-based monthly <italic>Metropolitan Magazine</italic>. Set to music in 1837 by Frederick Nichols Crouch, the song achieved transatlantic acclaim, becoming an important part of nineteenth-century cultural memory. Despite the success of "Kathleen Mavourneen" and Crawford's other prolific contributions to the periodical press, Louisa Macartney Crawford is a now a forgotten voice in nineteenth-century women's poetry. In fact, her identity as the author of even this popular ballad is invoked only to authenticate the song's Irishness, despite her biography as a member of the British landed class. Through a postcolonial reading of <italic>Metropolitan Magazine</italic>, the context for Crawford's writing, and an analysis of her national ballads, I argue that Crawford appropriated an Irish identity to negotiate her role as a female writer, but, in doing so, created a slippage of subjectivity that reveals the complexity of nineteenth-century women's poetry.

Religion, particularly the Protestant faith, is a fundamental component of American life that defines the countrys socio-cultural identity. Following the Civil War, religious leaders and laymen tapped into the countrys religious devotion in an attempt to reunite the country. The mission worked. Between 1870-1920, religious nationalism emerged and united a majority of Americans along both secular as well as theological goals, which ranged from social reform and activism to Christianizing the nation and bringing about the kingdom of God, or Christs thousand-year rule over Earth. The goal of this paper is to show how this religious nationalism developed and shaped Americas socio-religious thought into the early-twentieth century. This paper identifies changes in theology and biblical interpretations, social reform movements meant to Christianize the country, crusades against non-Protestant threats, and acts of Protestant consolidation and cooperation as the means by which Protestant nationalism developed and thrived.

This paper examines the relationship between Union soldiers and their encounters with Copperheads, members of the Peace faction of the Democratic Party. It encompasses soldiers' experiences both on the home front, as described in letters from family and friends, and in the field, marching through territory with residents who resented and disapproved of their presence. An important facet of this relationship is the way in which these accounts of Copperhead agitation clashed with the political leanings many soldiers may have had towards the Democratic Party. Although some positions, such as pro-slavery and anti-emancipation, had sympathetic ears amongst the army, the consistent drumbeat of anti-war sentiment from the Copperheads drove soldiers towards the Republican Party. This most notably shows during elections, especially in the key elections for Ohio Governor in 1863 and U.S. President in 1864.

The integration of women into the military establishment during World War II evoked a multitude of reactions from the American public. As over 500,000 women joined the military, they were met with support, skepticism, and condemnation. The attitudes of the civilian populace and the military establishment challenged women to expand social constructs of acceptable female behavior. As women gained a foothold in the military establishment, they proved to be a valuable asset to the war effort. Military planners initially envisioned women working in traditionally gendered occupations. As American males deployed to the European or Pacific Theaters, women frequently assumed unorthodox roles. Their experiences changed their perception of themselves and their environment. This study will explore the roles women assumed within the military establishment. In addition, this study will examine the impact of the military experience upon the lives of female veterans. Women entering the military enlisted in the WAAC/WAC, SPARS, WASP, WAVES, or the Marine Corps. Each branch of the military approached integration of females into the service in different ways and adopted varied requirements for enlistees. As a result, the choice of organization often reflected the educational and social background of the recruit. This study will explore the role of social class within the branches of the military. 2 Finally, this study will include a brief synthesis of female enlistment in each branch of the service. Each branch of the military has published an official synthesis of female participation in the war effort. Collections of autobiographical histories have been published. Nevertheless, the historiographical record lacks an academic synthesis of women in the military during World War II. The research conducted for this study includes primary and secondary source materials. In addition, interviews with female veterans and collection of oral histories shed valuable insight into the subsequent impact of the military experience in the lives of American veterans.

Following the election of Jimmy Carter as president, the profession of born again evangelical faith became a requirement for presidential candidates. Ronald Reagan pushed conservative Christian voters, especially in the form of the Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, into the Republican Party. When the Moral Majority declined as the flagship conservative Christian organization, the Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition took up the cause. Under the presidency of George W. Bush, much of the social agenda of the conservative Christian movement became governmental policy, even as the Christian Coalition declined in political power. Bush's presidency represents the institutionalization of the conservative Christian movement despite its failures in leadership and public scandals.

Challenging the belief that women did not respond publicly to the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848), this dissertation establishes a women's literature on the Mexican conflict. It examines a variety of textual materials--journalism, histories, novels, and pamphlet narratives--published in the years during and immediately following the war. What their writings reveal is a tenuous American identity struggling with a range of political and geographical instabilities during a period of contentious westward expansion. The U.S.-Mexico War offers an important public arena of women's political engagement for us to examine, and it asks us to reconsider the literary and cultural center of antebellum writings. This project not only recovers new voices and texts but also offers an alternative approach to more established writers, and it begins to build a critical framework for understanding the war's presence in American literature. The first chapter examines the New York Sun war correspondence of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, the only American journalist, male or female, to report from behind Mexican lines, and situates her work within the war writings of other journalists--Margaret Fuller, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Grace Greenwood, and Anne Royall. Chapter two turns to Emma Willard's conflicted history of the war, Last Leaves of American History. Eliza Allen's The Female Volunteer is the focus of chapter three, and her sensational cross-dressing narrative not only exposes the threats the war posed to gender, particularly the crisis in masculinity, but also reminds us of the troubled transnational identity of antebellum America. E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand responds to this masculinity crisis, and chapter four demonstrates how a focus on the war's presence in the novel opens up alternative interpretations, revealing in particular how Southworth complements her visions of domestic womanhood with a compatible manhood. The U.S.-Mexico War, as Jane Cazneau writes, placed "a deep and nervous responsibility on the American nation," and while there was little agreement as to the war's merits among these writers, they had little doubt as to the "nervous" distinction, whether for good or ill, the conflict had lain upon their nation.

This study of myth and sexuality in the novels of Caribbean-American women includes works by Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Cristina Garcia, and Michelle Cliff. The first chapter elucidates previously unpublished correlations between Naylors <em>The Women of Brewster Place</em> and Marshalls <em>Praisesong for the Widow</em> and a zombification trope. Similarly, Chapter Two delineates a formerly unremarked phoenix pattern in Garcias <em>Dreaming in Cuban</em>. In contrast to the previous chapters, Chapter Three outlines Cliffs characterization of historical production as mythmaking in <em>Free Enterprise</em>. The selected novels uses of myth illustrate Carine M. Mardorossians views about the changing nature of contemporary postcolonial fiction from an aesthetic of difference to one of an inclusive relation identity.

This thesis sets out to confront drug and alcohol abuse by American Servicemen during the Vietnam War, previously defying in depth historical analysis. New oral histories available within the last few years have shed new light on a previously elusive subject. Harnessing medical literature, government documents, oral histories and secondary sources this work seeks to explain the widespread alcohol and drug abuse the Vietnam War became infamous for. Factors contributing to abuse and elaborated upon include widespread availability of drugs and alcohol, military machismo, the inability of military leadership to cope with the burgeoning substance abuse problems and the rise of the domestic drug scene domestically.