The years immediately following the end of the American Civil War proved to be the high water mark in the nationalist spirit that provided for the direct federal protection of civil rights. This period was short, and as Southern patience outlasted Northern zeal, the federal government abandoned its efforts to actively enforce the spirit of the Reconstruction amendments. Even though during Reconstruction Congress greatly expanded the jurisdiction of the federal court system, the grants of jurisdiction did not help protect civil rights. Most of the statutes were civil in nature, requiring a litigant to hire a lawyer. Prospective plaintiffs in civil rights cases were unable to shoulder the expense of civil rights lawsuits so early use of the statutes was by corporations seeking to escape state regulation. Local lawyers willing to try civil rights cases faced an immense hurdle since the statutes were codified and broken up, legal journals de-emphasized these cases, and local pressure injured the attorneys' practices.

Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed the presidency convinced that atomic weapons should be employed as essentially conventional tools for war and diplomacy. Supported by the lessons of the Korean War, a conservative fiscal philosophy, advances in nuclear weapons technology, and an asymmetrical conception of containment, that conviction led Eisenhower to formulate a strategic vision that depended primarily upon nuclear weapons for deterring and fighting both general and limited war. During his first term, however, the President's views on nuclear weapons and, thus, U.S. national security strategy, underwent a significant evolution. Although U.S. national security policy, military force structure, and war plans remained firmly based on nuclear weapons, by 1956 Eisenhower's readiness to fulfill the military logic of his "New Look" strategy had all but disappeared. Focusing on decision-making at the highest level, this dissertation describes and explains the evolution of Eisenhower's nuclear outlook, paying particular attention to the mistaken estimates of Soviet capabilities and intentions, and the hypothesis of American vulnerability, which fueled that evolution.

This dissertation is an historical study of efforts, primarily by federal district judges, to manage growth, change, and conflict in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas during the second half of the twentieth century. Examples of judicial management as I use the phrase encompass a wide variety of activities the federal district judges in the Southern District have undertaken since the 1950s. The judges were required to cope with institutional growth, they felt obliged to foster social change, and they were called on to resolve political conflict. This dissertation examines ways in which various modes of judicial management were manifested in federal trials concerned broadly with civil rights, economic issues, and criminal justice. These three legal, topics exist within specific statutory and doctrinal frameworks that have evolved over the past half century. I will discuss relevant developments in the law pertaining. to the major topics as necessary. However, this dissertation is neither a study of the statutory changes within these three legal categories, nor primarily a study of changes in the theory and practice of judicial management of dockets, cases, or institutions. Rather, I employ these fundamental elements in combination in an attempt to portray a sense of the legal, social, and organizational changes which have transpired over several critical decades in the history of the Southern District of Texas.

In 1938, the House of Representatives authorized a special committee to investigate subversive or "un-American" propaganda. Popularly known as the Dies Committee after its chairman Martin Dies, this special committee was the progenitor of the most notorious legislative investigating committee in the history of Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was widely criticized in its own time, and by the majority of historians since, for its lax procedures, including a reliance on hearsay, unsupported information, and biased witnesses. The Committee also attempted to smear liberals and organized labor by associating them with radical organizations. During its first year, Dies' goal was seemingly to undermine the New Deal by claiming that the Roosevelt Administration and various New Deal agencies were riddled with Communists. Examination of the Committee's records suggests strongly that the foregoing criticisms were warranted. But to assess better the work of the Dies Committee, it is necessary to grapple with the fact that regardless of its motives and procedural inadequacies, in many instances its claims of Communist infiltration of New Deal agencies and the CIO were true. This dissertation examines the procedural and evidentiary standards under which the Dies Committee operated in an effort to address the question whether the lack of consistent application of these standards mattered when the investigation's conclusions were generally correct. The Committee's partisanship and willingness to used dubious evidence raised doubts about its claims of subversion in government and labor among the group whom it needed to convince-those in the Washington power structure. This issue is of heightened relevance given recent scholarship showing that the Soviet Union had funded and supervised an extensive espionage network in the United States during the 1930s. But as long as the Committee accepted rumor and conjecture it would fail to prove its case. Ultimately, the Committee's procedural lapses served only to undermine its own credibility.

Early British colonists in North America needed to mobilize military power. Initially, colonists used men with previous experience to train and lead small militias. When population growth demanded more trained leaders, colonists turned to books for military knowledge. Beginning in 1690, in Massachusetts, colonists printed a series of military training manuals. Colonial publishers struggled to adapt European military knowledge to American circumstances. Initially, they reprinted European works that suffered from excessive detail and poor organization. By the 1720s, colonial books were shorter and clearer but still not well adapted to the rugged American landscape. This failure to adapt continued until the 1740s, despite some improvement. During the French and Indian War, colonists finally published books that suited American conditions. The failure to adapt sooner was due to strategic advantages that allowed American colonists to win wars with inferior tactics and to colonists' hostility to Indian warmaking techniques.

This study demonstrates that Dewey did not reject Hegelianism during the 1890s, as scholars maintain, but developed a humanistic/historicist reading that was indebted to an American Hegelian tradition. Scholars have misunderstood the "permanent Hegelian deposit" in Dewey's thought because they have not fully appreciated this American Hegelian tradition and have assumed that his Hegelianism was based primarily on British neo-Hegelianism. The study examines the American reception of Hegel in the nineteenth-century by intellectuals as diverse as James Marsh and Frederic Henry Hedge and how it flowered in late nineteenth-century St. Louis. The St. Louis Hegelians read Hegel as a particularly practical and politically liberal philosopher whose social philosophy promoted both social diversity and unity. Led by W. T. Harris, they studied Hegel in German and published their own scholarship, as well as translations of German scholarship, in their Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Their efforts to make "Hegel talk English" and to base the St. Louis public schools on Hegel's philosophy of education won them national, and even, international attention. The St. Louis Hegelians sought to adapt Hegel's thought to their American context by assuaging elitist elements within it; Dewey's intellectual development was profoundly shaped by their appropriation of his philosophy. Dewey drew upon Hegel's argument that humans form societies because of their differences, not in spite of them. Hegel's rejection of the self-sufficient, atomistic individual entailed that the individual is dependent upon others for the satisfaction of material needs. Moreover, like Hegel, Dewey rejected the hedonistic basis of the British political tradition by arguing that humans seek recognition from their equals as well as satisfaction of material needs. Dewey believed Hegel's emphasis upon equality and diversity provided a model of society in which there was fertile ground for the individual to conceive and articulate cultural criticism. The study ends by comparing recent Hegel scholarship to Dewey's, demonstrating that American Hegelianism has returned, in important ways, to a Deweyan reading of Hegel.

From 1952 to 1962 it seemed that modern houses might become the standard choice for middle class suburban housing in Houston. This is apparent from a survey of architectural articles in the local newspapers and the national press. Of these houses, twenty three were given special attention. From an examination of this group of modern houses, all built in the newer, outlying subdivisions, an understanding of the attitudes Houstonians had towards the postwar suburban city is apparent.

Located at the crossroads of cultural, military, and southern history, this dissertation uncovers the cultural values, wartime perspectives, and psychological constructions that convinced many Confederate soldiers they would win the American Civil War. A host of elements, including evangelical religion, abstractions of the enemy, disorienting combat conditions, wishful rumors, and masculine ideals, sustained troop morale by promising ultimate victory in return for endurance against worsening circumstances. Using soldiers' letters and diaries written during the war's final sixteen months (January 1864--May 1865), this study shows how the cognitive and emotional supports for Rebels' confidence withstood successive setbacks but ultimately collapsed when events impinged upon their reality and ended the world they fought for. In addition to soldiers' writings, the sources range from camp songs and cartoons to sermons and editorials. This work also applies sociological theories on the spread of rumors to recapture the troops' perceptions and borrows psychological premises about cognitive dissonance to discern how troops received and adjusted to surrender. Looking beyond the Civil War, this thesis informs scholarship on masculinity, nationalism, Reconstruction, and postwar memory. The seeds of postwar defiance and Lost Cause mythology germinated in Rebels' experiences as hardened soldiers who had convinced themselves they could not be conquered by northerners and blacks. Faith in the invincibility of their arms, valor, and cause---convictions seared into the mentalities of thousands of white southern men during their formative years---did not die with surrender but shaped their peculiar postwar identity as unconquered losers. Undaunted by capitulation, white southern men continued their military struggle in the social and political theaters of Reconstruction.

William Louis Poteat (1856-1938) was a prominent educator, Progressive reformer, and leader in the Baptist denomination in North Carolina. He was the son of a slaveholder and grew up on a large tobacco plantation in Caswell County, North Carolina. From 1872 until 1877 he attended Wake Forest College, a Baptist school near Raleigh. He returned there in 1878 as a tutor and soon became a largely self-taught professor of biology. His introduction to modern science forced him to liberalize somewhat his conservative religious beliefs. He was a rarity in the South for openly teaching evolution beginning in the 1880s and was widely known among Southern Baptists for his advocacy of social Christianity. He led numerous campaigns for reform during the Progressive era on subjects including prohibition, public education, child labor, race relations, care of the insane, and eugenics. From 1905 until 1927 he served as president of Wake Forest College and guided the college based on a philosophy of Christian culture, a contrast to the zeal for practical training that simultaneously swept through the New South's state universities. In 1920 conservative Tarheel Baptists began to criticize Poteat for teaching his liberal (for the region) views on science and religion. He withstood assaults in 1920, 1922, and 1925 in a decade when a number of southern colleges dismissed professors for teaching evolution. This study advances historical understanding on several topics. It examines the intellectual compromises necessary for a social critic to avoid condemnation in the South in this period. Historians have identified Poteat as a foremost southern exemplar of social Christianity, but this biography reveals the individualistic, traditional roots of his quest for Progressive social reform, emphasizing the lack of a social gospel in the South. Analyzing Poteat's philosophy of education is a first step toward interpreting the history of denominational higher education in the South in the early twentieth century. Further, regarding the history of science in the postbellum South, Poteat's efforts toward original research indicate that he sought professional development but faced many obstacles such as a lack of resources and colleagues as well as his own commitment to broad liberal learning. This study also reinterprets the evolution controversy of the twenties by placing the religious conservatives who attacked Poteat within the context of a democratic opposition to Progressive-era bureaucratization, rather than regarding them only as irrational zealots.

<p> The American Revolution brought with it a crisis of identification. The political divisions that fragmented American society did not distinguish adherents of the two sides in any outward way. Yet the new American governments had to identify their citizens; potential citizens themselves had to choose and prove their identities; and both sides of the war had to distinguish friend from foe. Subordinated groups who were notionally excluded from but deeply affected by the Revolutionary contest found in the same crisis new opportunity to seize control over their own identities. Those who claimed mastership over these groups struggled to maintain control amid civil war and revolution. </p><p> To meet this crisis, American and British authorities and "Americans" of all sorts employed paper and parchment instruments of identification, including passes, passports, commissions, loyalty certificates, and letters of introduction. These were largely familiar instruments, many embodying the hierarchical and coercive social world from which the Revolution sprang. Access or subjection to certain classes of instruments depended on individuals' social standing and reflected their unequal power over their own identities. But they were now deployed to meet new challenges. The increased demands for identification brought to Revolutionary Americans in general degrees of scrutiny and constraint traditional reserved for the unfree, while subordinated groups faced an intensification of the regimes designed to govern them. The struggles to define, enforce, and contest Revolutionary identities reveal the ways the notionally voluntarist, republican Revolution, undertaken in the name of consent and equality, was effected through regimes of identification both exclusive and coercive. </p><p> While studies of early American identity are now common, there has been little study of the history of identification or identification papers in early America. Historians of this period have employed instruments of identification as sources, but they have rarely considered them as subjects of analysis in themselves. This study of the Revolutionary crisis of identification, from 1774 to 1783, examines the ways that these instruments of identification were used to identify "Americans" in the face of this crisis, at home and abroad, and therefore how the new United States were constituted through the identification of individuals.</p>