Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1980. / Title from title page screen, viewed Feb. 16, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Edward Schapsmeier (chair), Ira Cohen, Charles Gray, L. Moody Simms, Paul Baker. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-147) and abstract. Also available in print.

<p> Many historians of religion and politics in the early republic period fail to fully examine the importance of the debate between the Connecticut's Standing Order and religious dissenters concerning the necessity of a religious establishment in America. Relying on sermons, newspaper accounts, this project examines the ideology and justification of Connecticut's Standing Order in defending religious establishment, as well as the ideological reasons Republicans and religious dissenters offered in opposing it. Exploring the value of the church establishment from the perspective of both the supporters of the Standing Order and those who sided with the Jeffersonians offers important insight into how issues of religion shaped the political and social battles in the early republic. </p><p> This work focuses upon the political ideology of Connecticut's established clergy and Federalist allies in relation to the defense of the church establishment. In particular, the motives for those who defended the established church were based not upon selfish ambition, but rather upon well-constructed ideas about how best to maintain the prosperity of the American republic. In Connecticut, the adherents of the Standing Order valued holding the Congregational Church as the established church for the state because traditional social structures and social systems such as churches seemingly benefitted the continued success of the community. </p><p> This project demonstrates that the convictions on both sides of the debate were grounded upon ideas, not ambitions. For the Standing Order, the state church was a fundamental component of stability and prosperity in Connecticut. The established clergy of Standing Order, as well as their dissenter counterparts, believed that the outcome of the ecclesiastical issue was crucial for determining the future prosperity of the republic. Their vision for the nation may have lost out to that of the Jeffersonians and religious dissenters, but it was nonetheless a vision that ultimately had meaningful consequences for the development of the nation and the role of Christianity in shaping the political and social spheres.</p>

<p> The development of a Western identity, derivative and evolved from Northern, Midwestern, and Southern identities, played a significant role in determining the loyalty of the Pacific States on the eve of the Civil War. Western identity shared the same tenets as the other sections: property rights, republicanism, and economic and political autonomy. The experiences of the 1850s, though, separated Westerners from the North and the South, including their debates over slavery, black exclusion, and Indian policy. These experiences helped formulate the foundations of a Western identity, and when Southern identity challenged Western political autonomy by the mid-1850s, political violence and antiparty reactions through vigilantism and duels threw Western politics into chaos as the divided Democratic Party, split over the Lecompton Controversy, struggled to maintain control. With the election of 1860, Lincoln's victory in California and Oregon were the result of this chaos, and Westerners remained loyal to the North due to economic ties and Southern challenges to Western political autonomy. On the eve of the Civil War, the West was secured through the efforts of Republicans, but the belief in economic freedom from a slave labor system and federal aid for Indian campaigns played a significant role in forming a Western identity determined to remain in the Union. </p>

<p> Prior to the Civil War, the lives of free African Americans in Fairfax County, Virginia were both ordinary and extraordinary. Using the land as the underpinning of their existence, they approached life using methods that were common to the general population around them. Fairfax was a place that was undergoing a major transition from a plantation society to a culture dominated by self-reliant people operating small farms. Free African Americans who were able to gain access to land were a part of this process allowing them to discard the mantle of dependency associated with slavery. Nevertheless, as much as ex-slaves and their progeny attempted to live in the mainstream of this rural society, they faced laws and stereotypes that the county's white population did not have to confront. African Americans' ability to overcome race-based obstacles was dependent upon using their labor for their own benefit rather than for the comfort and profit of a former master or white employer. </p><p> When free African Americans were able to have access to the labor of their entire family, they were more likely to become self-reliant, but the vestiges of the slave system often stymied independence particularly for free women. Antebellum Fairfax had many families who had both slave and free members and some families who had both white and African American members. These divisions in families more often adversely impacted free African American women who could not rely on the labor of an enslaved husband or the lasting attention of a white male. Moreover, families who remained intact were more likely to be able to care for children and dependent aging members, while free African American females who headed households often saw their progeny subjected to forced apprenticeships in order for the family to survive. </p><p> Although the land provided the economic basis for the survival of free African Americans, the county's location along the border with Maryland and the District of Columbia also played a role in the lives of the county's free African American population. Virginia and its neighbors remained slave jurisdictions until the Civil War, but each government wished to stop the expansion of slavery within its borders. Each jurisdiction legislated against movement of new slaves into their territory and attempted to limit the movement of freed slaves into their jurisdictions. Still, in a compact border region restricting such movement was difficult. African Americans used the differences of laws initially to petition for freedom. As they gained access to the court system, free African Americans expanded their use of the judiciary by bringing their grievances before the courts which sided with the African American plaintiffs with surprising regularity. Although freed slaves and their offspring had few citizenship rights, they were able to use movement across borders and the ability to gain a hearing for their grievances to achieve increasing autonomy from their white neighbors. </p><p> No one story from the archives of the Fairfax County Courthouse completely defines the experience of free African Americans prior to the Civil War, but collectively they chronicle the lives of people who were an integral part of changing Fairfax County during the period. After freedom, many African Americans left Fairfax either voluntarily or through coercion. For those who stayed, their lives were so inter-connected both socially and economically with their white neighbors that any history of the county cannot ignore their role in the evolution of Fairfax.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 3108. Adviser: Claude Clegg. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 15, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Religious Studies, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 17, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4579. Adviser: Stephen J. Stein.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4827. Adviser: Wendy Gamber.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Christopher M. Span. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-247) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Remember, remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason, and plot,I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason,Should ever be forgot. </p><p> This verse, first recorded in Britain in the mid-1820s, makes a plea for the remembrance of November 5, 1605&mdash;the date of the discovery and suppression of a conspiracy to assassinate King James I; detonate Westminster Palace, the house of Parliament; and, ultimately, substitute the anti-Catholic monarchy of England with a protectorate that would favor the Church of Rome. In early 1606, weeks after the collapse of the Plot, the king endorsed and the Parliament passed "An Act for a Public Thanksgiving to Almighty God Every Year on the Fifth Day of November"; some sixty years later the legislative assemblies of the American colonies started doing the same. So was the official memory of "gunpowder, treason, and plot" born on both sides of the Atlantic, first as Guy Fawkes Day in England and then as Pope's Day in America. </p><p> This dissertation provides a new political history&mdash;and a new study of popular religion&mdash;in British North America and the early United States. I construct a long history of the anniversary&mdash;and the historical memory of the Plot, in a variety of texts&mdash;in early America, ca. 1605-1865. I close-read almanacs, diaries, instructionals, letters, newspapers, novels, sermons, and textbooks as a means of understanding the process by which the memory of November 5 was appropriated, reconstructed, and re-politicized. Turning to the mid-eighteenth century, I assess the influence of the Fifth on the Great Awakening and the American Revolution and vice versa. I investigate what became of November 5 after 1783, and I scrutinize the many ways in which the creative arts and the partisan press made frequent use of the memory of the events of 1605. I consider both how that memory arose in new places after the Revolution and in what ways the parties of the republic, like the crowds of the colonies, evoked the Fifth as a warning against absolutism. Finally, I examine what became of "1605" the coming, and the waging, of the American Civil War.</p>

<p> Numerous studies of anti-Catholicism in America have narrated a long dark prejudice that has plagued American society from the Colonial period to the present. A variety of interpretations for anti-Catholic sentiments and convictions have been offered, from theological to economic influences. Though many of these studies have offered invaluable insights in understanding anti-Catholic rhetoric and violence, each tends to neglect the larger anthropological realities which influence social tensions and group marginalization. By utilizing the <i>theory of human identity needs</i> as developed by Vern Neufeld Redekop, this study offers a means of interpreting anti-Catholicism from an anthropological perspective that allows for a multivalent approach to social, cultural, and communal disharmony and violence. Religion has played an important role in social and cultural tension in America. But by utilizing Redekop's human identity needs theory, it is possible to see religion's role in conjunction with other identity needs which help to form individual and communal identity. Human identity needs theory postulates that humans require a certain level of identity needs satisfaction in order to give an individual a sense of wellbeing in the world. These include, Redekop maintains, 1) meaning, 2) security, 3) connectedness, 4) recognition, and 5) action. By examining where these needs have been neglected or threatened, this study maintains one is better able to assess the variety of influences in the formation of identity, which in turn helps to foster animosity, marginalization, and possibly violence towards those individuals or groups defined as outsiders. Having been relegated as outsiders due to differing identity markers, the in group, or dominant social group, tend to perceive the outsiders as threatening if they are believed to be obstacles to the acquisition of one or more of the five identity needs categories. This study focuses on the bloody Bible Riots of 1844 as a case study for applying human identity needs theory in interpreting social violence in American history.</p>