Recent scholarship has approached Thomas Jefferson's thought in a multitude of ways, characterizing him variously as a Lockean liberal, a classical republican, a representative of the Enlightenment, and a radical Whig, to name only a few. This study argues that Jeffersonian thought was at once foundational and antifoundational, at once elevating liberty as the highest human value, and searching for the foundations for both liberty and moral self-government. The synthesis effected by Jefferson was inherently fragile. This study first examines Jefferson's effort to liberate the individual from existing forms of authority, and his corresponding embrace of nature as a foundational support for his most deeply held principles, then charts the fortunes of key Jeffersonian concepts over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention paid to the unraveling of the original Jeffersonian synthesis. Here the writings of a number of American thinkers are investigated, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Jackson Turner, William Graham Sumner, Allen Tate, John Dewey, Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty and Edward O. Wilson / acase@tulane.edu

William Hooper was born in Boston in 1742 to a well-established clergyman. Under his father's influence Hooper developed an affinity for discipline and learning which coalesced with his natural abilities. He distinguished himself at Harvard, graduating at the top of his class in 1760. Hooper apprenticed himself to James Otis, Jr., and served in his law office when the latter prepared some of his finest political tracts. Hooper had the opportunity also to observe Otis' famous Writs of Assistance speech, which attacked some of the fundamental precepts of British law at the time With family connections in North Carolina, Hooper moved there in 1764 and quickly allied himself, politically and socially, with the more influential familes in the Wilmington - Cape Fear area of the colony. He received a position in the royal establishment and was later elected to the House of Commons of the North Carolina Assembly. There he began to fight for the colony's rights to establish its own judicial system, a longstanding issue in North Carolina politics. Quickly he became a leading anti-government spokesman Hooper organized and then chaired the first provincial congress in North Carolina. He was elected to the colony's Committee of Correspondence and was a very active leader of the movement for a Continental Congress. His reputation as political theorist grew during this period and his fellow citizens called upon him frequently. He served in provincial congress, the Assembly, local committees of safety and a number of other capacities His colony also selected Hooper as its first member of the First Continental Congress in 1774. He served there for three years and during that time led the North Carolina delegation. He had a virtual free hand in determining North Carolina's position on the various issues faced by that body during those years. Hooper, along with Joseph Hewes and John Penn, signed the Declaration of Independence. Shortly thereafter, in February, 1777, he resigned his position to return to the state and concentrate on the task of forming the state's constitution Hooper remained an influential leader for years after his service in the Continental Congress ended. He continued to be elected to the states' Assemblies and carried on an active legal practice through those years. His influence did not diminish until the issue of the Federal Constitution arose in 1787 and 1788. Hooper staunchly supported the Constitution, an unpopular position in North Carolina. Always somewhat susceptable to illness, William Hooper succumbed to a recurrence of malaria in 1789 and died after a lengthy illness in October, 1790 Unfortunately Hooper's reputation seemed to have died with him. Quickly forgotten by historians, Hooper has suffered from generalized surveys of the Revolutionary era and emerged as a minor, rather conservative, figure from a backward colony. Jefferson called him the 'biggest Tory in Congress' and that epithet followed Hooper for years. In fact, William Hooper was an articulate, learned and at times, brilliant political theorist. He correctly predicted the course the colonies were taking as early as 1774, which earned him the title 'prophet of independence' from a nineteenth century historian. Hooper studied and thoroughly understood the great seventeenth century English Whig writers and perhaps more devotedly than any others adopted their precepts to the situation he obscured developing in the American colonies. Despite the loss of the greatest bulk of his papers in a fire, William Hooper left a valuable collection of letters and a legacy of political activisim which has never been properly appreciated / acase@tulane.edu

Many historians believe that during the 1890s, a crisis existed in the American mind. There were various responses to this perceived crisis, including evangelical and, in particular, patriotic/nationalistic revivals. This study offers a new perspective on these latter revivals in that they may be viewed as part of a Civil Religious revival At the center of the revival were America's public school children who, most observers agreed, were the most appropriate agents for perpetuating the country's Civil Religious heritage. The driving force behind this effort was a children's magazine called The Youth's Companion and two industrious staff members, James B. Upham and Francis Bellamy. These men, in league with such organizations as the National Education Association, the Grand Army of the Republic, and especially the American Institute of Civics, organized and executed the revival There were three factors which moved these individuals into action. First, the increasing tide of immigration generated concern that the newcomers would worship 'false gods' (anarchism, communism, or worse, Romanism) because of their unfamiliarity with the God of the Republic and the Providential meaning of American history and destiny. Second, because of increasing urbanization, materialism, and scientific investigation, there was a diminution of patriotic conviction or fervor. More often than not, patriotism was synonymous with Civil Religion (viz., the belief that the history of America is a manifestation of Providential Will, that America and Americans occupy a position of uniqueness among the nations of the earth, and that the divinely ordained mission of American civilization is to exemplify and spread the concepts of liberty, justice, equality, and democracy), which is to say, the trend of the age was leading to an increased amount of Civil Religious apostacy and/or heresy. Third, because of this growing cosmopolitanism in American society, many groups and individuals were becoming increasingly sensitive about the content of moral instruction in the public schools. Until the 1880s, the basis of ethical or moral training was usually a nondenominational but Protestant Biblical Christianity. When this basis was challenged, educators and other interested parties became concerned that if the religious or divine sanction was removed as the basis of morality, society would revert to heathenism and/or barbarism The solution to all three dilemmas was to instruct America's public school children in the principles of their Civil Religious heritage / acase@tulane.edu

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-08, Section: A, page: 2365. / Major Professor: William W. Rogers. / A study of violent crime in antebellum Florida (1821-1960) was carried out within the framework of several major aspects of the territory and state's criminal justice system. Such aspects considered were contemporary opinions on the causes of crime, violent crime against person, domestic violence, violence among soldiers and settlers, the duties and responsibilities of lawmen, catching criminals, crimes against property, jails and escapes, and the summary execution of criminals who organized themselves into gangs. The characteristic of honor as it relates to Southern violence was also considered.

Critical election and realignment theory dominates political science literature on American voting behavior, focusing on massive partisan conversion through cataclysmic political change. Attention to another viable source of partisan change, secular or long-term transformation, has been scant, due at least partially to the difficulties attendant to detecting glacial, ongoing change. I seek to address this gap in the literature through a fifty-state analysis of gubernatorial voting behavior spanning forty-six years, 1942-1988. / I test models of vote choice in gubernatorial elections based on a synthesis of the factors which we expect to influence partisanship from critical election and realignment theory in addition to factors involving demographic shifts and migratory patterns. First, this is done in ten-year intervals, followed by analyses of models for identical time periods modified to best explain the dependent variable within the context of each particular time period. These analyses are then replicated for the pre- and post-Voting Rights Act of 1965 time periods, and again for non-southern states. / The approach of this investigation shows that the factors influencing gubernatorial vote choice are undergoing a gradual transformation. The earlier periods tested (especially the 1950s) displayed a great deal of stability, followed by indications of partisan upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s. A degree of stability seems to return to gubernatorial voting by the 1980s. The results of modifying the models to fit the context of the time period under analysis are robust enough to warrant further attention to this research tactic. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-11, Section: A, page: 4070. / Major Professor: Charles J. Barrilleaux. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

The purpose of this treatise is to place military and dance music genres found in the music manuscript books of the Hitchcock Collection of flute music housed in the Warren D. Allen Music Library at Florida State University and the Hitchcock Papers in the Music Division of the Library of Congress within the context of Ethan Allen Hitchcock's life (1798-1870) in order to correlate his activities as military officer and flutist to the social structures of his professional and private life. / There are nine music manuscript books in the Hitchcock Collection which are broadly representative of American musical traditions during the nineteenth century and serve as partial cultural and musicological records of pre-Civil War America. The military band arrangements in the Library of Congress specifically provide information about much of the history of the United States Military Academy Band at West Point, New York between 1830-1833 and the Third Regiment of Infantry Band between 1841-1846 as they moved from Tallahassee, Florida to Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis), Missouri, and finally to Corpus Christi, Texas. The military and dance music genres in the manuscript books provide additional information about the Academy Band for the years 1817-1833, as well as information about social dance principally in West Point, New York during 1817-1833, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana during 1822-1823. Additionally, there are loose music manuscripts in the Hitchcock Collection which provide insight into military music and social dance at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania during 1854-1855. / Hitchcock's activities as a military officer and musician are outlined in the prose journals he recorded during the years 1816 to 1868, and the principal source for quotations from them in this treatise is the "W. A. Croffut Papers, Copy of Hitchcock Memoirs," Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. These have been verified for accuracy against the original diaries in the "Ethan Allen Hitchcock Papers" at the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Archival Collections in Tulsa, Oklahoma. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: A, page: 1171. / Major Professor: Dale A. Olsen. / Thesis (D.M.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1503. Adviser: Michael McGerr. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed April 12, 2007)."

Egyptomania| American cultural representations of Egypt during the Cold War

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Adviser: Roger D. Simon.

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.