Material Bodies examines Indigenous, Black, and white women’s body care in the long eighteenth-century South. By focusing on the objects, practices of using and maintaining objects, and spaces where body care took place this research uncovers the intimate, individual experiences of existing in a body that textual sources rarely discuss. Cloth, beds, washing, infant care objects and breast remedies, and spaces of body care are the focus of the five chapters. These objects, practices, and spaces were not the only ones that shaped women’s physical experiences however they were some of the most important. Culture, enslavement, class, and race played a role in the objects, practices, and spaces women turned to and could access. Analyzing women in this broad region allows this work to make a methodological argument for the utility of material culture for studies of the body. While primarily making a methodological argument this work also engages with scholarship on race and gender in the early modern period. As Native Americans, European colonists, and Africans came into contact in the Atlantic world from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, bodies served as the first and an ongoing mediator of cross-cultural interactions. Material bodies were a primary medium through which people viewed and formed opinions of each other. By understanding nuances of women’s lives and actions through the objects they used during body care, we see how women supported, challenged, and shaped ideas about race and gender.

This study explores the historical significance of the literary activity, hoaxes, and humor of Joseph Seawell, or "Shocco," Jones. Born in the Shocco Springs region of Warren County during the first decade of the nineteenth century, Jones was a wealthy, privileged third generation North Carolinian. Although dismissed from the University of North Carolina in 1826, in 1833, Jones received a degree from Harvard's law school, where he was exposed to a world vastly different from his native Warren County. as the son of a planter of means and the relative and friend of state and national politicians, Jones was primed to take his place among North Carolina's leaders. But instead of becoming a southern planter and politician, Jones became a historian, a media hoaxer, a humorist, and a literary character featured in Old Southwestern humorists' texts. His identification as a North Carolina gentleman intellectual, his experiences as a southern transplant in New England, his exposure to and participation in American print culture, and his 1839 move to Mississippi influenced his unconventional evolution from serious southern gentleman historian to playful media hoaxer. In 1834, Jones published A Defence of the Revolutionary History of the State of North Carolina from the Aspersions of Mr. Jefferson. Motivated by the desire to prove his state's primacy in the narrative of American's Revolutionary history, this text was intended to restore the historical reputation of a state with a past and contemporaneous reputation for socio-economic and cultural stagnation. Although the text was not a resounding success and had its fair share of flaws, his peers recognized him as a legitimate historian, even if his work was divisive and problematic. The text was also the first of his several attempts between 1834 and 1838 to make a name for himself as a significant American intellectual and literary figure. Jones attained national attention and recognition of his intellect not with his historical pursuits but with his orchestration of a major media hoax. Jones's 1839 duel hoax was more than a prank in which he convinced some newspaper readers that he had killed a man in a duel. Reflecting his adherence to the values of southern honor culture and his understanding of the changing literary marketplace and environment, the hoax was a skillful manipulation of the press and a commentary on the cultural values and personal experiences that failed to make Shocco Jones either a typical southern gentleman or intellectual. The duel hoax was the first of two major hoaxes in 1839 that made Jones a nationally recognized media celebrity. Jones was popular because he was an odd figure whose behavior defied categorization, but his fame was also a consequence of his representation of himself as an amalgamation of various national character types that both challenged and confirmed perceptions of regional stereotypes. Jones's identity as a southern gentleman trickster transcended regional and class cultural confines, making him an even more suitable candidate than his contemporary P.T. Barnum for the role of a representative nineteenth-century American.

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In the early 1730s, small groups of settlers started moving into the Valley of Virginia, beginning the movement into the southern backcountry. By the late 1740s Scots-Irish, English, and German settlers pressed into North Carolina's western Piedmont, and the small trickle of migrants quickly turned into a flood which persisted for the next three decades. This is a study of mid-eighteenth-century migration to the backcountry South.;The purpose of this study is to describe the process of eighteenth-century southern backcountry migration and to determine migrants' underlying motivations and considerations as they went about this process. It explores the experiences of settlers who migrated to the Valley of Virginia and North Carolina's western Piedmont from the late 1740s through the early 1770s.;To describe the process of migration, including means of transportation, routes of travel, and the practices of provisioning and seeking accommodations, this study relies on travel accounts written by migrants, as well as the journals of merchants, missionaries, and itinerant ministers. All of these travelers went through approximately the same process of visiting ordinaries, seeking meals, and encountering others along the way. For migrant families, the journey required considerable planning. Families with ample financial resources often sent someone ahead to investigate opportunities to acquire land and determine a safe, convenient route. Along the way, travelers encountered numerous public houses, but they also relied on roadside residents who opened up their private homes, offering shelter and food.;For many migrants, the opportunity to acquire more land was a primary motive for moving. An analysis of land records from several source areas indicates several patterns involving the migrants. Landowners and non-landowners alike moved to the North Carolina backcountry from southeastern Pennsylvania, Southside Virginia, and the Valley of Virginia. Migrants tended to settle in areas where there were other people from similar backgrounds, and in some cases, from the same former neighborhoods. Settling near relatives and associates provided migrants a sense of stability and familiarity as they attempted to recast their lives in the backcountry South.

In the late nineteenth century, bright tobacco came to dominate the agricultural production of the Virginia-North Carolina Piedmont. as the cultivation of bright tobacco spread, it created a new economy and social order centered on small, family-operated farms. For over a century, tobacco remained at the center of the region's economic and social order, even as numerous economic, technological and cultural forces reshaped the realities of tobacco agriculture. This dissertation explores the effects of these forces on the lives of the region's farm families. While many historian's have described tobacco farm life in terms of inexorable decline, this work takes pragmatic creativity as its theme; instead of viewing farm families as the hapless victims of industrial rapacity and government mendacity, it argues that tobacco farm families have shown themselves to be infinitely creative in responding to the shifting demands of a global tobacco economy. at the same time, this work jettisons the notion that tobacco farming is inherently retrograde, and argues, instead, that tobacco farm families have adapted to new technologies as they became available. In total, this work suggests that the farm families of the Piedmont have had a stronger hand in shaping their world than existing accounts of the transformation of southern agriculture over the last century, and especially since World War II, might suggest.;The dissertation is divided into three sections: land, labor, and life. The first examines the changes in the geography of tobacco brought on by both technological and economic developments and the expansion of federal programs into the countryside. The second section first documents the centrality of family labor to the production of bright tobacco by the beginning of the twentieth century before examining the rise of the use of hired farm labor in recent decades. The third section examines the impact of changing federal policy and economics on farm families lives by exploring how tobacco farm families helped to shape federal tobacco policy and by examining how farm families have used off-farm work to maintain viable farms.

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Born in Woodford County, Kentucky, on August 15, 1791, Duff Green taught school, fought in the War of 1812, and married Lucretia Maria Edwards before moving to the Missouri territory in 1816. He soon became a prominent citizen of Missouri, eventually served in both houses of the state legislature, and in 1824 became the editor of the St. Louis Enquirer, an influential newspaper in the new state.;In 1826, Green moved to Washington to become the editor and publisher of the United States' Telegraph, the recently established Jackson press in that city. The Telegraph played a significant role in General Jackson's election in 1828, but Green's influence in the new administration was minor.;In 1831, Green in his political favorite, John C. Calhoun, were read out of the Jackson party. Thereafter, the editor devoted himself to the defense of the South Carolinian and his elevation to the Presidency. as for Calhoun, he welcomed the aid of Green's press but kept his distance from his friend's numerous political and financial schemes. Meanwhile, the Telegraph defended nullification, advocated state rights, slavery, and Southern unification, and viciously attacked the abolitionists and Martin Van Buren.;Because of his financial ineptitude, Green was constantly on the brink of insolvency. Ultimately, after his loss of the Congressional printing in 1835, he undertook a number of speculative enterprises to maintain his press. When these enterprises failed in early 1837, the Telegraph was forced to cease publication.;Green's perpetuation of the demagogic style of journalism and his propagation of state rights and proslavery principles unintentionally helped to prepare the mind of the South for secession in 1860.

Southeastern North America was the scene of international, intercultural, and interethnic frontiers during the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century. Europeans and Indians existed there in greater relative concentrations than anywhere else in North America, and each European colony and Indian nation constituted a different locus of trade, diplomacy, and war. Because of the relatively high population density and national and ethnic complexity of the region, commercial, diplomatic, and military relations there exhibited a different character than in earlier-colonized regions from Virginia northward and in the Caribbean.;The southeastern Indians existed in a state of dependency in the eighteenth century which grew as the century wore on. The Indians' position relative to the Europeans was mitigated by the competition of three imperial powers for their trade and alliance. All major Indian powers in the region had a choice of at least two Europeans as trading partners and allies, and the Creeks bordered all three. The Creeks followed a conscious policy of balance-of-power after 1715 which helped maintain the political and diplomatic status quo on the frontier for half a century.;Europeans tried to alter the imperial status quo several times before 1763 but were unsuccessful each time. This was partly due to their own status of dependency on Europe; their policies were not always their own to devise. Economic, political, and military dependence on European capitals, intercolonial disputes, and internal politics made each colony less than effective in carrying out policies designed to better their position relative to other European and Indian powers.;This study first analyses southeastern Indian culture and the region's history to 1732 to establish the cultural, economic, ethnic, political and imperial background against which Indians and Europeans interacted in the Southeast. Subsequent chapters focus on specific episodes and events to 1763 that illustrate how a precarious balance between and among Indian and European powers operated, and why no power was able to upset that balance. Finally it shows that when the balance was upset after 1760 it was the result of intervention by outside forces.

This is a history of a frontier county in late colonial Virginia. Augusta County was created in 1738 and subdivided for the first time in 1770. During the intervening years it encompassed most of Virginia's claims to land west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.;As drawn by Virginians, the borders of Augusta County simultaneously encompassed two types of frontiers: a frontier of settlement on which white immigrants created a new society, and a frontier of culture in which those settlers interacted with a variety of Indians. This study examines both types of frontier experiences.;On the settlement frontier, white immigrants rapidly created a deferential and hierarchical society identical in its major features to contemporary counties throughout colonial Virginia. The aspects of white society examined by this dissertation include landholding, control of labor, religious diversity, and resistance to magisterial authority.;In the cultural frontier, Indian-white relations included routinely peaceful contacts as well as occasional violent outbursts. Cherokees responded to white expansion primarily with diplomacy and accommodation, while the tribes of the upper Ohio River Valley chose more militant resistance.;For contemporary whites and Indians, the complex frontier that was colonial Augusta County seemed at times to offer great rewards. Red or white, individual successes in realizing those rewards varied widely, depending partly on chance and larger historical events beyond local control. One constant continually influenced both destinies--the form and function of white society. That society, simultaneously conservative and dynamic, supported the expansion of colonial Virginia into the North American interior.

This dissertation is, first and foremost, an account of John Dahlgren's long and often controversial naval career. Beginning with his appointment to the navy in 1826, it details his climb from obscurity to the relative fame and recognition that he enjoyed by the end of his life: first as the noted designer of the distinctive, bottle-shaped Dahlgren gun, which was the navy's primary cannon during the Civil War, and, second, as one of only a few officers to attain the rank of admiral during the Civil War.;Dahlgren's career, both as an ordnance specialist and as a line officer, demonstrates how many officers scrambled up the military ladder. Using whatever means they could, including developing and utilizing political connections as well as conducting personal public relations campaigns, success often had little to do with true professional merit.;Dahlgren's Civil War career is also extremely important. His involvement with the Union's military campaign against Charleston reveals the absolute obsession that the North, especially the Union navy, had with trying to destroy this city. Additionally, Dahlgren's war career shows the Navy Department in an entirely different light than the one in which it is usually seen. Compared to the War Department, the Navy Department has generally been viewed as being relatively flawless during the war, and its few failings have been portrayed as innocent and well meaning mistakes. The circumstances surrounding Dahlgren's appointment to, and subsequent command of, the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron shows that this was not the case, as Dahlgren was primarily a pawn in both the Navy Department's and the Lincoln administration's battles against their Congressional enemies.;This dissertation is also the story of Dahlgren the man. It details the private side of his obsessive quest for personal glory and analyzes the ways in which he struggled to reconcile his insatiable ambition with the realities of his career. While he enjoyed the outward trappings of success, a reputation as a brilliant ordnance expert and the highest rank in the navy, Dahlgren died a bitter and disappointed man. Because he never experienced victory in battle, which was the ultimate measure of greatness for a naval hero, Dahlgren's lifelong quest for glory was never completely fulfilled.