My work—studying Roman Catholics in the South during the American Civil War— is a remedy to a two-directional historiographical neglect. Much of American Catholic scholarship focuses on the twentieth century (especially the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath), the North, and issues of race, class, urbanization, and gender giving sparse treatment to the nineteenth century South; when the nineteenth century is discussed the focus is once more usually on the North, immigration, and societal tensions between Catholics and Protestants. On the other hand, Civil War religious scholarship is largely Protestant in nature and while treating the nineteenth century South there is sparse coverage of how Catholicism fits within this paradigm. My work addresses both issues, adding the nineteenth century Southern voice to American Catholic scholarship and the Catholic voice to Civil War religious studies. My work is a study of allegiance and the interplay between religious and political attachments. Clergy—Catholic bishops, priests (usually chaplains), sisters, and the Pope, Pius IX—are the main characters of the study with a lay component present as well via Catholic soldiers. I argue that all of the Catholics of my study were fully “Confederatized,” committed to and involved in the Southern nation and cause, and both “devout Catholics and devoted Confederates.” They found no tension between their faith and their politics and lived both allegiances to the maximum with chaplains and soldiers the most ardent Confederates. The one exception to the “devoted Confederates” label were Catholic nuns. They were almost exclusively focused on their faith and providing spiritual and medical assistance to the men they ministered to in their role as Sister-nurses. While the Sister-nurses were apolitical their participation in the Confederate cause as battlefield medics shows the all encompassing involvement of Southern Catholics in the Confederacy—as soldiers, medics, and religious and social leaders as the bishops were, and both men and women, clergy and laity—and demonstrates that future studies of American Catholic, and Civil War religious, history can no longer overlook these men and women.

No description available.

The Civil War contained many examples of courage and commitment to duty that were inspired by religion. In recent years much has been written on this subject of religion and the Civil War but virtually all of it is written about Protestant chaplains and this has created a gap in the record. This thesis covers the role played by Catholic chaplains in Confederate army regiments from Louisiana. It explores their life, ministry, military role, and impact on the regiments. To cover this in depth the Catholic chaplains selected we those who left published records.

Before and during the Civil War, Richmond's German-Americans were divided by their diverse politics, economic interests, cultures, and religions. Some exhibited Confederate sentiments and others Unionist. At the start of the war, scores of Richmond's German-born men volunteered for Confederate military service while others fled to the North. Those who remained found that they were not fully accepted as members of the Confederate citizenry. Political allegiances within the German-American community were not static. They changed during the course of the war, largely under the influence of nativism. Nativists put into practice a self-fulfilling prophecy that, by accusing the German-born of disloyalty, alienated them and discouraged their sympathies towards the Confederacy. In doing so, by constructing an image of a German antihero, the Confederacy built up its spirit of nationalism. Although German immigrants moved to cities, in the South and in the North, primarily in order to seek economic opportunities, the immigrants who came to Richmond were different from their ethnic counterparts of the North. As they assimilated and acculturated to the South, their values, behaviors, and loyalties became diverse. By the time of the Civil War, the German-American community of Richmond was quite divided. A common ethnicity failed to hold even those hundreds of German-Americans living in Richmond to one political ideology. Their story illustrates that ethnic divisions often do not coincide with political ones. Richmond's German-American community received, during the Civil War, a reputation for universal disloyalty. This myth continues today, though a complex analysis of the German-born does not support it. / Master of Arts

No description available.

<p>Walker Percy writes, in the foreword of "A confederacy of dunces", “I hesitate to use the word comedy - though comedy it is - because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that …It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from.” In this essay I have analyzed where the sadness comes from, through the psychoanalytic theories of Jaqcues Lacan, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, mainly. My standpoint is that no text or utterance is ever completed, and therefore it is not absolute. The text itself is the strongest manifestation of power in the novel. When scrutinizing the text itself, I have treated it as one of the analysands, trying to reveal the suppressed information underneath the surface of the implied story.</p>

John Brown Gordon was committed to the mission of national reconciliation. He knew that the South would have to embrace the North to repair the devastation of the Civil War. Driven by dedication to public service after the war, he worked through his positions in governmental offices to help the South. As his public life slowed he began work on a lecture aimed at making him a peacemaker, a missionary for reconciliation. His purpose was to provide a broad, nationalistic perspective which created a common vantage point that would allow both Northerners and Southerners to derive pride and honor from their participation in the Civil War. The lecture, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," became very popular in a short period of time, and made Gordon one of the most requested speakers of the Southern Lyceum Program and Slayton Lyceum Program. The purpose of this critical interpretation of Gordon's lecture is to account for the effectiveness of the rhetorical elements and strategies in the work. The analysis will be based on Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm. Narratives dominate the content and structure of speech; narratives provide a way of ordering and presenting a view of the world through descriptions of a situation - -the act of storytellingthe format Gordon chose in creating the lecture. After drawing conclusions from application of the narrative paradigm I will focus on identifying and evaluating Gordon's rhetorical vision, which is based in Ernest Bormann's fantasy-theme theory. Finally, due to the synecdochal nature of the narratives I will use Kenneth Burke's four master tropes literature to fully interpret the various aspects of the narrative, which complements the initial mission of narrative criticism. In "The Last Days of the Confederacy," Gordon masterfully uses anecdotes from his experiences in the Civil War to create narrative sequences, which construct a strategy of transformative discourse. A typical sequence would start with an ingratiary tactic in which Gordon, in his eloquent manner, would describe a Northern character, scene, or theme and juxtapose it to another story from the South. The purpose of this sequence is to generate irony, creating a dialectic between the two stories, which, at the surface, seem to be opposed. His third step, then, was to use that dialectic to point to the commonalities between the North and the South. This he would do by illustrating an American trait, skill, or value. The result would be a major theme demonstrating a national value or belief to add strength to his existing compendium of themes, such as unity, fraternity, and brotherhood - -all tools to salve the process of reconciliation of conflict with face-saving for both. / Graduation date: 1994

Walker Percy writes, in the foreword of "A confederacy of dunces", “I hesitate to use the word comedy - though comedy it is - because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that …It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from.” In this essay I have analyzed where the sadness comes from, through the psychoanalytic theories of Jaqcues Lacan, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, mainly. My standpoint is that no text or utterance is ever completed, and therefore it is not absolute. The text itself is the strongest manifestation of power in the novel. When scrutinizing the text itself, I have treated it as one of the analysands, trying to reveal the suppressed information underneath the surface of the implied story.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, the United States (the Union) already had international diplomatic status, whereas the Confederate States of America wanted foreign recognition of its independence. The two governments sent agents and propagandists across the Atlantic, in particular to Great Britain to support their objectives. The Confederacy and the Union used various avenues, including rallies, talking with members of Parliament, and publications to convince the British that supporting the Confederacy was the correct action to take. The Union’s most well-known weapon emerged in January 1863: the Emancipation Proclamation. From the moment President Abraham Lincoln announced in September 1862 that he would emancipate slaves in the rebelling states, the nature of the American Civil War as viewed by the British changed. It could no longer be viewed simply as a war for southern independence, for it became more explicitly about the maintenance or abolition of slavery. For the British, slavery was a moral issue that they would never countenance. &lt;br&gt;The propagandists battled not just over slavery and its moral implications but also over supplies, and the propaganda battle climaxed over a material issue, that of the 1862 Florida and Alabama incidents when the Confederacy sneaked the ships out of Britain. The Union had tried desperately to convince the British government to stop the ships from sailing, but the British government allowed them to sail. Union outrage over the ships, subsequent military victories and the Emancipation Proclamation ultimately outweighed the efforts of Confederate diplomats and propagandists to gain open international recognition and support. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / History / MA / Thesis

This thesis describes the events leading up to the capture of Atlanta by the Union army during the Civil War.