HISTORY Diplomatic Ties: Slavery and Diplomacy in the Gulf Coast Region, 1836-1845 Marjorie Denise Brown Dissertation under the direction of Professor Richard J.M. Blackett By focusing on the tenures of five diplomats, this study examines the effect of diplomacy on the westward expansion of slavery after Texasâ independence in 1836 to its annexation into the Union in 1845. This project begins with the confrontation of the formal diplomatic world on the frontier with the contested introduction of slaves in the region. During the Republic (1836-45), Texasâ diplomatic corps emerged out of the slaveholding class. The Republicâs diplomacy tied Texasâ interests from the Gulf Coast of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean to Great Britain and the rest of Europe. In examining the role of diplomacy and the Republic of Texas, the issue of slavery is a continuous and contentious subject. By looking at the Republic, this study merges three different historiographiesâLatin American, North American, and British âto gain a comprehensive view of the westward expansion of slavery. Texas, due to its geographical size, was at the heart of the Gulf Coast region and serves as lens through which to view the westward expansion of slavery. This dissertation argues that diplomacy, particularly by Texas diplomats, propelled the westward expansion of slavery. This project addresses different questions concerning the slave trade. For example, why did slavery spread with such alacrity in the Republic in spite of strong international resistance? How did this trade create âunholy unionsâ between countries, who were politically, socially, and economically opposed to one another? In the end, these questions, allow for an assessment on the importance of the tie between diplomatic relations and the westward expansion of slavery to the economy of the Gulf Coast region in the antebellum years.

In early 1965, Dr. Jack Geiger, a physician with a history of civil rights activism, approached officials in the newly-created Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and proposed a plan to create a community health center in the South. The OEO, which had been charged with directing President Johnsonâs War on Poverty, was then in the midst of searching for community-oriented solutions to poverty. OEO officials seized Geigerâs proposal and what they saw as the opportunity to tackle health and poverty in tandem, and a new federal program was born. Over the next few years, the OEO funded community health centers across the country. This dissertation looks at how the ideas of âcommunity,â âcommunity health,â and âcommunity controlâ came to form the basis of a federal program. The community health center program was the result of interactions between federal officials, medical reformers, medical schools, health radicals, and the patients themselves. Drawn together by the appeal of âcommunity,â these groups soon realized that their interests did not always align. This dissertation will explore these tensions and conflicts, shedding light on how the competing definitions of âcommunityâ shaped the implementation of the community health center program. In the process, it attempts to integrate the community health centers into the larger history of the War on Poverty and reconcile the split between bottom-up and top-down approaches.

<p> This thesis argues that Pennsylvanian James Buchanan&rsquo;s political principles were formed early by classical republicanism as practiced in southern colonies/states during the pre-Revolutionary era and the early republic. An early and devoted admirer of South Carolina political theorists William Lowndes and John Calhoun, Buchanan developed a desire for harmony above all else, encouraging him throughout his entire political career to foster southern appeasement. When selecting his Cabinet in 1856-1857, he chose only men who agreed with him on all important issues, disdaining the advice and counsel of those who did not. While considered a master politician prior to his term, his actions during a critical time in the nation&rsquo;s history served to hasten the boiling sectional conflict. He followed the desires of the South in Kansas Territory despite all opposition from Free-Soilers and his own duly appointed Governor. He initiated a war with Brigham Young in Utah Territory. He pursued territorial expansion in the Caribbean to satisfy his Southern constituency. After the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, his Cabinet disintegrated and his Attorney General Jeremiah S. Black stepped forward to strengthen Buchanan&rsquo;s resolve in maintaining the sanctity of the federal Union above all else.</p><p> This thesis provides two important historiographical contributions. Historians have mostly focused on Buchanan&rsquo;s &ldquo;dough-face&rdquo; actions without examining the roots of the belief system fostering them. As Lincoln and Buchanan were the only two American presidents to face a crisis in which states actually seceded from the Union, we must examine how one man succeeded while another one failed. While Doris Kerns Goodwin produced a much-acclaimed work on Lincoln&rsquo;s relationship with his cabinet in <i>Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln</i>, historians have not contrasted his approach to leadership within his Cabinet with that of his predecessor (Buchanan). </p><p>

The fifteenth century in England was an extremely tumultuous period. The beginning of the century saw the continuation and eventual end of the Hundred Years War while the latter half saw a period of noble-led civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. The Wars of the Roses lasted for approximately thirty years and spanned the reigns of four kings: Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII. The English peerage was intimately involved throughout the entire conflict. Nobles such as Richard, Duke of York and Richard, Earl of Salisbury were responsible for beginning the Wars of the Roses, and other members of the nobility supported the Duke of York and the deposition of Henry VI in favor of Edward IV in 1461. Nine years later, Richard, Earl of Warwick and George, Duke of Clarence were responsible for the brief deposition of Edward IV. In 1483, the Duke of Buckingham aided Richard III in usurping his young nephew. Finally, in 1485, John, Earl of Oxford, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, and Thomas, Lord Stanley were integral in placing Henry VII on the throne. Some scholars have argued that Henry VII recognized that the main cause of the previous thirty years of civil war was the unrestrained and independent nobility which is why he sought to tame his nobility. This study will look at the Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Calendar of the Fine Rolls, Calendar of the Charter Rolls, and Calendar of the Close Rolls from the reigns of the four kings intimately involved with the Wars of the Roses and its immediate aftermath. These sources will be used to examine the patronage given to the nobility by each king as well as any punitive measures taken against the nobility for misbehavior. This evidence will show that Henry VII did, in fact, tame his nobility. He did so by restricting his patronage to the nobility in comparison to his predecessors. He also placed troublesome nobles under repressive bonds to ensure their loyalty.

From 1924 to 1932, Louisiana lawmakers considered five bills that would have granted superintendents of state institutions and some private hospitals the authority to forcibly sterilize their patients. Based on similar legislation passed in thirty-six other states, the bills cited eugenics as evidence that stripping these patients of their ability to reproduce would prevent the conditions such as feeblemindedness from passing on to the next generation. Although none of the bills passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature, a couple of them came dangerously close to becoming law. The debate among legislators, professionals, and social reformers provides a greater understanding of how Louisianans considered the controversial procedure. Proponents claimed that the procedure would end crime and poverty and save the state money. Opponents argued that eugenics was junk science and sterilization was a dangerous scheme. National figures contributed to the debate over compulsory eugenic sterilization in Louisiana, and the arguments offered resembled those in the national debate. Scholars have credited the opposition of Louisianas influential Roman Catholic Church as the reason why the state never adopted compulsory eugenic sterilization. A careful study of the public debate surrounding the bills and the breakdown of the legislative votes, however, suggests the failure resulted from more complex factors than a simple religious objection. The legislative vote indicates that the Catholic Churches objections did not always convince state senators from majority Catholic districts. Many of these lawmakers voted for the bills. Although, the Catholic opposition to the procedure did help to defeat the bill, other factors played a role. A prominent feature within the public debate is a discussion over individual rights versus the ability of the state to violate those rights in order to protect the public good. These finding not only challenge the accepted interpretation surrounding compulsory eugenic sterilization in Louisiana, but they suggest that simple explanations, such as religious divisions, do not necessarily explain legislative votes.

Connor was an Irish-born member of seventeenth-century English medical society who made an impact on medicine through his use of anatomy. This forward-thinking scientist also worked as a court physician for the Polish king John III Sobieski (1629- 1696) and published a history of that country. This thesis will examine Bernard Connor's 1698 publication The History of Poland to show that the Commonwealth was considered a vision of a progressive European parliamentary government that could serve as a model for a struggling English parliamentary government, thus supporting Larry Wolff and Maria Todorova's vision of the later eighteenth-century creation of the idea of a backward "eastern Europe."

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the Truman administration used fear to generate popular support for its Cold War foreign policies. Three issues were examined through the use of published government documents, personal memoirs, and weekly periodicals to assess the responses of the American public: the enactment of universal military training (UMT), the Soviet detonation of an atomic device, and the Truman administration's decision to build the hydrogen bomb. This study shows that the changing attitudes in the Truman administration toward the Soviet Union occurred in a climate of fear. Through press releases and by exerting influence on the media, the administration attempted to control the information the public received. Through the use of propaganda, the Truman administration pursued the implementation of UMT, generated fear of the Soviet Union after its detonation of the atomic bomb, and gained relative public support for the decision to build the hydrogen bomb.

This thesis is an examination of the differing nature of Indian and European relations on a fur trading and a settlement frontier. The argument is based on the assumption that there was a fairly sharply definable shift from fur trade to settlement in British Columbia; that in 1858 the fur trade essentially came to an end and the settlement frontier was born. This transition from fur trade to settlement also brought quite fundamental changes in the nature of Indian-European relations. During the fur trading period Indians and Europeans were involved, in a mutually beneficial economic system. Because of the nature of their activities fur traders were both unable and unwilling to force major cultural change on the Indians, so the change that did occur within Indian societies was limited and could be controlled by the Indians. During the fur trading period Indian cultures were stimulated rather than disrupted as a result of contact with Europeans. With settlement, however, the Indians experienced major cultural disruptions. New groups of Europeans arrived and made different demands on the Indians. Gold miners, settlers, missionaries and government officials, in different ways, all required the Indians to make major changes in their way of life, and the whites now had the power to force change. The Indians were no longer free to adapt as they wished, and the pace of change was so rapid that many Indians lost control of their situation. As the Europeans consolidated their hold on the country the traditional Indian cultures were disrupted while the Indians' current needs were neglected. Governmental action constituted an attack on Indian cultures, and reflected the fact that the Indians had become irrelevant to the development of the Province by white settlers. By 189 0 the developments that had commenced with the advent of settlement were complete. The settlers were in a firmly established position of dominance over the Indians of British Columbia. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

ABSTRACT In modern US history, the 1990s are often regarded as The Decade of Peace and Prosperity. Though the liberalization of markets and a technology boom fueled American prosperity, expectations of post-Cold War peace remained elusive. The purpose of this study is to observe how in the moment when the US became the worlds superpower, it also began to retreat from a position of active leadership. Elected in 1992, President Bill Clinton looked towards the United Nations as the answer to keeping peace around the globe. His administrations policies of democratic enlargement and aggressive multilateralism aimed to combine the spread of free market democracy and collective security as concepts upon which to contain foreign conflict. While noble in its idealism, Clinton lacked clear objectives when faced with international crises. His focus on domestic issues, and lack of attention to cases where US leadership was necessary, hurt Americas credibility as a force for humanity and justice in the eyes of many around the globe. With a focus on the eruption of five serious foreign entanglements during Clintons two termsSomalia, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan Genocide, Haiti, and the rise of Al Qaedathis work illuminates a distrust of resolute American leadership among Clinton and his primary advisors. His hesitancy to wield American power, actively persuade allies, and use US influence to direct international policy reflected a nation unwilling to confront either friend or foe to advance its own interests. The rapid rise of al Qaeda during the Clinton presidency gives additional weight to this studys findings regarding the administrations lack of focus and willpower involving direct national security threats. As Clinton increasingly looked towards international bodies for direction, even at the height of US power, he allowed the nation to become mired in incompetent peacekeeping missions that too often yielded disastrous consequences, both for US forces and those they were sent to protect.

This thesis examines the controversial relationship between contemporaries Carter G. Woodson, founder and director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and Thomas Jesse Jones, chief executive of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. This comparative study considers the life and work ofboth Woodson and Jones and assesses their contributions to African-American history, philanthropy, and race relations. Their relationship is interpreted through close examination and analysis of various writings, conflicting ideologies, and public accusations against one another. The conclusions drawn suggest that white foundation officials, often under the auspices ofracial cooperation, manipulated the policies ofblack institutions and organizations. This evaluation provides a more thorough understanding ofthe historic and contentious struggle that often occurred between the giver and the recipient during the early twentieth century.