In the annals of North Carolina history, few figures stand out more than Griffith Rutherford. An orphan when he arrived in the new world, Rutherford settled in the North Carolina backcountry two decades before the American Revolution. Almost immediately he ascended a social and economic ladder in Rowan County in his service as a soldier and elected assemblyman. A consummate fixer during his military career, Rutherford continually rushed to scenes when a Loyalist insurrections or party of marauding Indians threatened the state. As a militia general during the Revolution he was responsible for the defense of the entire western quadrant of the state. When he was not engaging insurgents or leading an army into Cherokee villages, Rutherford served in several elected offices. His first came during the 1766 Regulator insurrection that disrupted North Carolina. After helping draft the state constitution in 1776, Rutherford served in the state Senate, a post he held in between military campaigns that took him to Georgia and South Carolina. This dissertation is the story of how Rutherford, in spite of his humble origins, eventually became one of the most prominent men in his state. Though the information about his life is often scant, enough can be gleaned to utilize Rutherford as an example of a rapidly ascending backcountry figure. By taking full advantage of the opportunities and connections afforded him, Rutherford illustrates how late colonial North Carolina was a place where rapid advancement could take place. Making Rutherfords life more unique is the way he combined politics and military service during several moments in his life. On several occasions, Rutherford underwent a grueling military campaign and upon his return quickly jumped in the current political debate. His experience in one service always affected the other, and it shaped his decisions as a militia officer and as an elected official. Though he lacked the legal or formal education of his contemporaries, Rutherford earned the respect and sometimes rage of the individuals who helped secure and create the state of North Carolina.

The golden age of the Royal Navy, which saw its apotheosis at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, also presented one of the great paradoxes of modern naval organization. "Young gentlemen," some as young as eight or nine, were placed in positions of authority aboard His Majesty's ships and expected to command veteran mariners with decades of sea experience. The effectiveness of this system, and the continued success of the Royal Navy as an institution, tended to belie the obvious disadvantages of placing adolescent recruits on the quarterdecks of active men-of-war. This study examines two aspects of the process that allowed midshipmen and quarterdeck boys to function within the shipboard hierarchy and offers explanation by way of J. C. D. Clark's theory of a persistent ancien regime mentality in English society. Part I examines the selection of boys destined for command. A trend that began in the late 1770s saw a dramatic increase in the number of "Honorable" boys, those with significant social and/or political "interest," entering the service. Many senior officers lamented the preferential treatment granted these young notables and its deleterious effect on subordination. Within the context of Clark's theory of a "patrician hegemony," the desirability of a naval career during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars meant that, increasingly, opportunities benefited the elite. The natural authority granted by birth was also widely accepted by the men of the lower deck, despite social unrest stirring in France and the effects of the Great Mutinies of 1797. Part II looks at the sources of a young gentleman's authority. Those institutions, both naval and civilian, that granted young gentlemen their practical and theoretical status as officers-in-training, also reinforced the structure of the old order. The increasing social status of young gentlemen in the Royal Navy of the Great Wars and the processes that maintained their authority reflected wider social and cultural trends - developments that confirmed the view of Georgian England as an ancien regime.

In response to increased tensions over the Cold War and internal security, and in response to increased anti-Communism during the Red Scare, Congress, in 1950, enacted a notorious piece of legislation. The McCarran Act was designed to combat both the increased threat of international aggression by Communist nations and, thanks to a Communist party inside the United States, the possibility of internal subversion on the domestic front. The McCarran Act created a Subversive Activities Control Board to register members of a Communist-action organization or a Communist-front organization. Also contained within the McCarran Act was an Emergency Detention statute, which gave the President authority during times of internal security emergency, to apprehend and detain each person as to whom there is a reasonable ground to believe that such person probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with others to engage in, acts of espionage or sabotage. The McCarran Internal Security Act was the most comprehensive and stringent piece of anti-Communist legislation signed into law during the post-1945 Red Scare. The McCarran Act raised important questions regarding the constitutionality of internal security legislation and the debate over internal security and civil liberties. This thesis argues that the decisions made by the Supreme Court in cases involving the McCarran Act and other anti-Communist legislation created a framework within which Congress created future internal security legislation, including the USA Patriot Act of 2001.

The memory of Civil War prisons has always been contested. Since 1861, generations of Americans struggled with the questions raised by the deaths of approximately 56,000 prisoners of war, almost one-tenth of all Civil War fatalities. During the war, throughout Reconstruction, and well into the twentieth century, a sectional debate raged over the responsibility for the prison casualties. Republican politicians invoked the savage cruelty of Confederate prisons as they waved the bloody shirt, while hundreds of former prisoners published narratives that blamed various prison officials and promoted sectional bitterness. The animosity reflected a need to identify individuals responsible for the tragedy as well as the stakes involved-how history would remember the Union and Confederate prisons. In the 1920s and 1930s, when the prison controversy finally bowed to the influence of sectional reconciliation, Americans began exploring the legacy of Civil War prisons against the backdrop of the First and Second World Wars and their even more terrible atrocities. Historians and writers, inspired by the pursuit of objectivity, probed the legacy of Civil War prisons, no longer to blame individual Union or Confederate officials, but instead out of a desire to understand how such horrors could be possible in a supposedly modern society. In recent decades, a trend developed towards commemorating and commercializing the tragedy of Civil War prisons, culminating in the 1998 opening of the National POW Museum at Andersonville, Georgia, site of the most infamous Civil War prison. The museum presented a universal narrative of the POW experience that interpreted Civil War prisons not as a terrible exception, but as the first in a series of modern atrocities. In its message of patriotic appreciation for the sacrifice of all American POWs, however, the museum also glorified their suffering as the inevitable cost of freedom. Throughout the reinterpretation of Civil War prisons, the effort to understand the prison deaths reflected a desire to find meaning in the tragedy. Although satisfactory answers for the prison atrocities of the Civil War remained elusive, the persistence Americans showed in asking the questions testifies to the enduring power of historical memory.

Andrew Jackson has inspired numerous biographies and works of historical scholarship, but his religious views have attracted very little attention. Jackson may have been a giant on the political landscape, but he was also a human being, an ordinary American who experienced the same difficulties and challenges as other Americans of the early nineteenth century. Another common experience for many Americans of Jacksons day included church life, revivals, and efforts to conceptualize every day events within the context of religious experience. Finding out where Jackson stood on religion and what role religion played in his thinking helps situate him as a man of his times. Unfortunately, he so greatly influenced his generation that he has taken on larger-than-life proportions, and even historians have found it difficult to present Jackson as an ordinary person who could choose to make the same responses to religion as did his contemporaries. In sum, looking at Jacksons religious views as expressed in his correspondence regarding events both public and private helps explain him. Jackson wrote thousands of letters over the course of his lifetime, and his correspondence, especially his private letters to his friends and family, indicate that he did indeed inherit and live by a sturdy set of religious convictions, deeply rooted in the Calvinist tradition of Scottish Presbyterian Christianity. In his letters, Jackson briefly but consistently revealed his concern over his relationship to the sovereignty and providence of God. Jacksons foundational belief that a sovereign God governed the world, guiding it toward a destiny only He could fully comprehend remained unshaken, even as he experienced the death of beloved family members, the difficulties of war, and other harsh realities of early nineteenth-century American life. As he grew older, Jackson also became more evangelical in his religious outlook, an experience common to many other people of the Jacksonian period. Ralph Waldo Emersons views on Providence serve as a foil to more greatly reveal the subtle difference between the Jacksonian Providential optimism rooted in uncertainty and the emerging, Whiggish world view that would eventually overcome it.

The Delta country of northeast Louisiana is a richly productive alluvial region stretching south from the Arkansas line to the confluence of the Red and Mississippi Rivers below Natchez. As the source of great cotton fortunes made during antebellum times, it reflected the Old South ideal and, for several decades after the end of the Civil War, remained firmly grounded in this old plantation culture. The economic depression of the 1890s and the coming of the boll weevil in the early 1900s, however, signaled a gradual decline that turned into full-blown dissolution in the years following the First World War. Old families, both black and white, were swept aside or moved away, new people arrived, lands changed hands, and revolutions in organization and authority eroded the bonds of people connected by the intensity of shared experience through time. This dissertation examines the challenges to traditional Delta life during the 1920s and 1930s, as the old plantation order collapsed amidst the pressures of the modern era. In particular, this study focuses on the transformation of the planter class from a collection of independent producers to an organized interest group, as its members grappled with financial uncertainty, the collapse of their social hegemony, and the loss of political power. Ongoing problems with the cotton economy forced dramatic changes in the plantation routine and a virtual revolution in race, gender, and class relations further disrupted the integrity of the old order. The rise of Huey Long to prominence decreased the influence of planters in state and national politics and the expansion of the Federal government into agriculture and flood control policy during the ensuing years, although ultimately beneficial, proved disturbing for a group accustomed to radical independence. By the end of the 1930s, however, local planters had adjusted to the new conditions, paving the way for rapid development after the Second World War and moving the Delta ever further from its roots in the antebellum era.

Elizabeth I of England was one of the most celebrated monarchs in history. Authors, playwrights, and artists venerated her in their art. At her accession, however, her subjects were unsure about their new queen. She was an illegitimate female ruling a religiously divided kingdom. In response to this, Elizabeth and her council initiated a propaganda campaign that created an image of Elizabeth as a wise, just, and well-beloved ruler. This thesis will examine Elizabeths coronation procession, the performance of plays and masques at court, and the queens annual progresses to show how Elizabeth and her subjects used drama, pageantry, and spectacle to communicate with each other, laying the foundation for the Cult of Gloriana.

The case of the all-black 25th Infantry of the United States Army in the Brownsville Affair is perhaps one of the most egregious events in American history. On the night of August 13, 1906, a group of anonymous men went on a shooting rampage throughout the town of Brownsville, Texas, leaving one person dead and another wounded. Since there had been hostilities between black soldiers and white civilians prior to the shootings, it did not take long for local authorities to assume the collective guilt of black soldiers. Without an adequate investigation or a full hearing, President Roosevelt bowed to public pressure and issued dishonorable discharges to all members of the 25th who were stationed in Brownsville. Following their immediate discharge from the United States Army in December 1906, many of these soldiers were refused civilian employment due to their military status. This thesis is a reexamination of the Brownsville affair and its aftermath and seeks to make a case for restitution on behalf of the discharged soldiers and their families.

Many free women of color lived in antebellum New Orleans. Free women of color tried hard to improve their lives, and engaged in a wide range of economic activities, including slaveholding. Numerous records show that free women of color owned slaves. It is hard to determine why free women of color engaged in such business. Free women of colors relations with their slaves is controversial as it is difficult to assess why free black women would own slaves, but also buy, sell, and mortgage slaves. Free women of colors status was exceptional due to specific patterns of manumission in Spanish Louisiana, and to their unique relations with white men. These women expanded and exploited the opportunities that were available to them, achieving a unique social and economic status in New Orleans. Thus, they came to own substantial amounts of property including slaves. Notarial actssales of slaves, wills, mortgages, successions, petitions for emancipation, etc.help give an accurate description of these womens social and economic status. These acts extensively document free women of colors position as regards slaveholding, and allow to give a powerful and fresh outlook on free black female slaveholding. These acts not only reflect the affluence of free women of color in New Orleans, but they also show the impact of the arrival of the refugees from Saint Domingue and Cuba. Hence, free women of color from Saint Domingue constituted an important proportion of slaveholders in New Orleans. Their lives resembled free women of colors in Louisiana as they formed a diverse group with a unique and distinct culture. Free women of color sometimes bought slaves for benevolent reasons, and occasionally emancipated some of them. However, it seems that most of free women of color were aware of the commercial advantages they could get from slaveholding. Therefore, the latter should not be underestimated. The economic potential of slaves seemed to have been constantly on their minds whether they owned significant property, or experienced precarious situations. Thus, it is difficult to ignore evidence that free women of color engaged in slavery for commercial purposesand prospered.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, southern cities such as New Orleans had to reconstitute local civilian government under extremely difficult circumstances. Different aspects of their physical infrastructure had been worn down and required revitalization. Sudden changes in the size and demographics of the population made social cohesion and provision of services more difficult and complicated. A depressed economy limited the financial resources available to government and business to confront the needs of growth. These recovery problems were common to all areas of the South, but in New Orleans they were greatly exacerbated by the citys unusually high population density and its special role in commerce. The new city government not only had to provide services and preserve safety, but civic leaders had to make themselves seem like legitimate and competent replacements. Outgoing Union authorities had to seem superfluous in their continued presence. This thesis seeks to know how fervently city leadership sought to meet these problems, and to what degree they succeeded. The main areas of focus are on transportation, public health, and public safety. To investigate these matters I studied a range of primary and secondary sources. Letter books, contracts, and permits recorded by the City of New Orleans furnish a view of the citys official policies. New Orleanss diverse newspapers illustrate public perception of crisis management as it unfolded. Census bureau data grounds idiosyncratic observations of city life in statistical foundations. A wealth of photographic documentation of this period offers the look and feel of a great city in transition from a slave economy to the uncertainties of the new free labor society. While the first civilian governments after the war did much to solve basic problems of industry, they failed to properly account for the substantial needs of their polity. Through shortsightedness and the uninspired maintenance of outmoded policies, city government failed the trust placed in it in 1865.