The cavalier image in the antebellum South represented the pinnacle of white southern manhood. Defined by their chivalry, honor, bravery, and skills as horsemen and fightersâcharacteristics found valuable by southerners. Cavaliers, however, also embodied the white Southâs control over a large enslaved black population, and many southern planters fashioned themselves according to this image. Over time, the image became more aristocratic as cavalier became synonymous with slaveholders, and slaveholders, most believed, provided social order. After the Civil War, the cavalier did not completely disappear. Instead, southerners slowly began a transformation of the cavalier. By applying the title of cavalier to George Armstrong Custer after his death, southerners honored his military ability, his manhood, and most important, the uses his death had in aiding southerners in their call to end Reconstruction. Applying the title to a northerner, however, hastened the downfall of the cavalier image. During the Spanish-American War, southerners honored Theodore Roosevelt for his manliness and his martial abilities, but never called him a cavalier. In fact, most southerners agreed that the cavalier had become a figure of the past ensconced in the history of the Civil War. In 1898, most of the Southâs praise went to volunteer soldiers, who now commanded a powerful place in the southern mind for their prowess in combat, their dutiful response to the call for volunteers, bravery, and manliness. Southern manhood and volunteerism had become such powerful notions that by 1916 both white and black volunteers received praise. Replacing the cavalier, the volunteer image came to embody many of the characteristics its predecessor: honor, manhood, and martial prowess. The declension of the cavalier image can be attributed to three distinctive themes. First, chivalrous manhood became less important to southern society, and as chivalry faded, so too did the cavalier image. Warfare and society also became more egalitarian. Volunteer soldiers became just as potent symbolically as the cavalier had once been. Finally, the nature of warfare itself changed. No longer able to mount cavalry charges because of technological advancements, the importance of the mounted warrior dwindled away.

The relationship between science and religion was a dominant topic in late-Victorian Britain. This is exemplified in the debate over biblical authenticity and bible history. After 1860 higher criticism, the textual examination of the biblical texts became a prominent issue of discussion in British society. Higher critics brought into question the authorship and authenticity of the Pentateuch, particularly that of Genesis. One significant contributor to this debate was Oxford educator and Assyriologist Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce, who firmly believed that philology, history and, particularly, archeology provided the evidence necessary to validate the accuracy of biblical texts. Supporters of orthodoxy embraced Sayce's argument, believing he had successfully countered the arguments of the higher critics and exonerated biblical authenticity. His combination of liberal theology and modern philology made him the ideal advocate for the truth of the bible, which he defended in a new, 'scientific' way rather than resorting to traditional theological arguments. This dissertation examines Sayce's intellectual approach to biblical history and emphasizes his significant contributions to the debates over Old Testament criticism. Even though Sayce embraced the use of archeology, history and philology in proving biblical authenticity, he acknowledged similarities between Babylonian texts and the Book of Genesis. The recognition of these similarities was shaped by his extensive study of ancient history and philology. Sayce's use of liberal, scientific methods to defend orthodoxy makes his contributions to late-Victorian religious thought interesting and complex. His career and religious interpretations not only reflect Britain's interest and focus on religion but also British society's anxiety over secularization and its impact on religious life. Contemporary works which deal with religion in Britain, and more specifically higher criticism, either omit Sayce or underemphasize his contributions. This has contributed to the lack of information on Sayce. This dissertation relies on newly discovered documents, used here for the first time, to provide insight and perspective into Sayce's intellectual development from religious liberalism (the acceptance and acknowledgment of the higher critical) during the 1860s to firmly defending orthodoxy (harshly criticizing higher critics) after 1895.

Through its military and political service to the United Provinces of the Netherlands during the course of the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain, the house of Orange came to occupy a special place in Dutch culture. The image of the house of Orange in Dutch political culture followed a trajectory of cultural assimilation from the sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, whereby Orange's continued service linked it inextricably to certain aspects of Dutch culture. Having granted the house of Orange legitimacy as political leaders, the Dutch people went about incorporating Orange into the heart of their cultural spirit. In May 1650, William II, prince of Orange, tried to bully the province of Holland into a more favorable political settlement by visiting its principal cities at the head of the army. The first stadholderless era commenced upon the death of William II in November 1650, with the major political crisis not yet settled. The house of Orange in these years depended on the cultural loyalty of Orangists for support. These new circumstances resulted in a displacement of Orangist loyalty from the person of the stadholder-prince of Orange to the house itself, and a fidelity to the idea that the prince of Orange belonged in the offices of stadholder, captain- and admiral-general. Orangists had strong hopes that the young William III would one day come to power. The sources examined here reveal three major themes in the expressions of Orangism during the first stadholderless era. Printmakers relied on the familiarity of their audience with nature to depict William III as a young sprout who would one day grow into the strong Tree of Orange. In addition to this arboreal metaphor, images of nursing mothers in conjunction with the house of Orange reinforced the notion that William III benefited from proper nurturing and education. Finally, an analysis of the use of classical imagery in Orangist materials suggests conclusions about the social and religious composition of the audience for popular Orangism.

Mary Tudor, the first officially crowned queen regnant of England, received a humanist education. A curriculum was recommended for her in multiple writings by Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives. This thesis attempts to synthesize and examine information the nature of this plan for a princess's education and the extent to which it was implemented.

Culture contact in colonial North America sometimes led to violent interactions. The continent during colonization contained two very different populations. Native Americans and Europeans occupied the same space and necessarily developed unique relationships. Each had to maneuver around the other to forge careful and productive bonds. When they could not, conflict arose; sometimes as war, sometimes as stealing or raiding. During their brief relationship, the Natchez Indians and French colonists in Louisiana engaged in several wars. Those wars revealed various elements of each culture. In 1716 Natchez warriors responded to a French diplomatic insult by killing French fur traders travelling upriver thus sparking the first war. In 1722-23, the French and Natchez fought again; this time over unpaid debts. Finally, in 1729, the Natchez executed a viciously well-planned attack on the French Fort Rosalie, which stood in their territory. Each war, while complicating their relationship, became a form of expression and exchange for the Natchez and the French. The Indians and Europeans clarified their outlooks and ideas with violence. The three wars escalated, growing increasingly more violent for both parties as their contact became considerably more intense and crowded. By the end of the third war the Natchez no longer existed as a cohesive nation. The French had brutally expressed their anger toward and fear of the Natchez; the Europeans all but decimated the Indians. Their chiefdom beaten, the remaining Natchez scattered throughout the southeast, some making it as north as the Carolinas. The French continued to maintain their presence in Louisiana for several more decades.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and assess the role of Philip Henry Kerr, eleventh Marquis of Lothian, the British ambassador to the United States from August 1939 to December 1940. While much of the historiography of Anglo-American relations during the Second World War focuses on the Roosevelt-Churchill axis, this dissertation contends that Lord Lothian played a vital, if not the principal, role in creating that axis and in forging closer relations during the vital months before Pearl Harbor. More generally, this dissertation contends that Lothian is a vital, if not the principal, architect of the Special Relationship. Anglo-American relations during the interwar years were characterized by an underlying discord, caused by economic disparity, naval rivalry, and divergent approaches to international security. By December 1940, however, relations were stronger and closer, as many Americans came to appreciate that Britains survival was critical to keeping the United States out of the war. Although not exclusively responsible, Lothian played a significant role in affecting this transformation in public opinion. First, he established a British public relations apparatus and initiated a vigorous publicity campaign in the United States, which generated greater awareness of Britains increasingly dire military predicament and more widespread popular support for Britain. Second, Lothian helped to broker the celebrated Destroyers-for-Bases deal, by which the United States agreed to provide Britain with fifty destroyers in return for land rights in various British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. Third, Lothian helped to lay the foundations for the Lend-Lease program. Following a brief autumn visit to Britain, he intimated to the American press that London was running out of cash with which to purchase American military supplies. He also urged Churchill to outline the realities of Britains position in a long, detailed letter to Roosevelt. These two initiatives presented the Roosevelt administration with a comprehensive view of Britains desperate situation that compelled the president to take action. The result was the Lend-Lease Act, which provided Britain with a program of American assistance, hardly compatible with neutrality, and ultimately became the foundation of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War.

The purposes of this study were to trace the evolution of the North American P-51 Mustang as an escort fighter in World War Two and to enumerate the reasons why it played a leading role in the extension of the American strategic bombing campaign into Germany and the ultimate defeat of the German Luftwaffe. The Mustang prototype was built in 1940 in response to a British request for a fighter to help repel German invaders. The original model, powered by an Allison engine and three-bladed propeller, was fast and maneuverable at low altitudes, but its performance deteriorated rapidly at altitudes above 12,000 feet. In an experiment to improve its high-altitude performance, the British installed a Rolls Royce Merlin engine in the Mustang, and the resulting high altitude performance of the airplane was exceptional. However, at that time neither the British nor the Americans opted to pursue further development and production of the airplane. After America entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Allied powers agreed that the main war effort should be to "Defeat Germany First." A principal aspect of the war plan was a daylight strategic bombing campaign against German forces in Continental Europe by American bombers. The bombing campaign from bases in England began in July of 1942. As the program progressed and targets were attacked that were beyond the range of escorting Allied fighters, it became apparent that the bombers could not adequately defend themselves against defending German fighters. A desperate effort was made to develop a high-performance escort fighter that could accompany the bombers to all targets of interest. The Merlin-powered Mustang with a four-bladed propeller proved to be that airplane. This thesis discusses the technical reasons why the Mustang was a superior escort and air combat fighter. The energy maneuverability analysis is used to explain how the fighter gained an air combat advantage over the principal Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. The roles of bomber escort doctrine, pilot training and aircraft production in bringing the Mustang into its position of superiority are also indicated.

The theme of this thesis is Hannah Arendts critique and ultimate rejection of the ideas of individualism developed during the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. She rejects the Enlightenment notion of the abstract man, but equally rejects the notion of Romantic introspection that followed. Such a critique is important to Arendt because she makes human plurality the center for her entire system of thought. Using the French Revolution, Jewish history, and totalitarianism as her examples, Arendt explains the effects of such overtly individualistic thinking in both society and politics. The goal of this thesis is not a comprehensive look at the vast number of theories developed during the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. That is far beyond its intended scope. The goal, instead, is to show how Arendt used her critique of a select number of ideas to further define and clarify her own thoughts. In the end it will be shown that while Arendt ranged all over in her thinking (from history to politics to philosophy) she engaged these topics in a systematic way as to explore the affinities and contradictions to human plurality in whatever she studied. She is drawn to the late 18th/early 19th centuries precisely because she envisions it as a watershed moment in Western conceptions of individuality, one that stamped out all thought of human plurality. Arendt wants to rescue the notion of human plurality and elevate it to a primal position in Western thought.

Before January 1811, slave rebellion weighed heavily on the minds of white Louisianans. The colonial and territorial history of Louisiana challenged leaders with a diverse and complex social environment that required calculated decision-making and a fair hand to navigate. Racial and ethnic divisions forced officials to tread carefully in order to build a prosperous territory while maintaining control over the slave population. Many Louisianans used slave labor to produce indigo, cotton, and sugarcane along the rivers of south Louisiana, primarily between Baton Rouge and the mouth of the Mississippi River. For nearly a century, Louisianans avoided slave upheaval but after 1791 the colonial and territorial ties to Saint Domingue, the seat of the first successful slave revolution in world history, heightened the tension. Over the course of the next twenty years Spanish, French, and American leaders worked diligently to prevent slave rebellion in a territory that had slowly become a fertile breeding ground for slave insurrection. Eventually the strain overwhelmed territorial leaders when thousands of exiles from the Haitian Revolution arrived in Louisiana after a brief period in Cuba. Social tension, resulting from the exponential population growth and the increase of a dangerous ideology developed during their experiences with slave insurrection, that the Haitian refugees brought with them. The territory finally succumbed to attempted revolution when Charles Deslondes, a slave on the Manuel André plantation, called upon his fellow bondsmen and bondswomen to kill whites and demand their own freedom.

Jordan, Richard L. B. A. University of Southern Mississippi, 2000. M. A. University of Southern Mississippi, 2002. Doctor of Philosophy, Fall Commencement, 2008. Major: History. The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics in a Transatlantic Context. Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Meredith Veldman. Pages in dissertation, 345. Words in Abstract, 277. ABSTRACT On August 1, 1946, the Reverend Ian Paisley was ordained as the minister of the Ravenhill Evangelical Mission Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland. From his new pulpit, the young evangelist embarked on a six-decade crusade attacking Irish theological and political issues and espousing militant fundamentalism and premillennial pessimism: Paisley confronted the liberal, modernist, and ecumenical trends within Irish Protestantism, the attempted political rapprochement between protestant Unionists and catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland, and the Northern Irish civil rights movement. Paisley also opposed the Irish Republican Army and any move towards the political reunification of Ireland. In 1971, Paisley and his political allies formed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to articulate his political agenda. Paisley and his party were successful, becoming the prominent protestant political organization in Northern Ireland. In May 2007 Paisley became the First Minister of the Northern Ireland statelet. But as Paisley and the DUP grew in popularity, Paisley offered political solutions that compromised his Calvinist and premillennial religiosity. The Reverend Ian Paisleys career and transformation, however, did not take place solely within the context of Irish history, religiosity, and politics. During the 1950s and 1960s, Paisley made alliances with militant fundamentalists in North America. The most important was the Reverend Carl McIntire, a minister whose public protests and attacks on fellow Christians Paisley emulated. Paisleys aggressive crusade twice landed him in jail, for which McIntire and North Americans portrayed Paisley as a martyr for their version of Bible Protestantism. International support not only bolstered Paisleys prestige in Northern Ireland, but also his own sense of destiny as a Protestant prophet. This dissertation traces Paisleys transformation from a premillennial fundamentalist crusader into an amillennial politician.