This dissertation is an attempt to portray the revolutionary character of the American Civil War through a comparative methodology utilizing the French Revolution as both point of influence and as a parallel example. Within this novel context, subtle trends in the ideological development of the Republican Party's Radical wing undertake new meaning and an alternative revolutionary heritage takes shape around an idealization of the universalism of the French and Haitian Revolutions of the 1790s. The work argues that through a diffusion of ideas and knowledge of events from the streets of Paris into the fields of Haiti and onto the shores of the American coast, a small faction of militant abolitionists latched onto the ideal of the Haitian Revolution as their own legacy. By the late 1830s, this radical edge of the antislavery movement embarked onto two courses, both derived from and influenced by their newfound ideology. The first was towards violent direct action against slavery while the second aimed at legitimizing radical new legal theories and creating the political structure necessary to bring about their enforcement. While on the one hand John Brown and Gerrit Smith pursued militant action, on the other Alvan Stewart and Salmon P. Chase sought a political and legal redefinition of American society through the Liberty and eventually Republican parties. With the coming of war in the 1860s, these two trends, violence and radical politics, converged in the Union war effort. In the midst of the Civil War and the early fight for Reconstruction, Radical Republicans and their allies in the Union Army displayed themselves as American Jacobins. Through a set of comparisons with French Revolutionary events and political debates, this thesis argues that the result of the ideological development between the American Revolution and the Civil War Era in the United States was the creation of a revolutionary ideology parallel to that of French Jacobinism. By the time of their fall from power, the Radical Republicans had seen their ideals both lambasted as the radical edge of politics and then transformed into the status quo, helping to prepare the nation for modernity.

Au sortir de quatre années d’une guerre fratricide, les États-Unis s’engageaient sur la voie de la Reconstruction, période qui généra des questions autour de la liberté. Deux catégories étaient au cœur d’une actualité faite de rebondissements multiples : les Noirs et les femmes. Les uns parce que leurs soutiens abolitionnistes souhaitaient obtenir une citoyenneté immédiate (“This is the Negro’s hour”) ; les autres parce qu’elles étaient les alliées de longue date des mêmes abolitionnistes et réclamaient dorénavant le suffrage. Ce fut le début d’alliances, de mésalliances entre les hommes noirs, les suffragists, les femmes noires et leurs soutiens et adversaires respectifs, pris qu’ils étaient dans les péripéties de luttes et de causes qui, bien que complémentaires et concomitantes, demeurèrent souvent différentes voire divergentes sur le plan des principes et des stratégies de lutte, ce qui mena parfois à une hostilité réciproque. Tous entrèrent ainsi dans un jeu continu entre universalisme et particularisme (s) jusqu’à l’avènement du vote féminin (Sud mis à part) en 1920 puis du Voting Right Act (1865). Que la réussite des un(e)s dépendît ou non de la victoire des autres, les défaites successives des un(e)s et des autres montraient quant à elles les réticences d’une société traversée par les convulsions occasionnées par ses contradictions d’origine : depuis qu’elle avait proclamé tous les hommes (hormis les Noirs, les Amérindiens et les femmes) égaux. L’inclusion électorale des Noirs et des femmes fut effective au terme de plus d’un siècle de luttes, d’alliances et de mésalliances qui se succédèrent au milieu de cycles successifs d’adhésions ou d’oppositions souvent tumultueuses d’un bout à l’autre de l’échiquier politique. / In the wake of a tragic civil war, the United States entered a period of Reconstruction that aroused many questions about the notion of liberty. Two groups were propelled into the center of the country’s public debate: Blacks and women. While the former became a central issue because their abolitionist allies wanted them to garner immediate citizenship (“This is the Negro’s hour”), the latter were trying to catch public attention because they had been longtime allies to the same abolitionists and were now claiming their own enfranchisement. That was the inception of a long period made of alliances interspersed with moments of blatant disagreement and even separation between black male militants, suffragists, black female franchise advocators, and their respective supporters or opponents. They were all caught in the twists and turns of struggles and causes that complemented one another. Though their motives were concomitant and compatible, they remained fundamentally distinct, even divergent in terms of principles and strategies, which sometimes sparked mutual hostility. They all entered a cycle of actions oscillating between a universal and a particular claim of the franchise. This situation prevailed until the advent of universal female suffrage in 1920 (except for black women in the South). Whether or not the success or failure of black males depended on the defeat of women, the successive defeats of both groups pointed out the reluctance of a society undergoing the convulsions sparked by its original contradictions stemming from the very period when it declared all men equal; all except Indians, Blacks, and women. The final enfranchisement of both women and Blacks took more than a century of alliances and dissociations in the midst of a tumult of successive support or opposition across the country’s political spectrum.

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)