Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Electoral geographers are mostly concerned with mapping the responses of voters to different political candidates, while they also work to explain the factors that influence those responses. Yet most studies do not consider how different geographic contexts can affect the political perceptions of voters. In particular, people who live in close proximity to one another may come to embrace similar beliefs and values, while broader social and economic processes may divide these individuals into separate camps. Thus, electoral studies performed at the local level may produce different results than those done at the regional or national level. In exploring how different scales of analysis can give different interpretations of voting patterns, this research gathered data from a series of elections that took place in Virginia. These elections, which occurred between 2003 and 2006, span a variety of federal and state offices, with each presiding over a certain geographic jurisdiction. The study proceeded to map the results of each election in terms of three different types of geographic areas: precincts, counties, and legislative districts. The maps displayed the majority winners within each of these areas, giving a rough indication of the bases of support for each of the different candidates. The study then determined the number of instances where two neighboring areas both favored the same candidate, as well as the number of cases where they voted for opposing candidates. These data helped to shed light on the autocorrelation structure of voting patterns in Virginia, revealing how people in the same general vicinity tend to vote together. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that smaller geographic units (e.g., precincts) exhibit greater autocorrelation in voting than do larger areas. This observation agrees with the concept of sectionalism, which asserts that location and culture are key influences on voting behavior. However, the data also suggest that class differences are a major source of electoral cleavage, as people from different social and economic backgrounds tend to settle in different areas. The use of multiple scales of analysis thus presents multiple explanations for the voting trend of a given location. / Master of Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. / The Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association was awarded for this essay. From the Annual report of the American Historical Association, 1900, vol. I, p. 237-463, 3 pl. "List of references": p. 461-463.

I interpret Civil War romanticism by looking at well-known archetypal characters such as the knight, the Puritan, and the Christ figure. I argue that sectional reunion occurred, in part, because Americans shared a common celebration of the Christian/chivalrous hero expressed through stories about the lives and personalities of leading figures of the Civil War. Western traditions like Christianity and its medieval warrior code, chivalry, conditioned Americans to seek heroes who conformed to a certain pattern that resembled the knightly ideal. Chivalry did not crowd-out other forms of masculine behavior, but during the nineteenth century, the British century, Americans had not yet created a man in their own image. That would come later with the twentieth century’s most favored man: the cowboy. Americans created Robert E. Lee as a knight figure resembling Western heroes such as King Arthur. Unlike the more controversial Confederate notables Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, the Lee figure offered Americans the genteel, Christ-like, hero who could be made to represent all of white America. Davis was too defiantly unreconstructed to ever affect much sectional agreement, and Jackson simply could not be made to fit the chivalrous pattern. Thus, Lee allowed southerners to identify themselves as uniquely chivalrous and honorable compared to the modern North. At the same time, the Lee figure provided northerners the opportunity to romanticize a charming, orderly, Old South while rejecting the violent, narrow-minded, states' rights South best symbolized by Davis. I prefer to interpret commentary about the Civil War as storytelling and do not use terms such as the Lost Cause or Civil War memory. High-ranking officers, the common solider, and those who never participated in the Civil War each told stories about it. Due to the large number of stories told, certain common themes became evident in American interpretations of the Civil War era. Common stories include: Lee at Appomattox, Jackson's unmerciful marches against Union forces, and Davis (almost) eluding capture dressed as a woman. Taken together the sub-stories reveal much about the grand narrative of the Civil War, and how Americans, though succeeding to a great extent, failed to completely reunite.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. / The Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association was awarded for this essay. From the Annual report of the American Historical Association, 1900, vol. I, p. 237-463, 3 pl. "List of references": p. 461-463.

This dissertation examines the interdenominational pursuits of the American Presbyterian Church from 1758 to 1801 in order to demonstrate how the Church helped to foster both national and sectional spirit. I have utilized a variety of sources including: the published and unpublished work of both the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, as well as published and unpublished Presbyterian sermons, lectures, hymnals, poetry and letters. With these sources I argue that a self-imposed interdenominational transformation began in the American Presbyterian Church upon its reunion in 1758 and that this process was altered by the Church’s experience during the American Revolution. The resulting interdenominational goals had both spiritual and national objectives. As the leaders in the Presbyterian Church strove for unity in Christ and Country, I contend that they created fissures in the Church that would one day divide it as well as further the sectional rift that would lead to the Civil War.

No description available.

““Fraught with Disastrous Consequences for our Country”: Cherokee Sovereignty, Nullification and the Sectional Crisis” explores how the national debates over Indian sovereignty rights contributed to the rise of American sectionalism. Although most American citizens supported westward expansion, the Cherokee Nation demonstrated effectively that it had adopted Western civilized standards and, in accord with federal treaty law, deserved constitutional protections for its sovereignty and homelands. The Cherokees’ success divided American public opinion over that nation’s purported rights to constitutional protections. When Georgian leaders and the state militia harassed Northern white American missionaries who supported Cherokee sovereignty rights, even citizenship rights seemed in question. South Carolina’s leaders capitalized on the Cherokee debate by framing their own protest against federal tariffs as a complementary states’ rights issue. Thus, in 1832, nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Cherokee sovereignty protections against Georgia’s removal efforts in Worcester v. Georgia, South Carolina issued an Ordinance of Nullification, proclaiming its state right to nullify federal taxation. Current historiography tends to suggest that most Americans at that time ignored Cherokee sovereignty to confront South Carolina’s Nullification challenge. Alternatively, this project proposes that the debates over Cherokee sovereignty exacerbated Americans’ fear over South Carolina’s Nullification crisis, because together they representing a two-state challenge to federal authority. While current historiography also recognizes that expansion was a critical feature of American sectionalism, the debate over Indian sovereignty within already established Eastern states demonstrates that the politics of expansion was not simply a Western borderlands issue. Nullification threatened the Union because Georgia and President Andrew Jackson simultaneously ignored the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority to interpret constitutional law, while promoting the vital importance of constitutional law. To explore the sectional tensions that linked Cherokee sovereignty and Nullification, this project reviews the earlier period in American politics when these issues evolved separately to demonstrate the effect of their eventual connection. The first chapter provides an example that shows how the Cherokees protected their treaty rights successfully during this earlier period. Chapter Two considers the unique histories of South Carolina and the Cherokee Nation, and their collective challenges to the evolving American political economy. Chapter Three explores how the non-white republic of the Cherokee Nation contributed to the weakening of race-based slavery positivism, despite its own investment in slavery. Chapter Four demonstrates how a widening circle of congressional figures began connecting publicly the debates over Cherokee removal, tariffs, and slavery, made especially visible during the Webster-Hayne debates in the Senate. Chapter Five delineates the national discord over the extra-legal violence against white missionaries who protected Cherokee interests. As evident through the recently discovered prison journal of Rev. Samuel Austin Worcester—of Worcester v. Georgia—this chapter also demonstrates that despite their rhetoric otherwise, Jacksonians recognized the sectional toxicity when the American public connected Cherokee sovereignty and Nullification. / History