Secession Research Articles

‘She Died from Grief’: Trauma and Emotion in Information Wanted Advertisements

ABSTRACT This article examines formerly enslaved people’s use of Information Wanted advertisements to reconnect with lost family after the American Civil War. This article argues that physical reunification with loved ones was not the sole purpose of the advertisements of the post-emancipation era, since the advertisements both testified to the cruelty of family and kinship group separations and were radical first-person observations recording – and bearing witness to – the suffering of loved ones in enslavement. In safeguarding Black genealogies through the use of the advertisements, formerly enslaved people asserted family strength and power by publicly memorializing those they had lost. Formerly enslaved people thus employed emotion as a mechanism of resistance, within the advertisements, to protest the white emotional regime of the post-emancipation era.

“When I’m a Human Being”: race, bodies, and power in Disney’s adaptations of “The Frog King or Iron Henry”

In the summer of 2020, Walt Disney Theme Parks announced plans to reimagine the popular attraction “Splash Mountain” in the theme of the 2009 feature-length animated film The Princess and the Frog. As only the third Disney feature-length animated film to showcase Black characters prominently, The Princess and the Frog seems perfectly poised to replace the Song of the South—critiqued for its romanticization of race relations after the American Civil War—in the Disney parks. In this adaptation of “Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich” (“The Frog King or Iron Henry”), Walt Disney Animation Studios introduces its first Black princess. While a hardworking, self-starter princess of color is a step towards representation, the film’s portrayal of non-white characters reinforces a hierarchy of race and class which privileges the wealthy white characters while relegating characters of color to the bottom rungs of human society and into non-human bodies. This essay explores the intersection of gender, race, and class in Disney’s adaptations of the classic fairy tale “Der Froschkönig” from the Grimms’ 1812 variation and the plans to reimagine it for Disney theme parks. In conversation with adaptation studies, narrative theory, and feminist theories, this contribution interrogates the underlying messages of prejudice and -isms in The Princess and the Frog that reinforce twentieth- and twenty-first-century prejudices against people of color, women, and the working class, rendering the proposed update of the “Splash Mountain” attraction into a modernization of the problems already recognized in the current ride.

“If you kill him, you have got to kill me first”: examining individual and collective loyalties during the Memphis Massacre (1866)

ABSTRACT Traditionally, examinations of Civil War era loyalty have focused on higher-level loyalties to the Union or Confederacy, conflating loyalty with Unionism. This article takes the Memphis Massacre (1866) and examines the expressions of individual and collective loyalties that took place alongside the violence. Although there have been numerous studies of the Memphis Massacre, they tend to focus on tensions between the city’s Irish and African American population, overlooking the fact that loyalties transcended racial boundaries. Collective and individual loyalties played critical roles during the Massacre, blurring the lines between victim and victimizer, ultimately complicating our understanding of this well-studied event.

Secessionist Movement in Church History: A Critical Analysis of the Protestant Churches’ Separation from the Anglican Communion in Nigeria.

The secessionist movement, particularly evident in the Protestant Churches’ separation from the Anglican Communion, was a critical period in the history and development of Christianity in Nigeria. The schism within the Anglican Church led to the proliferation of churches and the expansion of denominations in Nigeria. Thus, this paper critically delves into the historical, social, and theological factors that engendered the separation of ‘Protestant Churches’ from the Anglican Church in Nigeria, while assessing its theological and ecclesiastical implications, the objective being to provide a comprehensive account of the underlying motivations behind the breakaway, and its consequences on Nigeria’s multi-faceted religious landscape. With the aid of content analysis method of research, which relies essentially on the collection and analysis of secondary data, the study finds out that a complex interplay of colonialism, cultural dynamics, and doctrinal differences contributed to the emergence of distinct Protestant denominations in Nigeria during the colonial period. Furthermore, the paper contends that the role of the secessionist movement in shaping and reshaping religious identities, practices, interactions and discourses within the country cannot be over-emphasized, thus, deserving the critical attention of the intellectual community.

Popularization of the New Museum Space “Prison Castle” of a Small Town in Western Siberia

The article examines the potential of a small historical city with unique historical and cultural heritage. Based on the results of a scientific expedition that studied the potential of a small cultural space, and the small town of Western Siberia — the city of Tyukalinsk, Omsk region, a new museum space “Prison Castle of the county town of Tyukalinsk” was designed. The main results were based on the local history interviews conducted with local historians and museum workers of Tyukalinsk. In addition to that, the process of designing the future excursion object — the architectural museum complex was carried out based on the archival and museum funds of the small town. The analysis of the conducted research allowed us to conclude that it is necessary to design a new museum space that will attract the interest of a wide audience, local residents, and new potential tourists. The reconstruction of the museum space with an unusual theme allows us to present the historical events of the Civil War era in a new way. By drawing attention to the historical past of Tyukalinsk through the creative museum space, we thereby preserve the values of historical and cultural heritage.

Another Look: Animal Histories of the Civil War Era

Another Look: Animal Histories of the Civil War Era

What Were the Causes of the American Civil War? A Study in Artificial Intelligence

What Were the Causes of the American Civil War? A Study in Artificial Intelligence

The Impact of the American Civil War on Political Writing in Jamaica and Cuba

The Impact of the American Civil War on Political Writing in Jamaica and Cuba

A Narrative of Crisis: Nancy Emerson's Diary and Healing through Writing

ABSTRACT: Nancy Emerson, a middle-class white woman who lived with her brother's family in Augusta County, Virginia, kept a diary intermittently between May 1862 and November 1864. Emerson's diary can be defined as a narrative of crisis, generated to respond to, reduce, contain, and mitigate trauma due to the potential physical and psychological threat of the American Civil War. The narrative construction of traumatic experiences is a form of purification and catharsis, allowing Emerson to experience the stages of recovery by regaining a sense of community and establishing safety through writing, attending prayer meetings, reporting news, remembrance of and mourning for the dead, and Christian resignation. By combining psychiatric, literary, and historical approaches, this study offers contextualization of Emerson's narration, representation, and writing about physical and psychological crisis as a process of working through and recovery.

Separatist and Terrorist Movements in Papua: The Challenges of Social Disaster Management and the Important Role of Human-Made Disaster Intelligence

The Papua secessionist movement hinders Indonesia's stability efforts. The government has implemented measures, deploying intelligence for managing social crises as defined by Law 24 of 2007 on Disaster Management. The present study examines the separatist movement in Papua, its resultant societal upheaval, and the crucial role of intelligence in mitigating this societal crisis. The study explores applying Human-Made Disaster Intelligence, using AI and data tech, to mitigate risks in the Papua case. This study employs a literature review with 26 sources to explore challenges posed by separatist and terrorist movements in Papua. Data is gathered from official sources, excluding personal websites and social media. The study was conducted from January to March 2023. Data analysis utilizes descriptive narratives to qualitatively explore separatist and terrorist movements, social disasters, intelligence, and the Papua region. The research findings demonstrate that the separatist movement in Papua has resulted in a significant societal calamity, causing conflicts, casualties, and economic challenges. Man-made disaster intelligence is proposed to manage social disasters by collecting and analyzing data related to separatist activities. Intelligence plays a crucial role in detecting and mitigating risks associated with separatism, offering preventive and remedial measures. Challenges include limited resources and the need for collaboration among intelligence agencies. Strategic measures to enhance intelligence involve increased resources, collaboration, transparency, and the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for data analysis. The complexity of using AI in countering separatist movements requires careful consideration of data sources, collection methods, and reliability measures.

The Letters of John H. Crowder

In the midst of the American Civil War, sixteen-year-old John H. Crowder, a free person of color, penned a series of letters that offer insight into the experiences, hopes, obstacles, and discrimination faced by young African Americans during the nineteenth century. Serving in the Louisiana Native Guard, one of the Union’s pioneering regiments that welcomed people of color, Crowder writes to declare his youthful ambitions and his unwavering resilience against his often disapproving superior officers. Additionally, within these letters Crowder’s profound love for his mother and a female friend is revealed, along with his determination to secure a stable future for the women in his life. The preservation of Crowder’s letters, alongside the story of his mother's pursuit of a military pension after Crowder’s death, brings to light the oft-overlooked contributions and experiences of African Americans in the post-Antebellum South. In this “Spotlight on Juvenilia,” I delve into the story behind the preservation of Crowder’s letters, exploring the unique challenges and triumphs experienced by young African Americans, as well as their significant role in shaping the Civil War narrative. Moreover, I emphasize the importance of amplifying diverse historical perspectives, particularly those of youth and people of color. By shedding light on the interplay between personal agency and societal constraints for Crowder, this exploration underscores the significance of his community’s voices in reshaping historical discourses and highlights the far-reaching implications of their experiences during this pivotal period in history.

Realist, Naturalist, Impressionist Narrative Techniques and Themes in Crane’s the Red Badge of Courage

The distinguished American novelist Stephen Crane has been regarded as one of the pioneers of naturalism in American Novel. In his novel The Red Badge of Courage, naturalism occurs through the whole story, realism and impressionism also play an important part in his work. Cited for its fresh narrative style and naturalistic, realistic and impressionistic depictions of combat, the novel made him a celebrity. Naturalism sometimes depicts the relationship between individual and nature, focusing on the characters in their environment. Nature’s indifference to humanity’s fate is such naturalistic element explored in this novel. The reality of war is shown in its brutality, boredom and injustice. Crane carefully uses imagery that reflects the perspective and state of the protagonist. In this study, it is aimed to examine Stephen Crane’s novel as a non-traditional war narrative, where he reflects the inner experience of its protagonist, a soldier fleeing war from the perspectives of realism, naturalism and impressionism. In this thematic and descriptive study, text analysis was used and examples of naturalism, realism and impressionism were interpreted. In this work, which is close to the naturalness of daily language, the use of images and colour is important. The author has managed to convey the civil war in the most effective way, even though he did not live during the war years. This work, which reflects the American Civil War through the internal transformations experienced by the soldiers, provided a different perspective as well as general topics such as the north-south conflict.

History, politics, and variolation vaccination hesitancy in the American South during the American Civil War

Examining the history of vaccination in the Civil War reveals lessons about why citizens resisted vaccination and how physicians tried to respond to the problems associated with combating epidemic diseases like smallpox. The Confederate government and physicians failed to effectively advocate to the public and collect information in an organized manner, and they suffered failures in getting enough citizens and soldiers vaccinated. Some Confederate physicians like Joseph Jones studied vaccination, but this came after the war, and the Confederate government failed to embrace and combat vaccine hesitancy. In some cases, more radical political elements tried to control the conversation through newspaper articles. Criticisms of vaccination likely continued to haunt the perceptions of vaccination in the Southern United States.

Harold Swanberg, MD: Why and how EMWA should remember him

Before the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) and the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), there was the Mississippi Valley Medical Editors Association (MVMEA). Most medical writers are unaware of the history of MVMEA and of how it turned into AMWA and EMWA. Here, I chronicle the life of Harold Swanberg, MD, who founded the MVMEA and, when it faltered, reinvented it as AMWA. The story begins shortly after the American Civil War, when medical journals were becoming more respected as sources of information and when editors began to be employed as paid, part- or full-time editors. It continues with the rise and fall of the MVMEA and its rebirth as AMWA. Swanberg’s death coincided with the end of his vision for AMWA. However, the new vision for the association – and an international tragedy – allowed AMWA and EMWA to become key forces in developing modern medical writing as a profession.

Robert E. Cray. A Notable Bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Violence in the Civil War Era.

Robert E. Cray. <i>A Notable Bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Violence in the Civil War Era</i>.

A geospatial and archaeological investigation of an African–American cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

AbstractOberlin Cemetery, located near downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, was founded in 1873 following the American Civil War (1861–1865). This 3.2 ac (~1.29 ha) parcel of land served as the main cemetery for the people of Oberlin Village—the largest freedmen's community in Wake County. Today, descendants of the village founders and other neighbourhood residents, organized as the Friends of Oberlin Village (FOV), are preserving this community landmark and working to have its historical significance recognized. In support of these efforts, terrestrial laser scanning, global‐positioning‐system‐enabled pedestrian and ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) surveys were conducted during the winter and summer of 2016. We inventoried 276 formal grave markers identifying 221 individuals, 296 elongate depressions without a formal marker interpreted as sunken graves, and 130 fieldstones interpreted as burial markers, resulting in an estimate of 517‐to‐660 persons interred within the cemetery. The GPR survey supported the interpretation of topographic depressions as sunken graves; however, the undulating topography, as well as the density of trees and shrubs, limited this survey to ~12% of the site. Based on the birth dates listed on monuments, ~23% of these persons were born before the end of the Civil War. Death dates show the community's continued use of the cemetery throughout the early 1970s and less frequent use after that, with the most recent burials in 2009. A comparison with a 2012 inventory of monuments within Oberlin Cemetery suggests that ~3% of the markers were lost or displaced in 4 years, highlighting the importance of survey and preservation efforts. This work contributed to the FOV's successful nomination of the cemetery to the US National Register of Historic Places and was used to support several grants received for its preservation.

Transpacific Connections in the Civil War Era

Abstract: This essay introduces the special forum on transpacific connections in the Civil War era. The forum investigates how US interaction with Asia and the Pacific shaped race relations, gender ideology, diplomacy, and legal rights in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. By examining the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States, the experience of Black migrants in Japan, Chinese women's habeas corpus litigations, and the naturalized citizenship of Chinese Americans, the forum integrates Asia and the Pacific into Civil War–era scholarship. Conceptually, the forum is informed by three strands of historiography: the international history of the Civil War era, the American West during the Civil War era, and the history of the Pacific World.

Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era

Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era

Comment to Transpacific Connections in the Civil War Era

Comment to Transpacific Connections in the Civil War Era

Chinese Women and Habeas Corpus Hearings in California, 1857–1882

Abstract: This article examines how Chinese women and men used habeas corpus proceedings in California to contest transpacific relations of gender, commerce, law, and power. The first section looks at habeas hearings about runaway or allegedly kidnapped Chinese women already in the United States. The second chronicles how these hearings correlated with and diverged from the habeas proceedings involving the detention of Chinese women immigrants upon arrival. The California judges' approach to these cases mirrored Congress's concern over "the enormous diversity of domestic arrangements" in slavery by the end of the Civil War, when lawmakers introduced monogamous marriage and dependency on a male head of household as the most acceptable conditions for a nonwhite woman's freedom. The habeas proceedings concerning Chinese women thus revealed a Pacific, subnational practice of governance that was consonant with the national trend of reconstructing nonwhite women's sociolegal status in the Civil War era.