Period In American History Research Articles

"What shall we do with the Negro?": Lincoln, white racism, and Civil War America

Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the New York Times in 1862, 'What shall we do with the negro?' The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for both those in the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens' organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. What Shall We Do with the Negro? demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue. Escott gives especial critical attention to Abraham Lincoln. Since the civil rights movement, many popular books have treated Lincoln as an icon, a mythical leader with thoroughly modern views on all aspects of race. But, focusing on Lincoln's policies rather than attempting to divine Lincoln's intentions from his often ambiguous or cryptic statements, Escott reveals a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than on emancipation, who showed an enduring respect for states' rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly in freedom, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of the interests of blacks. Escott's approach reveals the depth of slavery's influence on society and the pervasiveness of assumptions of white supremacy. What Shall We Do with the Negro? serves as a corrective in offering a more realistic, more nuanced, and less celebratory approach to understanding this crucial period in American history.

I belong to South Carolina: South Carolina slave narratives

This title includes rare firsthand accounts of slavery from across the Palmetto State collected together for the first time. Out of the hundreds of published slave narratives, only a handful exist specific to South Carolina, and most of these are not readily available to modern readers. Edited by Susanna Ashton, this collection restores to print seven slave narratives documenting the lived realities of slavery as it existed across the Palmetto State's upcountry, midlands, and lowcountry, from plantation culture to urban servitude. First published between the late eighteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, these richly detailed firsthand accounts present a representative cross section of slave experiences, from religious awakenings and artisan apprenticeships to sexual exploitations and harrowing escapes. In their distinctive individual voices, narrators celebrate and mourn the lives of fellow slaves, contemplate the meaning of freedom, and share insights into the social patterns and cultural controls exercised during a turbulent period in American history. Each narrative is preceded by an introduction to place its content and publication history in historical context. The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina. I Belong to South Carolina reinserts a chorus of powerful voices of the dispossessed into South Carolina's public history, reminding us of the cruelties of the past and the need for vigilant guardianship of liberty in the present and future.

New Orleans after the Civil War: race, politics, and a new birth of freedom

We often think of Reconstruction as an unfinished revolution. Justin A. Nystrom's original study of the aftermath of emancipation in New Orleans takes a different perspective, arguing that the politics of the era were less of a binary struggle over political supremacy and morality than they were about a quest for stability in a world rendered uncertain and unfamiliar by the collapse of slavery. Commercially vibrant and racially unique before the Civil War, New Orleans after secession and following Appomattox provides an especially interesting case study in political and social adjustment. Taking a generational view and using longitudinal studies of some of the major political players of the era, Nystrom asks fundamentally new questions about life in the post-Civil War South: Who would emerge as leaders in the prostrate but economically ambitious city? How would whites who differed over secession come together over postwar policy? Where would the mixed-race middle class and newly freed slaves fit in the new order? Nystrom follows not only the period's broad contours and occasional bloody conflicts but also the coalition building and the often surprising liaisons that formed to address these and related issues. His unusual approach breaks free from the worn stereotypes of Reconstruction to explore the uncertainty, self-doubt, and moral complexity that haunted Southerners after the war. This probing look at a generation of New Orleanians and how they redefined a society shattered by the Civil War engages historical actors on their own terms and makes real the human dimension of life during this difficult period in American history.

Covert action in the Cold War: US policy, intelligence and CIA operations

Born out of the ashes of World II, the covert action arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created to counter the challenge posed by the Soviet Union and its allies and bolster American interests worldwide. It evolved rapidly into an eclectic, well-resourced organization whose activities provided a substitute for overt military action and afforded essential backup when the Cold turned hot in Korea and Vietnam. This comprehensive examination of a still controversial subject sheds valuable new light on the undercover operations mounted by the CIA during the Cold War. Using a wide range of unpublished government records and documents, James Callanan traces the growth of the agency chronologically as it forged a covert action mission that sought to advance US foreign and defense policy in all corners of the globe. Offering a powerful perspective on a pivotal period in American history, Covert Action in the Cold War makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of global politics during the Cold War.

The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course ‐ edited by Phillip Hammack and Bertram Cohler

The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course. Phillip Hammack and Bertram Cohler (Eds.). New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. 474 pp. ISBN 9780195326789. $49.95 (Cloth). The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course, by editors Phillip Hammack and Bertram Cohler, explores the role of sociocultural and political contexts embedded in various historical periods and how these affect the life trajectories of gay and lesbian individuals and families. Further, the volume offers several chapters that examine how context informs the ways in which gays and lesbians have and are creating, shaping, and reshaping the stories of their sexual identities, illuminating the meaning behind them in an eloquent and in many instances emotionally intimate way. The editors open the volume with their conceptualization of the co-constructional processes of sexual identity development, drawing from multiple disciplines including history, psychology, sociology, and queer studies. To further conceptually ground the volume they are among the first (cf. Savin-Williams, 2005) to move away from more static early models of sexual identity development (e.g., Cass, 1979) by merging narrative and life-course perspectives. The resulting theoretical framework highlights the fluid and dynamic sexual identities of gays and lesbians and the influential role of context in their development over the life course. The editors, and many of the chapter authors, assert that the meaning of one's sexual identity is more than simply being gay or lesbian, alternative to the idea of a master narrative. The meaning of gay or lesbian varies by person and context, although some elements can be shared, especially within a generation that shares an experience, thereby creating a narrative generation. For example, those gay men of dating age during the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s are a recognized generation defined by a specific historical event. As a result of this shared experience, they share a similar discourse about dating in the age of AIDS. However, this is not to suggest that everyone shares the same discourse. Another example includes an individual's coming out story that is situated in the era of the emergence of AIDS. In fact, several chapters examine new or existing data and literature by contextualizing the life stories of gays and lesbians using a generation narrative in a way that could not be more timely. The current sociocultural and political context affecting the lives of gay and lesbian individuals, couples, and families in the United States and abroad differs vastly between and within countries and is highlighted in several chapters throughout the volume. In the United States alone, some basic rights (e.g., protections from discrimination in housing and the work place) are afforded to gay and lesbian individuals in some states, whereas in others it remains legal to deny housing to someone because of their perceived sexual identity. Similarly, in some states gay and lesbian couples who wish to marry are allowed the same state-level rights and privileges of marriage as heterosexual couples, whereas in other states they can register to receive some marital-like rights via domestic partnerships statutes. Still, in most states no rights or privileges are afforded these couples. Further, in most states and to a small extent at the federal level, the rights, privileges, and constraints for these individuals and families are contested and changing rapidly (for better or worse; e.g., the repeal of Proposition 8 in California). In fact, it has become commonplace to encounter some form of media (e.g., Internet) that discusses the latest developments in gay and lesbian rights, and it is widely accepted that discrimination continues to pervade the fabric of the American tapestry. Certainly, each decade or historical period in American history has differentially influenced the constraints and access to myriad rights, privileges, and safe communities for gay and lesbians. …

Integrating Normative and Descriptive Constitutional Theory: The Case of Original Meaning

According to strict form of originalism, Constitution derives its authority from its ratification during particular periods in American history. Under this view, any departure from understandings of those discrete periods robs constitutional interpretation of its claim to legitimacy. The political theory underlying strict originalism is a form of social contract theory: unelected judges may displace legislative decisions in name of Constitution, but only because Constitution is a social contract to which consent was validly given through ratification. Although there are very few strict originalists, virtually all practitioners of and commentators on constitutional law accept that original meaning has some relevance to constitutional interpretation. Most, if not all, of us are what Paul Brest has called moderate originalists; we are interested in the framers' intent on a relatively abstract level of generality.

Communism in Hollywood: the moral paradoxes of testimony, silence, and betrayal

Much has been written about the history of Communism in America, including the Party's appeal to many in the Hollywood community of the 1930s and 40s. While several books have offered standard accounts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the blacklist in the entertainment industry, Alan Casty provides a fresh and provocative perspective. In Communism in Hollywood: The Moral Paradoxes of Testimony, Silence, and Betrayal, Casty challenges the absolute dualisms of the period: cowardly informers and heroic martyrs. Drawing on newly available material, Casty illustrates the control by the international Communist movement and the role of the Hollywood Communists themselves in fomenting the intense hostilities of the period. Casty juxtaposes the actions and statements of those who testified and named names before HUAC with Communists who refused to testify and remained silent about the atrocities of the Soviet Union. By providing a scrupulous account of the full scope of the Communist Party in Hollywood, this book presents a more accurate picture of the moral quandaries faced during this dark period in American history.

A Conduct Incompatible with Their Character: Patriots, Loyalists, & Spies: Espionage in the American Revolution and the Underlying Social & Ideological Revolution in the American Colonies

The American Revolution was a precarious and uncertain period in American history in which loyalties were tried, ideologies were tested, and identities shifted; the conflicted role of espionage in the American Revolution offers insight into this formative moment in the development of an American identity disparate from Britain. Espionage had a critical function in the American Revolution, both militarily and politically. Intelligence secured by spies affected the strategic outcome of the Revolutionary War and the public imagination was strongly influenced by the exposure of spies. However, experimentation in espionage during the Revolutionary War has been little examined by historians, especially in a social or ideological context. This paper will examine espionage in the context of colonial norms and conventions in order to reveal how it contributed to the underlying social and ideological revolution of the American Revolution and the emergence of a truly American identity.

Federal Administration and Administrative Law in the Gilded Age

Federal Administration and Administrative Law in the Gilded Age

Why Does Life Expectancy Grow When Economy Contracts?

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessWhy Does Life Expectancy Grow When Economy Contracts?Joan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:6 Nov 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.44.21.psychnews_44_21_025AbstractThe Great Depression is generally considered a dark period in American history, when millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and all of their worldly possessions and when a few despairing Wall Street investors leapt from buildings to their deaths.Indeed, a new analysis of economic and mortality data from that period has shown that suicides did increase during the Great Depression. But otherwise, the analysis has demonstrated, mortality rates dropped during those years.These findings were reported online September 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by José Tapia Granados, Ph.D., and Ana Diez-Roux, Ph.D. Tapia is an economist and assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Diez-Roux is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health.Tapia and Diez-Roux analyzed mortality and economic data from 1920 to 1940 to see whether they could find any correlations between mortality rates and economic downturns and upswings during these years. They could, they found.From 1930 to 1933, mortality rates decreased for almost all age groups compared with those from 1920 to 1929, and there was an overall gain of six years in life expectancy for the general American population. Nonwhite Americans profited the most, with a gain of eight years in life expectancy.The only exception to this general pattern was suicide mortality rates, which increased from 1930 to 1933, compared with suicide mortality rates from 1920 to 1929. However, suicides accounted for less than 2 percent of all deaths during 1930 to 1933.Moreover, for most age groups overall mortality tended to peak—over and above its long-term trend—during years of strong economic expansion (such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936-1937). In contrast, the deep recession of 1921, the Great Depression of 1930 to 1933, and the deep recession of 1938 coincided with generalized declines in mortality rates and peaks in life expectancy.But how to explain these counterintuitive results?Since this is a study of association, not of cause, it's possible that economic conditions influenced mortality, or that mortality influenced economic conditions, or that the link between economic conditions and mortality could be explained by other factors. Tapia and Diez-Roux suspect that economic conditions influenced mortality. And if that is the case, they reasoned, then the Great Depression, as well as recessions between 1920 and 1940, benefited people's physical health.Yet if their hypothesis is correct, why would people's physical health profit from economic depressions or recessions?Economic expansions have been linked to increases in smoking and alcohol consumption, reductions in sleep, increases in work stress, increases in atmospheric pollution, and increases in traffic accidents—all of which have been linked to adverse health outcomes and death. So economic depressions or recessions might help shield people from such factors and thereby reduce their death rates.Since suicides rose during the Great Depression, it is also plausible that people's mental health suffers from economic depressions or recessions, the researchers concluded.And if these hypotheses are correct, they may have implications for the current severe economic downturn. “My expectation is that the physical health of Americans during the current ‘Great Recession’ is probably improving, with general mortality falling, though mental distress can be worsening and suicides increasing,” Tapia told Psychiatric News. “This makes suicide prevention particularly important at present.”The study was partially funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program.“Life and Death During the Great Depression” is posted at <www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/09/28/0904491106.abstract>. ISSUES NewArchived

Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870–1890 (review)

Reviewed by: Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870–1890 Frank N. Schubert Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870–1890. By Kevin Adams. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8061-3981-4. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 276. $34.95. Kevin Adams seeks to produce what he calls “a sociocultural history that situates members of the frontier army within post-Civil War American society” (p. 4). He examines the roles and status of white officers, and white and black enlisted men, as well as the army’s missions, which he notes, following Francis Paul Prucha, Michael Tate, and others, emphasized “nation-building” and drudgery over combat. He concludes that each group showed significant common characteristics, and that their status had two main sources, eighteenth century tradition and the values of post-Civil War society. Officers, according to Adams, were a well-educated, self-conscious elite. White enlisted men existed somewhere between civilian laborers and chattel slaves, and the condition of black enlisted men reflected the inferior position of African Americans in the post-abolition two-tiered racial system. Overall, Adams asserts that enlisted men, largely unskilled immigrants, constituted an aggrieved class with an egalitarian outlook. As a result they represented “a counterbalance to the frenzy brought by Euro-American expansion into the trans-Mississippi West,…a minor, but real, historical alternative to the well-known excesses of western settlement” (p. 107). As a whole, he contends, the army represented a microcosm of the national movement toward a permanent class-based society. He supports this view with anecdotes culled from four depositories and the books of other historians. Adams barely touched the massive documentation in the [End Page 1342] National Archives, including the court martial records that might have suggested that an egalitarian spirit did not exactly pervade the barracks. His reading of the Army and Navy Journal seems to have been confined to a handful of issues available in his university library. Adams’s efforts to fit his subject into his framework are not convincing. For example, to illustrate the focus of the officer class on social matters outside the profession of soldiering, he produces the obituary of General George Crook in the Army and Navy Journal, which emphasized Crook’s extracurricular interests and attainments to the exclusion of his combat record and tactical innovations. To Adams this focus shows that the military audience valued the nonprofessional side of Crook’s life. To others this might mean that the paper’s readers already knew of Crook’s campaign successes and failures and his use of mules and Indian scouts in dogged pursuit. When he tries to extend his reach to encompass the role of gender, Adams asks whether soldiers’ interest in prostitutes represented an effort to “compensate for attacks on their masculinity elsewhere in their lives,” i.e. the occasional requirement for a few to do domestic (women’s) work for officers. Of course, the short answer is “no.” Men who break the monotony with stag dances do not need complicated psycho- social reasons to visit whores. Soldiering may have been, as he says, “a masculine form of gendered oppression,” reflecting “the gendered implications of increasing social stratification in the late nineteenth century,” but Roman soldiers on the Danubian frontier two thousand years ago went whoring too. So did my generation of soldiers in Vietnam. Not for nothing is prostitution known as the oldest profession. Adams appears to think he has discovered something new and telling about the Army. It was indeed a stratified organization in which officers dominated. This is well known. It is equally well known that the rigid caste structure of a standing army is timeless and not tied to the Gilded Age or any particular period. Race relations in post-Civil War America did go through a distinctive evolution, unique to the period, but that is generally familiar as well. Overall, this book adds little to our understanding of the frontier army or the post-Civil War period in American history. Frank N. Schubert Mount Vernon, Virginia Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

Policy and Politics: The Bush Administration and the 2008 Presidential Election

It was called the most important election since the Great Depression. The policies of the Bush administration established the storyline for the presidential election and determined its outcome. This could be seen in three areas: a failing economy, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the expansion of executive powers. In particular, the collapse of the financial industry in the fall of 2008 correlated with the increases in the Democratic vote. The Bush presidency should be considered transformative, a highly significant period in American history. Not only did it set the agenda for the election, pitting an advocate for change (Barack Obama) against a candidate committed to continuing the Bush policies (John McCain), it also dictated the problems the in-coming administration would have to deal with.

Balance or Dominance? Party Competition in Congressional Politics

With a pioneering application of probability models in political science, Stokes and Iversen established “the existence of forces restoring party competition.” Whatever the margin of victory in a given election, the partisan vote subsequently tends to return to the point of equal division. The authors introduce an expanded test of electoral equilibrium that allows for effects of major realignments and regional differences, using congressional elections since 1828. They find that the vote division gravitates to the mean but that the mean vote, in most periods of American history and in several regions, departs significantly from the point of equal division and in some instances is prone to a pronounced drift. Hence, during much of their lifetime, many Americans do not experience, in congressional elections, party competition that gives the opposition much of a chance to win.

T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American agitator: a collection of writings, 1880-1928

Born into slavery, T. Thomas Fortune was known as the dean of African American journalism by the time of his death in the early twentieth century. The editorship of three prominent black newspapers - the New York Globe, Freeman, and Age - provided Fortune with a platform to speak against racism and injustice.For nearly five decades his was one of the most powerful voices in the press. Contemporaries such as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington considered him an equal, if not a superior, in social and political thought. Today's histories often pass over his writings, in part because they are so voluminous and have rarely been reprinted. Shawn Leigh Alexander's anthology will go a long way towards rectifying that situation, demonstrating the breadth of Fortune's contribution to black political thought at a key period in American history.

Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age: from the end of World War I to the great crash

This illustrated encyclopedia offers in-depth coverage of one of the most fascinating and widely studied periods in American history. Extending from the end of World War I in 1918 to the great Wall Street crash in 1929, the Jazz age was a time of frenetic energy and unprecedented historical developments, ranging from the League of Nations, woman suffrage, Prohibition, the Red Scare, the Ku Klux Klan, the Lindberg flight, and the Scopes trial, to the rise of organized crime, motion pictures, and celebrity culture.Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age provides information on the politics, economics, society, and culture of the era in rich detail. The entries cover themes, personalities, institutions, ideas, events, trends, and more; and special features such as sidebars and photos help bring the era vividly to life.

The Marxist and the movies: a biography of Paul Jarrico

As part of its effort to rid the nation of Communist influence and infiltration, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed hundreds of actors, screenwriters, producers, and directors with suspected leanings in 1947. Some of these film industry veterans, including screenwriter Paul Jarrico (1915-1997), refused to testify on Capitol Hill and were denied subsequent employment. In The Marxist and the Movies, Larry Ceplair illuminates the life, career, and political activism of Jarrico, the recipient of an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941) and the producer of the only film ever blacklisted, The Salt of the Earth (1954). Although the story of the Hollywood Ten has been told, The Marxist and the Movies is a unique look at Communist activities during this seminal period in American history. Ceplair recounts Jarrico's struggles against both personal demons and the prevailing power structures of his era. Through firsthand accounts from Jarrico himself and interviews with those closest to him, as well as congressional records and statements from those on both sides of the Red Scare, Ceplair provides an intimate view of Paul Jarrico's life, set in historical and cultural context.

Cornplanter: chief warrior of the Allegany Senecas

The era following the American War of Independence was one of enormous conflict for the Allegany Senecas. As the most influential Seneca leader of his time, Cornplanter led his people in war and along an often troubled path to peace. This incisive biography traces his rise to prominence as a Seneca military leader during the American Revolution and his later diplomatic success in negotiations with the Federal government. The book also explores Cornplanter's dealings with other Native American councils and with his own people. It explains how Senecas faced heavy pressure to sell their lands, and how they concurrently embraced a reformed and revitalized Iroquois religion, as inspired by Cornplanter's visionary half-brother, Handsome Lake. Thomas S. Abler skillfully weaves together previously discordant strands of the Chief Warrior's life into a concise, animated, and enlightening portrait. Even as Cornplanter examines a critical period in American history, it gives us a multidimensional knowledge of politics and diplomacy from the Seneca point of view.

Black Female Executions in Historical Context

This article examines the systemic oppression of executed Black women from the earliest periods of American history. The most consistent factor in Black female executions throughout U.S. history is criminal justice authorities' executions of Black women largely for challenging gendered and racist exploitation. Colonial and antebellum slavery institutionalized the persecution of slave women, who often retaliated against oppressive brutality by killing White masters. White lynch mobs effectively augmented the legal killing of Black women in postbellum society and lowered Black female execution rates. Reduced to a peonage state in the apartheid of Jim Crow, Black women's crimes of resistance against White brutality paralleled those of slave women decades earlier. And despite the delusional expansion of civil rights and the sovereignty of Black people over the confines of segregation in the modern era, the racialized sexism of American criminal justice has rendered Black women ever more vulnerable to the death penalty.

Religion's Impact on American Social Issues

Americans have often appealed to religion to explain how society ought to be organized, and to express their concern over particular social issues. By considering two important social issues at two different periods in American history, this teaching strategy explores religion's impact on people's beliefs about society and also the impact of society on religion. The lesson is designed to highlight historical variability in the relationship between religion and society. To facilitate comparison of the two cases, the lesson focuses on how Americans have used the Bible to explain and justify their stands on social issues. Of course, the impact of religion on social issues in American history is not limited to use of the Bible, and instructors will want to point out that Americans revere other sacred texts, too, and that appealing to sacred texts is only one way people express their religion. Nevertheless, the Bible has figured prominently in American debates over social issues. The first part of the lesson considers Thomas Paine's influential pamphlet, Common Sense, published in January 1776, and its appeal to the Bible to justify American rebellion against the British monarchy. The second part of the lesson considers proslavery writing during the 185os, focusing on the support defenders of slavery drew from the Bible to establish their position that slavery was a legitimate institution. The third and final part of the lesson considers differences in the social contexts that led different groups of people to interpret the Bible's message about government and human equality differently.

Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race

Between 1850 and 1930, demographic upheaval in the United States was connected to reorganization of the racial order. Socially and politically recognized boundaries between groups shifted, new groups emerged, others disappeared, and notions of who belonged in which category changed. All recognized racial groups—blacks, whites, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and others—were affected. This article investigates how and why census racial classification policies changed during this period, only to stabilize abruptly before World War II. In the context of demographic transformations and their political consequences, we find that census policy in any given year was driven by a combination of scientific, political, and ideological motivations.Based on this analysis, we rethink existing theoretical approaches to censuses and racial classification, arguing that a nation's census is deeply implicated in and helps to construct its social and political order. Censuses provide the concepts, taxonomy, and substantive information by which a nation understands its component parts as well as the contours of the whole; censuses both create the image and provide the mirror of that image for a nation's self-reflection. We conclude by outlining the meaning of this period in American history for current and future debates over race and classification.