pre-Civil War Research Articles

Colonial Slavery, the Lord-Bondsman Dialectic, and the St Louis Hegelians

AbstractHegel's lord-bondsman dialectic has been of especially great interest to progressive and radical Hegelians—broadly speaking, politically left-leaning interpreters of Hegel who object to certain social hierarchies and demand their abolition. They read Hegel as giving an account of how ‘lordship’ over others is an inherently unstable and unsatisfying social formation, even for its supposed beneficiaries. Marxists, feminists and post-colonial theorists have all found inspiration in Hegel's analysis of the lord and bondsman by applying it to concrete relations of oppression, such as capitalism, patriarchy, or racism. In contrast, recent scholarship on Hegel's views on race and colonialism has cast doubt on whether his systematic political philosophy and philosophy of history can be of similar use to progressives. Hegel was undeniably a Eurocentric thinker, but philosophers like Robert Bernasconi and Alison Stone have convincingly shown that he was also a racist and a defender of colonialism. Crucially, however, few of the scholars who write on Hegel's pro-colonialism have analysed this feature of Hegel's thought in connection with the lord-bondsman dialectic. In this article, I argue for two connected theses. First, I argue that contrary to the hopes of some progressive defenders of Hegel, we cannot easily separate the lord-bondsman dialectic from Hegel's pro-colonialism. This is because Hegel himself appealed to the lord-bondsman dialectic to argue that colonial slavery educated its victims, and could therefore be temporarily justified. Second, I argue that this pro-colonial reading of the dialectic, though largely ignored by contemporary interpreters, was in fact recognized and embraced by a group of Hegelians in North America known as the St Louis Hegelians. They used the lord-bondsman dialectic as a basis for a qualified defence of pre-Civil War American slavery.

French-Canadian Settlement and Community Formation in Pre–Civil War New York State

French-Canadian Settlement and Community Formation in Pre–Civil War New York State

What fraction of antebellum US national product did the enslaved produce?

This article evaluates the high-profile claim that enslaved African-Americans produced over 50 percent of US national product in the pre-Civil War period. The accounting exercise shows the fraction was closer to (and indeed likely slightly below) the share of the population, that is, about 12.6 percent in 1860. The enslaved population had higher rates of labor force participation, but they were also forced to work in sectors–agriculture and domestic service—with below average output per worker. The economic surplus generated by the enslaved was due chiefly to the low value of the very basic consumption bundle provided rather than to exceptionally high values of production per capita.

Birth in the U.S. Plantation South and Racial Differences in all-cause mortality in later life

The American South has been characterized as a Stroke Belt due to high cardiovascular mortality. We examine whether mortality rates and race differences in rates reflect birthplace exposure to Jim Crow-era inequalities associated with the Plantation South. The plantation mode of agricultural production was widespread through the 1950s when older adults of today, if exposed, were children. We use proportional hazards models to estimate all-cause mortality in Non-Hispanic Black and White birth cohorts (1920–1954) in a sample (N = 21,941) drawn from REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS), a national study designed to investigate Stroke Belt risk. We link REGARDS data to two U.S. Plantation Censuses (1916, 1948) to develop county-level measures that capture the geographic overlap between the Stroke Belt, two subregions of the Plantation South, and a non-Plantation South subregion. Additionally, we examine the life course timing of geographic exposure: at birth, adulthood (survey enrollment baseline), neither, or both portions of life. We find mortality hazard rates higher for Black compared to White participants, regardless of birthplace, and for the southern-born compared to those not southern-born, regardless of race. Race-specific models adjusting for adult Stroke Belt residence find birthplace-mortality associations fully attenuated among White—except in one of two Plantation South subregions—but not among Black participants. Mortality hazard rates are highest among Black and White participants born in this one Plantation South subregion. The Black-White mortality differential is largest in this birthplace subregion as well. In this subregion, the legacy of pre-Civil War plantation production under enslavement was followed by high-productivity plantation farming under the southern Sharecropping System.

Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen C. Guelzo

Reviewed by: Robert E. Lee: A Life by Allen C. Guelzo Gary W. Gallagher (bio) Robert E. Lee: A Life. By Allen C. Guelzo. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. Pp. 600. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $18.00.) Undertaking a biography of Robert E. Lee in the second decade of the twenty-first century invites discomfort. The simplistic version of Lee as an uncomplicated Christian gentleman of unrivaled military genius, as codified by Douglas Southall Freeman in the mid-1930s, has been replaced by another simplistic version, embraced by pundits and some scholars, of a racist, slaveholding traitor who must be scorned. Allen C. Guelzo pursued his work on Lee with full knowledge of possible pitfalls. “This book began in 2014,” he observes, “in what now seems like almost another world, with a single question: How do you write the biography of someone who commits treason?” Moreover, “the treason Lee committed was aggravated by the nature of the cause for which he committed it—the protection of legalized human slavery” (3). Although “to capture Lee in a squinting and cynical view” would be easy, Guelzo notes that “no one who met Robert Edward Lee—no matter what the circumstances of the meeting—ever seemed to fail to be impressed by the man” (3). Acknowledging that Thomas L. Connelly, Alan T. Nolan, Michael Fellman, and others have challenged Freeman’s interpretation, Guelzo warns against “casting Lee in contradiction—as either saint or sinner, as either simple or pathological,” rather “than seeing his anxieties as a [End Page 253] counterpoint to his dignity, his impatience and his temper as the match to his composure” (5). Like many others, Guelzo looks to the father to understand the son. Henry Lee exhibited fiscal irresponsibility and abandoned his family when Robert was six years old. “It was Lee’s determination to not be Light Horse Harry,” remarks Guelzo, “that fired his impatience and, in later years, his ferocious outbursts of temper at his own and others’ imperfections” (7). Throughout his life, Lee pursued fiscal security and personal independence—goals that sometimes clashed. Absent control, he often “grew impatient, contemptuous, and, on one significant occasion, violent” (5). That occasion occurred in 1859 when he ordered, and perhaps directly participated in, the whipping of three enslaved people at Arlington. The book’s longest section examines the pre–Civil War years. During that period, Lee stayed in the army, which he found unsatisfactory in many ways, because it conveyed financial security. He excelled during the war with Mexico but groused because it brought no advance in permanent rank. He “recognized slavery as an embarrassment that would one day have to be released,” but also offered “no plan for that release and felt no urgency about improvising one. His indifference to the follies of a slave economy and its jagged violation of natural rights was a cruelty in self-disguised velvet” (146). Guelzo identifies three critical decisions during the secession crisis. For the first, to resign his colonelcy in the U.S. Army, it was “consistently family and not politics” that guided Lee (188). His second decision, to refuse command of the U.S. forces offered by Francis Preston Blair, positioned Lee to “sit out the ensuing conflict as a neutral” (193). The third decision, to take charge of Virginia’s state forces, rendered Lee a traitor who “irrevocably, finally, publicly turned his back on his service, his flag, and, ultimately, his country” (197). In a wise choice, Guelzo forgoes detailed narratives of military operations that others have examined in minute detail. For example, the 1862 Maryland campaign takes up just twelve pages, two of them devoted to the Battle of Antietam. Guelzo pronounces Lee superior to any other Confederate general and all but one of his Union opponents: “Only Grant emerged in the war with military gifts on a par with Lee, and even then it took Grant almost a year to force Lee’s Confederates to their knees at Appomattox. There is glory for Lee in that achievement. But it is a glory in technique, to be acknowledged with a decent reluctance” (430). Guelzo credits Lee as a strategist who knew the key to Confederate victory lay...

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U. S.—Mexico Borderlands by William S. Kiser

Reviewed by: Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U. S.—Mexico Borderlands by William S. Kiser Robert Wooster Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U. S.—Mexico Borderlands. By William S. Kiser. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. Pp. 262. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) In this, his fifth book published since 2011, William S. Kiser continues to burnish his reputation as a prodigious researcher, productive writer, and keen analyst of the mid-nineteenth century southwestern borderlands from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Using an impressive variety of manuscripts, official documents, English- and Spanish-language newspapers, and secondary books and articles, Kiser demonstrates the often-overlooked significance of northern Mexico to the American Civil War and Greater Reconstruction (meaning the imperial struggles for hemispheric dominance as well as the fate of slavery and the former Confederate states). The weight of the evidence is indeed overwhelming: countless Confederate and Union political officials, army officers, diplomats, and [End Page 585] rogue leaders envisioned the northern borderlands of Mexico as a means of furthering their national and personal ambitions, more often than not through such "irregular diplomacy" (7) as fantastical schemes, filibustering, bribes, tariffs, and secret personal deals. By 1864, the occupation of much of the region by Emperor Maximilian I's imperialists only increased the potential stakes, as the French presence promised even more meaningful opportunities for a Confederate resurgence. As Kiser rightly insists, however, "the localized nature of borderlands diplomacy" (28) greatly complicated the dreams of outsiders. State governors Ignacio Pesqueíra (Sonora), Luis Terrazas (Chihuahua), Santiago Vidaurri (Nuevo León), and Albino López (Tamaulipas) stubbornly sought to maintain their local sovereignty while continuing to further their own personal interests as they balanced official and unofficial diplomacy with the external forces. Bandits, smugglers, and non-state regional strongmen such as Patricio Milmo, Juan Cortina, Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio also sought to exploit these rivalries through financial machinations and open warfare to further their own causes, which invariably featured a greater emphasis on local rather than national interests. To transform the complex variety of ingredients into a comprehensible narrative, Kiser sensibly organizes his work into five chapters: one on the pre-Civil War diplomacy that had shaped the region; one each on the Mexican northwest (Chihuahua and Sonora) and northeast (Nuevo León and Tamaulipas) before mid-1863; and one for each of these regions following the French intervention. A concluding essay seeks to bring borderlands diplomacy into the present day. Built upon the foundational publications of historian Jerry Thompson along with Kiser's own studies, Illusions of Empire makes the strongest case in print for the importance of Mexican diplomacy to the United States during the Civil War era. Furthermore, it offers important analytical opportunities for Texas historians beyond the southwestern borderlands. Traditional scholars, including this reviewer, have tended to compartmentalize the complicated experiences of the Lone Star State in the mid-nineteenth century into segmented time periods and regions. That research has been invaluable in establishing a basic narrative. But a deeper understanding of the Texas past now requires something of a paradigm shift. Rather than shaping our investigations around unique eras like the antebellum years, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and approaching our studies from the perspective of separate regions—the South and the Confederacy, the American West, and the southwestern borderlands—we need to begin the more complicated but infinitely more rewarding task of emphasizing, as Kiser suggests, a "more expansive vision" (7) of the interconnectedness of these experiences. [End Page 586] Robert Wooster Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (emeritus) Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

Old Ironsides.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was a 19th century elite physician, curmudgeon, essayist, and poet. His works were numerous, insightful, entertaining, and characteristic of the pre-Civil War, Civil War, and Gilded age eras. Many of his shorter poems are taught in high school as examples of late 19th century works, as they are relatively easy to memorize and understand. Holmes and the Fireside Poets (Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell, among others) created works that, in their time, were read aloud by fathers and mothers to their family because the poems often centered around values, morals, and historic events. "Old Ironsides" is characteristic of the type of work for which the Fireside Poets became famous. It is an entertaining poem to read, study, and hear, particularly when linking it to the oldest ship in the world, still afloat and sailing around Boston Bay.

"It Was our Home and Sadly We Will Never Return": Nostalgia and the Circulation of Images in Lebanese Jewish Virtual Communities

Abstract: By focusing on photographs pertaining to Beirut's historic Jewish neighborhood and central synagogue, I address in this article the mobilization of collective nostalgia on three Lebanese Jewish Facebook groups that provide a realm for debating, challenging, and reconstructing concepts of belonging while remembering a shared homeland from the diaspora. Furthermore, I explore how the nostalgic circulation and sharing of family photographs and anonymous snapshots of the community's pre-Civil War life privileges a particular perspective on how life once was, and by excluding other realities from both the photographic frame and historical narrative, creates a community history through which to imagine the future.

Chronology of societal and Afro-American art evolution in pre (1619-1865) and post (1865-1965) civil war in the US

This study explores the relationship between the societal integration of African Americans and its influences on the group's art of painting in the pre-and-post-Civil War periods, i.e., from 1619-1865 and 1865-1965, in the United States of America. It seeks to explore a relationship between greater social integration and influences on the artwork of African Americans over time - themes and elements of art, i.e., lines and colours. It draws upon John Dewey’s theory of art as experience and Erwin Panofsky's Thematic analysis (Iconography). The study findings suggest the oppression and exclusion of African Americans in general (in the pre-Civil War period) and its influences on the constrained creativity of the group’s artwork (of painting). However, on the contrary, the findings indicate greater experimentation, uniqueness, and depiction of African identity in post-Civil War period artwork of painting. This coincides with the gradual but ominous social acceptance, educational attainments, and economic success of Afro-Americans in American society during this period. The findings and analysis validate a relationship between the societal transformation of marginalized groups (from exclusion to integration) and influences on groups’ artistic expressions.

Race, Politics, and Nation in Albion W. Tourgée's American Historical Novels Series: The Example of Hot Plowshares

Race, Politics, and Nation in Albion W. Tourgée's American Historical Novels Series: The Example of <i>Hot Plowshares</i>

“IF WE DIDN’T EAT THEM, THEY WOULDN’T EXIST” The Nonidentity Problem’s Implications for Animals (Including Humans)

“IF WE DIDN’T EAT THEM, THEY WOULDN’T EXIST” The Nonidentity Problem’s Implications for Animals (Including Humans)

Access to Finance and Technological Innovation: Evidence from Pre-Civil War America

AbstractThis article provides new evidence on how access to finance affects technological innovation and establishes the role of labor practices in shaping this relation. We exploit a unique setting, pre-Civil War America, where staggered adoption of free banking laws across states encouraged bank entry, and variation in the use of exploited workers in agriculture generated differences in producers’ demands for labor-saving technologies. Results show that access to finance spurred innovation; the positive effect on agricultural innovation diminished with labor exploitation. We establish the causal role of labor exploitation using the 1850s cholera pandemic and the influx of Irish immigrants.

The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman

Union general William T. Sherman has been the subject of a dozen major biographies since the end of the Civil War. Brian Holden Reid has surpassed them in some ways but has not done so in others. His is a two-toned book. The first and best part is Holden Reid's discussion of Sherman the man, his personality, his pre–Civil War and post-Appomattox life. Holden Reid provides the best take on aspects of his subject that has ever been written. He also provides the best take on certain aspects of Sherman's war career, such as his near emotional breakdown in the fall of 1861 and his association with the burning of Columbia, South Carolina. In these regards, Holden Reid has written the best biography of Sherman. But the other part of his biography, the discussion of Sherman the Civil War general, has flaws and weaknesses. Holden Reid commits a number of factual errors. He garbles the flow of events that led to Sherman's first independent command, the Chickasaw Bayou Campaign in late 1862, as well as Sherman's conduct of the relief march to Knoxville in late 1863. For example, Holden Reid believes that Sherman moved his command directly from Memphis to Chattanooga along the line of railroad linking those two points across north Mississippi and north Alabama late in 1863, apparently using the railroad for logistical purposes. But in reality Sherman cut off contact with the railroad and marched his command without a supply line across southern Tennessee. This was in fact the first time he conducted such a risky move, and Holden Reid missed an opportunity to analyze it within the context of Sherman's evolving concepts of war management, one of the stated purposes of this biography.

The Rise and Fall of a "Free" Delaware: The Missouri Crisis and the Invention of the Free State in the Mid-Atlantic

This article examines both the origins of the "free state" concept in U.S. history as well the little-known, brief period that Delaware was widely considered a "free state." Americans had long talked about "slaveholding" and "non-slaveholding" states—but it was not until the late 1810s and early 1820s that northerners began to use the words "free state." This change represented a rhetorical escalation from "non-slaveholding state" to a term with an even clearer moral valence. But it was not originally obvious to observers exactly which states should be included in the "free" cohort, and, for a time, white Delawareans were successful in convincing themselves and their fellow Americans that they should be counted amongst the northern free states. This article charts Delawareans' arguments in favor of their "free state" status, as well as, over time, their state's fall from grace into the "slave state" category. That it was only in the years after the Missouri Compromise that a nebulous group of non-slave states solidified into an identifiable core of "free" ones demonstrates that the development of the sectional divide in the pre-Civil War era was more gradual and more uncertain than previously thought. It reveals a process of negotiating a "free" identity on a state level that did not mirror reality on the ground. Finally, it uncovers the rhetorical process behind the large-scale erasure of enslaved African Americans' realities in the creation of the "Free North" myth along its borders, even when the evidence of their existence and their experiences would have been impossible for their white neighbors to ignore

Analogous Exceptionalisms within Japanese and American History: Kokugaku and Transcendentalism

Japanologists have identified the intellectual movement called Kokugaku (“national learning”) as early modern Japan’s version of nativism, even though it bears no resemblance to the original American version of nativism from the 1840s, namely Know-Nothingism. Instead, Kokugaku had striking intellectual and institutional similarities with pre-Civil War Transcendentalism. Americanists have associated Transcendentalism with the broader ideological phenomenon known as exceptionalism, rather than with nativism. For this reason, this article proposes to reclassify Kokugaku as exceptionalism, instead of nativism, via a comparison between it and Transcendentalism. The intellectual linchpin between Transcendentalism and exceptionalism is Fichte, whose ideas influenced Japan’s literary genre known as Nihonjinron (“theories of Japanese[-ness]”), the modern successor of Kokugaku, a connection that bolsters the intellectual legitimacy of the view that Kokugaku and Transcendentalism are analogous versions of exceptionalism.

‘The History of Political Thought Above All’

Abstract Well-known for his work on absolutism, divine right theory, and his contextual reading of Hobbes’ ideas, Sommerville also published successful critical editions of Sir Robert Filmer and King James vi and I’s political writing. Sommerville’s engagement in key historiographical debates on early- modern British history, involving “opposing camps” of revisionists and post-revisionists, is less explored. Here, I focus on the question whether pre-Civil War England was immune to ideological conflict or, instead, featured a confrontation between King and Parliament based on ideas of power, liberty and obedience. I also highlight the continued relevance of Sommerville’s innovative account of English political thought as deeply shaped by European theories. His work reminds us of the role of the history of political thought in rectifying false claims and unchecked opinions, so commonly expounded in our divided world. In conclusion, I advance my own critical interpretation of Sommerville’s views on absolutism and patriarchalism.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Reviewed by: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi Devin Thomas O'Shea (bio) stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in america Ibram X. Kendi Bold Type Books https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/ibram-x-kendi/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568585987/ 608 Pages; Print, $19.99 Like Bertrand Russel's The History of Western Philosophy (1945), Stamped from the Beginning is a hulking 584-page narrative archeology of ideas. [End Page 89] Professor Ibram X. Kendi's argument lays out three competing ideologies which reveal themselves during discussions of race in America dating back to pilgrim days. First, there are segregationists who place non-white people in a fundamentally different category than themselves. Then there are assimilationists who largely believe non-white people could improve, and become whiter, if only they would straighten up a little. Finally, there are antiracists who believe these distinctions between races and cultures are largely bullshit. Russel's history of ideas traces a (fairly) straight line through schools of western thought which builds from one thinker to another. Eventually, Russel comes to the consensus that we've entered a brand-new school of thought, and in that way, philosophy progresses. So too for America's racist ideas—they move from body to body throughout history and evolve. Professor Kendi de-centralizes these ideas through many voices while also selecting a touchstone historical figure to represent an era. For example, pre-Revolutionary America is the realm of Cotton Mather. Mather's conception of race is a matter of religion; he was abnormally progressive in that Cotton believed slaves were human enough to be baptized. From there, we move to the era of founding fathers where Thomas Jefferson gets no gloss. Kendi's work is astounding for its breath of historical understanding; the sections on Jefferson and W. E. B. Du Bois seem especially familiar to the writer. Any question that Jefferson had realized something about slavery later in life (an idea I've read about often) is debunked. The only change in Jefferson's mind seems to be about how attractive Black women are. First they aren't attractive, then there's an epiphany sometime after Sally Hemmings, but there is no deathbed revelation. Kendi navigates pre-Civil War America through William Lloyd Garrison, and transitions to Du Bois for Reconstruction up through the Civil Rights Movement. From that point forward, the book moves at a gallop to cover ground including Sista Solider, The Bell Curve (1995), and Ferguson. Angela Davis is our touchstone intellectual who brings us up to the present, and while Davis's philosophy is covered well enough, this is the section of Stamped that feels hurried. It's bound to feel that way—this is the case with all projects that set out to account for hundreds of years of history. Eventually, the historian crosses a threshold where the debates are no longer dead. The [End Page 90] form changes, and suddenly Professor Kendi is explaining the recent ancestry of our modern debates. At the time of writing, Kendi is under the impression that the most dangerous racist idea of the Obama era is that we live in a post-racial society. That idea, Kendi argues, is what prevents antiracist action in the United States; modern producers of racist ideas have been working to put up "a portrait of America conveying that there was no longer any need for protective or affirmative civil rights laws and policies—and no longer any need to ever talk about race." There's no mention of Trump except for the introduction to the paperback edition (which I think Professor Kendi could have cut since the body of the book stands so well on its own). The US has historical amnesia, and by following the three ideologies—assimilationists, segregationists, and antiracist—Professor Kendi shows how language, profit motive, and technology keep racist ideas alive. These forces also de-claw antiracist efforts. Each step of "progress" in fact finds new ground to exploit. For example, the first half of the book concerns itself with religious ideas transitioning into scientific ideas. The debate over the souls...

Connecticut State Library Spotlight

Connecticut State Library Spotlight

COUNTERING XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM THROUGH SHORT STORIES FOR HISTORY STUDENTS

Short stories provide suitable reading materials to enrich the study of American History. Using literary works can help foster transformative history teaching, especially when discussing the violent past to construct a better future. This study aims at examining two American short stories that deal with racism and prejudice. Used as primary data are “Désirée’s Baby” (1893) which tells about racial intolerance in a pre-Civil War plantation society; and “Shame” (1964), a story about intolerance experienced by a Black schoolboy. Critical reading method is applied by making contextualization with different American historical periods. The results show that (1) themes of xenophobia, racism, and intolerance are evident in these short stories; (2) authorial backgrounds help explain their dealing with the history of racism shown in their works; and (3) stories of inter-racial relations make good reading supplements for teaching American History. In conclusion, literature is history which is beautifully condensed that can help raise students’ awareness about the evil pasts and to grow a historical empathy in facing current realities in order to build a more just, civil, and compassionate society in the future.