South Carolina Upcountry Research Articles

The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph

Reviewed by: The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph Judith Giesberg (bio) The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation. By Thavolia Glymph. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 384. Cloth, $34.95.) Reviewing the literature on women in 2002, Thavolia Glymph concluded that “the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction remains the most racially gendered and regionally segregated historiographical space in US history.”1 Civil War scholarship has made great, corrective strides since then. Scholars are removing the blinders that prevented our seeing when geography mattered less in women’s lives than race or class. The field is a whole lot less “battle-centric” than it once was, with few insisting that sharp lines marked the separation of battlefield from home front (217). It is fitting that Glymph’s new book seeks to further the work of breaking down the boundaries that still separate scholarship on black and white women, North and South, wealthy and poor. But it does more than integrate. The Women’s Fight stakes out new scholarly ground, arguing that black women’s labor—overlooked, coerced, dangerous, and often unremunerated—was central to the U.S. Army’s [End Page 585] success in the field. And, in highlighting how various women’s war “business”—slaves’, white slave-owning refugees’, poor southern whites’, and abolition-minded white northern volunteers’—brought them “colli[ding]” into one another, Glymph shows what was at stake for women whose “business” was ending slavery and for those who benefited from its perpetuation (2, 259). Whereas some scholarly distinctions seem no longer meaningful, this one remains essential in understanding women’s Civil War. Less clear are the book’s claims about the “home” referenced in the subtitle; this may be because no home was safely beyond the reach of the Civil War—at least none of those featured in the book. The Women’s Fight begins with white slaveholding women on the road as refugees, seeking to get themselves and their slave property beyond the reach of the U.S. Army. During their journey, they suffered some of the privations—dirt, cold, hunger—faced by the enslaved people who had been force-marched to the cotton frontier decades earlier. Things didn’t get any better for them once they made new homes in mountain communities in western North Carolina or the South Carolina upcountry, where their poor white neighbors did not welcome them and the airs they put on. Who wants new neighbors showing up and eating up meager food reserves? Particularly those who thought the local women were simply “ungrateful wretches,” as did Gertrude Clanton Thomas, or “corn women,” as did Mary Rhodes, when they came looking for help feeding their families (70, 74). Yet, when the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands arrived late in the war, women who had fled the Union army to protect their property in slaves were made over into “homeless Union refugees,” becoming the “refugees” in the bureau’s name and the recipients of Yankee sympathy and largesse (85). Not so the bureau’s “freedmen”—or, rather, the enslaved women who were left to make their freedom when slaveholding women fled. Enslaved women are the Civil War’s forgotten Unionists, “an undrafted, unwanted army of black women” who “shored up the antislavery ground” on which the U.S. Army would fight (97). Everyone knows that the 180,000 black men, most of them enslaved, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops provided a crucial boost for the Union war effort, entering the fight at a time when the army was stretched thin and in need of fresh recruits. Glymph’s “army of black women” can now join them in the scholarship on the won cause. Glymph previewed some of her thinking on black Unionist women in an essay in this journal’s September 2018 issue; here the subject gets a fuller treatment. Glymph reaches deep into a number of primary sources, including the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Federal Writers’ Project interviews...

A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and His Family, 1860-1863

A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and His Family, 1860-1863

A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and His Family, 1860-1863

A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and His Family, 1860-1863

“From the cradle to the grave”: Jim Williams, black manhood, and militia activism in Reconstruction South Carolina

ABSTRACTThe life of Jim Williams, an African American militia captain hanged by the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina in 1871, illuminates the history of martial black manhood during Reconstruction. Service in state militias seemed to afford black men the opportunity to assert a new kind of manhood, grounded in a desire to defend black communities and exercise political rights gained after emancipation. But conservative white southerners met these assertions of black manhood with a campaign of vigilantism. Racist violence by conservative white southerners worked to reverse the support militias had received from white Republicans, and the militias were disbanded and blamed for the very violence they suffered. This article explores Williams’s story, analyzes both officers and troops of black militia companies in the South Carolina upcountry, and charts how real and rhetorical violence silenced the militias’ assertions of a new form of black manhood and freedom.

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

September 01 2017 Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. By HidetakaHirota. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 320. $35.00.) Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio is professor and chair of the history department at Furman University in Greenville, SC. An immigration historian, Vecchio has published several articles on Italian and Jewish immigration and is the author of Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America. Her current work examines Jewish immigrants and their economic impact on the South Carolina Upcountry Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Diane C. Vecchio Diane C. Vecchio is professor and chair of the history department at Furman University in Greenville, SC. An immigration historian, Vecchio has published several articles on Italian and Jewish immigration and is the author of Merchants, Midwives, and Laboring Women: Italian Migrants in Urban America. Her current work examines Jewish immigrants and their economic impact on the South Carolina Upcountry Online Issn: 1937-2213 Print Issn: 0028-4866 © 2017 by The New England Quarterly2017The New England Quarterly The New England Quarterly (2017) 90 (3): 491–493. https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00635 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Diane C. Vecchio; Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. The New England Quarterly 2017; 90 (3): 491–493. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_r_00635 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThe New England Quarterly Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2017 by The New England Quarterly2017The New England Quarterly Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Tilly Merrick, merchant in a turbulent Atlantic World

In March 1781, Tilly Merrick, 26 years of age, launched his career as an apprentice in a newly established Amsterdam firm. A native of Concord, Massachusetts, his earliest contacts were with Boston merchants. With the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution, already wise in the ways of trading in the Atlantic world engulfed in war, Merrick set out to establish himself in the new nation, eventually settling in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to his Boston friends, he now had European contacts primarily in London and Amsterdam and soon found a prominent trading partner in Philadelphia. His business largely consisted in shipping rice, indigo, and deerskins while importing consumer goods to meet the demands of a people ravaged by the bitter warfare of the final campaign of the American Revolution. Another factor soon complicated Merrick's endeavors as an established merchant in Charleston, namely excessive heat and mosquitos. After two years in the city he found it necessary during the summer months to take refuge in the South Carolina upcountry where native tribes were recently dispossessed and a viable rural economy was being developed. Here Merrick stocked a store, started construction of a “plantation” with slave and free labor, began speculating in land, investing in internal improvements and establishing himself in upcountry affairs before the cotton kingdom with a rich plantation economy developed at the end of the eighteenth century. As economic stagnation persisted in the Atlantic world, Merrick began to curtail his ventures in it, devoting more time to his upcountry operations. Here, too, he had to extend long-term credit. By the end of the century, his health impaired, Merrick returned to Concord where he involved himself in various endeavors while maintaining ties with Carolina associates now involved in a rapidly developing cotton economy.

Discovering South Carolina's rock art

For years Tommy Charles searched South Carolina's upcountry for examples of ancient rock art carvings and paintings, efforts conducted on behalf of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA). As SCIAA's collections coordinator, Charles amassed considerable field experience in both prehistoric and historic archaeology and had firsthand involvement in cataloging sixty-four sites of South Carolina rock art. Charles chronicles his adventures in exploration and preservation in Discovering South Carolina's Rock Art.Although Native American rock art is common in the western United States and even at many sites east of the Mississippi, it was believed to be almost nonexistent in South Carolina until the 1980s, when several randomly discovered petroglyphs were reported in the upstate. These discoveries set in motion the first organized endeavor to identify and document these ancient examples of human expression in South Carolina. Over the ensuing years, and assisted by a host of volunteers and avocational collectors, Charles scoured the Piedmont and mountains of South Carolina in search of additional rock art. Frustrated by the inability to find these elusive artifacts, many of which are eroded almost beyond visibility, Charles began employing methods still considered unorthodox by current scientific standards for archaeological research to assist with his search and documentation. Survey efforts led to the discovery of rock art created by Native Americans and Europeans. Of particular interest are the many circle-and-line petroglyphs the survey found in South Carolina. Seeking a reason for this repetitive symbol, Charles's investigation into these finds led to the discovery that similar motifs had been identified along the Appalachian Mountains from Alabama to New York, as well as in the American Southwest and Western Europe.This engrossing account of the search for South Carolina's rock art brings awareness to the precarious state of these artifacts, threatened not only by natural attrition but also by human activities. Charles argues that, if left unprotected, rock art is ultimately doomed to exist only in our historical records.

From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915

Book Review| April 01 2010 From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915 From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850-1915. Stephen A. West. Eldred E. Prince, Jr. Eldred E. Prince, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Agricultural History (2010) 84 (2): 274–276. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-84.2.274 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Eldred E. Prince; From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. Agricultural History 1 January 2010; 84 (2): 274–276. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-84.2.274 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsAgricultural History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2010 Agricultural History Society2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915. By Stephen A. West (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2008) 261 pp. $45.00

<i>From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915.</i> By Stephen A. West (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2008) 261 pp. $45.00

From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850-1915

From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850-1915

:From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915.(The American South Series.)

:From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915.<i>(The American South Series.)</i>

Review of Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry by W. Scott Poole:Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Review of Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry by W. Scott Poole:Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Reviews of Books:Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry W. Scott Poole

Reviews of Books:Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry W. Scott Poole

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry W. Scott Poole

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry W. Scott Poole

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (review)

Taking issue with Lacy K. Ford, The Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry (1988), Manisha Sinha argues that South Carolina's hair-trigger extremism was not so much a product of the state's peculiar political history as it was "part of the tide of reaction that followed the Revolutionary era in the Atlantic world" (7). Under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, she contends, the state's political system fell under control of low country slaveholders who shared a self-destructive and self-fulfilling prophetic ideology of proslavery and "separatism" from the American nation.

The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics (review)

Reviews397 power, not idealism; that compromise was part and parcel of the political game that blacks were learning to play; and that change was more likely to come incrementally than in a giant leap to freedom. More generally, there might have been more emphasis on the consequences of the New Deal—which is barely mentioned—and of World War Two—which is discussed briefly. Not only did these twin phenomena set in motion the economic changes that provided the context for a successful assault on Jim Crow and disenfranchisement throughout the South, they also squeezed out a trickle of tentative white liberalism, even in Mississippi, which Dittmer rather underestimates. This is not to suggest that the relative and frequently ambiguous racial liberalism of Frank Smith, P. D. East, Hazel Brannon Smith, Florence Mars, Turner Catledge, or even Will Campbell in his sojourn at Ole Miss ever posed a serious challenge to white supremacy in Mississippi. Nor is it to deny that most racial liberals fell mute or ducked for cover the moment white racists rallied against an insurgent mass black movement. It is, however, to suggest that the very existence of these racial moderates and, in a world where such voices were once unheard, their public condemnations of racial brutality and support for black advancement within the boundaries of Jim Crow encouraged notions that change might just be possible in Mississippi. After more than a half-century of inertia and stasis, blacks drew strength for their coming struggle from any signs of a thaw in the middle of the racist iceberg that was Mississippi. Just as he fails to pay much attention to white liberalism, Dittmer fails to delineate white society more generally with quite the same subtlety he brings to his analysis of black Mississippi. We have the traditional cast of villains—from Theron Lynd through Ross Barnett to Byron De La Beckwith, the Klan, and the Citizens Councils and State Sovereignty Commission—but the mass of ordinary white Mississippians remains largely anonymous in an account that places so much emphasis on grass-roots affairs. In order to appreciate exactly what blacks and their allies were up against, we need to know even more about the various types of local white people; more about how their support, or at least acquiescence, in the resistance movement was secured; and more about if, when, and how fault lines in the solid rock of Mississippi's white resistance appeared. John Dittmer would, of course, be justified in claiming that this would require another book, and for now we should just be grateful to him for the masterly study that is Local People. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics. By George C. Rabie. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. 416 pp. Cloth, $34.95. Reviewed by Lacy K. Ford, Jr., associate professor ofhistory at the University ofSouth Carolina. He is the author ofOrigins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860, and is currently working on a history ofpolitical thought in the Old South. George Rabie has written a balanced, perceptive, and thoroughly researched history of high politics in the Confederacy. His compelling argument is succinctly summarized by the book's subtitle, "A Revolution Against Politics." Rabie maintains that the Confederacy is best understood not as an experiment in southern nationalism but as an attempt by white southerners to regenerate the republican purity of the Founding Fathers' generation with a revolution of their own: a revolution against politics. The Confederacy's revolution 398Southern Cultures against politics promised a rejection of the partisanship, patronage, and electioneering that southerners of virtually all ideological persuasions had practiced vigorously during the antebellum era, but which leading Confederates identified as an important if not decisive factor in the decline and fall of the old Union. To Rabie, the Confederacy was unquestionably a revolutionary experiment, but it was a conservative, restorationist revolution designed to create a republic safe for slavery and free of partisan politics. Ultimately, Rabie concludes, this revolution against politics failed only because the Confederacy itself failed. According to Rabie, both supporters of Jefferson Davis's troubled administration and its bitter opponents accepted the basic tenets of the revolution against politics: antipartyism and a belief...