US Civil Research Articles

New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. However, incomplete records have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll both nationally, and especially, at the state level. In this article, we leverage the recently released full count of individual census returns and a sample of linked records across multiple censuses to provide i) the most precise national estimate of excess mortality to date and ii) reliable state-level estimates of excess mortality among native-born white males. Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample. Leveraging a novel migration-adjusted census comparison method, we document the extent to which the war’s toll was much greater in the Confederate states than in the Union.

The Unbearable Whiteness of John Brown: Theatrical Legacies and Performing Abolition

Abstract: John Brown is a figure so intensely contested as to embody diametrically opposed meanings according to the varied contexts in which his image has been activated. At times hailed as the man who started the US Civil War, Brown has been variously described as a righteous abolitionist, a religious zealot, a gifted orator, a formidable military strategist, a self-appointed white savior, and a madman. Today, Brown is conjured in the name of all manner of causes, from leftist gun clubs to collegiate sports, while his theatricalized image is activated in wildly disparate ways. The apparent singularity of Brown as a historical figure, together with his ready adoption and deployment across various arenas—from entertainment to revolutionary politics—presents a problem familiar to theatre and performance scholars, namely the space between the image or concept of a person (or a character) and their actual performance, in life or onstage. There is perhaps an obvious tension in the ways that John Brown is remembered and reperformed and for whom he is remembered and reperformed. Or, as Ted A. Smith points out in thinking with Brown: "An image, however iconic, is not an argument."

Weak identification in discrete choice models

We study the impact of weak identification in discrete choice models, and provide insights into the determinants of identification strength in these models. Using these insights, we propose a novel test that can consistently detect weak identification in commonly applied discrete choice models, such as probit, logit, and many of their extensions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that when the null hypothesis of weak identification is rejected, Wald-based inference can be carried out using standard formulas and critical values. A Monte Carlo study compares our proposed testing approach against commonly applied weak identification tests. The results simultaneously demonstrate the good performance of our approach and the fundamental failure of using conventional weak identification tests for linear models in the discrete choice model context. Lastly, we apply our approach in two empirical examples: married women labor force participation, and US food aid and civil conflicts.

New development: Loyalty to principle or politics—The US civil service under attack … but is it justified?

IMPACT It is very important to recognize that, apparent irony notwithstanding, a merit-based, apolitical career civil service has become a vital support to large-scale democracy. Thus, policies that seek to appoint loyalists in administrative positions threaten the basis of democracy. The authors stress the importance of a career civil service recruited on the basis of merit, while at the same time recognizing the need for genuine civil service reform. The article also highlights the importance of career civil servants to citizens.

Civil Legal Services and Survivor-Defined Justice: A Qualitative Study with US Civil Legal Attorneys for Sexual Assault Survivors

In the United States and elsewhere, civil legal services are an overlooked strategy in the response to sexual assault. Contrary to the criminal legal system, civil legal remedies can offer supports that are specific to survivors’ immediate needs in the aftermath of sexual assault. To learn more about this legal strategy, we explored three areas: 1) civil legal needs of survivors; 2) barriers to seeking civil legal services; and 3) what survivor-defined justice might look like. In-depth interviews were conducted with 24 civil legal attorneys who work with survivors of sexual assault in the US. Results indicate that survivors have a multitude of overlapping legal needs outside of the criminal legal system, especially related to increasing agency, safety, and stability in their lives. Yet, several barriers exist that prevent access to these legal remedies. Despite these barriers, attorneys outlined how survivors’ lives have been positively affected by the services they offer. Attorneys also spoke to what “survivor-defined justice” might look like for their clients in this context. The results support the need to expand our conceptualization of justice beyond what the criminal legal system can offer. Implications for advancing civil remedies as a survivor-centered legal strategy are discussed.

Machine Learning for Predicting Intent of Radical Action in Text Data

Many cases of radicalism, especially violent radicalism, manifest within the context of inter-ethnic conflict and war. Research in this domain has significantly contributed to our overarching comprehension of the issue. This form of radicalism is inherently linked to the dynamics of group affiliation. However, our focus here is directed towards the individual motivation driving radical actions. While radical actions may encompass dynamics of group affiliation (e.g., the most radical pro-life activists being members of the Army of God), they also possess a substantial individual component. For instance, numerous attacks on abortion doctors or clinics are categorized as ’lone-wolf terrorism’. In this study, we sought to examine whether state-of-the-art Machine Learning tech- nology for text analysis could effectively discern the intent behind radical actions from user-generated content. We analyzed a diverse array of radical texts published online by various activists, including anarchists, Iranian guerrilla members, Indian revolution- aries, activists from the US civil rights movement, and The Army of God. Our analysis reveals that Machine Learning models can successfully identify potential signals indica- tive of the author’s intent behind radical actions.

Ultra Veritatem Muliebris Vis: Women Classicists at and beyond Washington University in the Dawning of Post-Bellum America

Abstract: To contextualize the all-female American production of Plautus’ Rudens at Washington University in St. Louis in 1884 by the university’s Ladies’ Literary Society, my discussion considers the topic of Plautus’ comedy—freeborn Greeks threatened with enslavement—and the historical circumstances of its first staging in ca. 200 BCE; the historical circumstances surrounding the production, in a former slave state, less than two decades after the US Civil War; and, to illuminate the milieu in which the female students revised and performed Plautus’ text, the lives and professional contributions of five prominent American women classicists educated between 1865 and 1917.

"Adapted to the Soldier's Pocket": Military Discipline, Religious Publishing, and the Power of Print Format during the US Civil War

"Adapted to the Soldier's Pocket": Military Discipline, Religious Publishing, and the Power of Print Format during the US Civil War

Ira G. Owen: US Civil War Era Photographer of Newton, New Jersey

Like other studio photographers, Ira G. Owen, primarily active in Newton, New Jersey, in the 1860s, sought to profit from the strong demand for photographs so that he could have a comfortable middle-class life. Owen exemplifies the “you can make it if you try” kind of success story that came true for some able and motivated entrepreneurial Americans in a market economy in which small businesses could flourish under effective management. This article by Gary Saretzky traces the trajectory of Owen’s career, closely looking at his marketing and production methods, including posing styles employed to satisfy his many customers during the Civil War and postwar years in Newton, Hackettstown, and Scranton. For additional illustrations to this article, see the Ira G. Owen Digital Portfolio. A special addendum to this article, by Joseph G. Bilby, outlines the military career of one of Owen’s subjects, Nathaniel K. Bray.

The Requirement of Fair Negotiation (Gebot des fairen Verhandelns) and the Principle of Undue Influence in German and US Employment Law

In its decisions of 24 February 2022 and 7 February 2019, the German Federal Labour Court (BAG) ruled that German labour courts should take into account whether a breach of the requirement of fair negotiation had occurred in assessing the validity of termination agreements. The Court thereby aimed to improve the protection of employees who have been improperly pressured by their employer into concluding a termination agreement. Arguably, the principle of undue influence in US contract law fulfils a comparable function. This article analyses the BAG decision then addresses the question of the comparability of the legal concepts. Since the concept and scope of undue influence are not easy to grasp, the definition in US case law and the practical application of the legal concept are analysed. Based on this analysis, the article considers whether a US civil court would have decided the BAG case in the same way. The article concludes that the principles in German and American law lead to similar outcomes. Requirement of Fair Negotiation, Undue Influence, German Labour Court, US Contract Law, US Civil Courts

Changes in the Distribution of Black and White Wealth since the US Civil War

The difference in the average wealth of Black and white Americans narrowed in the first century after the Civil War, but remained large and even widened again after 1980. Given high levels of wealth concentration both historically and today, dynamics at the average may not capture important heterogeneity in racial wealth gaps across the distribution. This paper looks into the historical evolution of the Black and white wealth distributions since Emancipation. The picture that emerges is an even starker one than racial wealth inequality at the mean. Tracing, for the first time, the evolution of wealth of the median Black household and the gap between the typical Black and white household over time, we estimate that the majority of Black households only began to dispose of measurable wealth around World War II. While the civil rights era brought substantial wealth gains for the median Black household, the gap between Black and white wealth at the median has not changed much since the 1970s. The top and the bottom of the wealth distribution show even greater persistence, with Black households consistently over-represented in the bottom half of the wealth distribution and under-represented in the top-10 percent over the past seven decades.

Title IX, Campus Sexual Misconduct, and the Criminalization of a US Civil Rights Law

Title IX, Campus Sexual Misconduct, and the Criminalization of a US Civil Rights Law

Children and grandchildren of Union Army veterans: New data collections to study the persistence of longevity and socioeconomic status across generations

This paper introduces four new intergenerational and multigenerational datasets which follow both sons and daughters and which can be used to study the persistence of longevity, socioeconomic status, family structure, and geographic mobility across generations. The data follow the children of Black and White Union Army (US Civil War, 1861-5) veterans from birth to death, linking them to the available censuses. The White samples include an over-sample of children of ex-POWs. A separate collection links grandchildren of White Union Army veterans to their death records. The data were created with high quality manual linkage procedures utilizing a wide variety of records to establish links.

Overweight grandsons and grandfathers’ starvation exposure

Much of the increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been in developing countries with a history of famines and malnutrition. This paper is the first to examine overweight among adult grandsons of grandfathers exposed to starvation during developmental ages. I study grandsons born to grandfathers who served in the Union Army during the US Civil War (1861-5) where some grandfathers experienced severe net malnutrition because they suffered a harsh POW experience. I find that male-line but not female-line grandsons of grandfathers who survived a severe captivity during their growing years faced a 21% increase in mean overweight and a 2% increase in mean BMI compared to grandsons of non-POWs. Male-line grandsons descended from grandfathers who experienced a harsh captivity faced a 22%–28% greater risk of dying every year after age 45 relative to grandsons descended from non-POWs, with overweight accounting for 9%–14% of the excess risk.

Data plantation: Northern Virginia and the territorialization of digital civilization in “the Internet Capital of the World”

Abstract Purpose The development of the Northern VA and the Washington, DC metro area as a key node in the globalizing digital urban system is well established. This essay investigates the growth of that technological geography in the 1990s and 2000s as a part of the planetary epoch of human transformation that some have called the “Plantationocene” (vs. Anthropocene). Approach A historical and critical interpretive analysis of race, landscape, and technology policy in the Northern VA area. Findings The paper establishes the region’s social attachments to its “bucolic” agrarian landscape, rooted in the US Civil War and vast inequalities of the reimposition of the plantation as an “afterlife of slavery” after Reconstruction’s failure. It then suggests that the conditions of the plantation economy within a kind of digital plantation economy—featuring resource monopolies, extractive forms of exploitation, and monocrop “ecologies”—based on the “Server Farming” (aka, data center) industry through which some 70 % of the world’s Internet traffic flows. It looks at this digital aspect of the Plantationocene as post-Bellum and insurgent, in which the manipulation of history, the accumulation and control of ‘arable’ (digital) land, and the dispossession of social processes under quasi-feudalistic property rights encourage unequal, unsustainable, and often violent cultures and political ecologies. Practical implications Researchers considering digital urbanism might use this approach to understand online and offline geographies of the contemporary media industry. Social implications It treats the contemporary anti-government and ethno-nationalist movements growing in digital mediation as part of a much longer and unsettled planetary conflict over the plantation system, racialized social inequality, and the abolition of slavery. Originality/value While some work on “data colonialism” implicitly connects digital urbanism to the mostly agriculturally-focused work on the Plantationocene, this essay makes the connection explicit, place-based in specific historical-geographical contexts, and focused on the roles of specific political economic actors.

Reconciliation Narratives:The Birth of a Nationafter the US Civil War

We study how the spread of the Lost Cause narrative—a revisionist and racist retelling of the US Civil War—shifted opinions and behaviors toward national reunification and racial discrimination against African Americans. Looking at screenings of The Birth of a Nation, a blockbuster movie that greatly popularized the Lost Cause after 1915, we find that the film shifted the public discourse toward a more patriotic and less divisive language, increased military enlistment, and fostered cultural convergence between former enemies. We document how the racist content of the narrative connects to reconciliation through a “common-enemy” type of argument. (JEL J15, L82, N31, N32, N41, Z13)

Fighting for Real: Truth and American War Memory

Abstract This essay-review considers two recent books on the subject of American veteran memoir—Stephen Cushman’s The General’s Civil War (2021) and Myra Mendible’s American War Stories (2021). Surveying military conflicts centered on the US Civil War and the more recent wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, both authors examine a range of veteran nonfiction writing, and with the explicit purpose of speaking to US audiences in our own time. Given the United States’ severely divided political culture today, both authors see the lessons and hard truths expressed in veteran memoir as rife with possibilities for addressing American social divisions in the twenty-first century. Along the way, a preoccupation with the very themes of “truth” and “reality” exposed by war representation leads both authors, though for very different reasons, to meditate on the need for new epistemological frameworks that, given the limitations of a waning postmodernism, would restore a fresh commitment to both. While very different philosophies of history shape the perspectives of each author, the revivified commitment to truth-telling unites their accounts.[A] . . . central theme . . . in . . . US military history and the literary portrayal of war is the renewed commitment to historical veracity, expanded factuality, and representational depth—in short, a fuller, more capacious picture of both the truth and reality of war-making.

(Re)Mediating Narratives of Identity in US Civil Rights Discourse: CMDA as a Pedagogic Tool

(Re)Mediating Narratives of Identity in US Civil Rights Discourse: CMDA as a Pedagogic Tool

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

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

Fenomena Perilaku LGBT di Kalangan Muslim dan Kristen: Studi Kasus Media Sosial

The Phenomenon of LGBT Behavior Among Muslims and Christians: A Case Study of Social Media. While the type of research used by the author is a library research. As for the data analysis using descriptive qualitative methods, content analysis comparative methods, and hermeneutic methods. Problems on social media related to LGBT come from pornographic sites where users can easily participate, share and create content in the virtual world which is immediately widespread, apart from that there are facts proving this deviation, also because this issue is a classic issue that then it is developing again at the present time, especially in the community and has a very negative impact because it can damage the morale of the nation's children and is very contrary to religious norms, values and Pancasila. This research approach takes the historical approach method. The results of this study indicate that the phenomenon of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) is a group that has a different sexual orientation than heterosexuals. In Indonesia, it began to be advertised openly in people's lives. Many people claim that they are LGBT. For Muslims and Christians in Indonesia about the Sodom people at the time of Prophet Lut who were punished by God for same-sex sexual behavior that deviated and left religious teachings. One of the developments of LGBT is the spread of social media where users can communicate, share and create content by spreading photos or videos. The issue of sexual deviance has become the object of debate where people still think that LGBT behavior is an act that is not appropriate. And some people think that everyone has the right to freedom of belief, express thoughts and attitudes according to their conscience.This finding is in accordance with Akhmad Said Asrori The Executive Board of Nadhlatul Ulama (PBNU) emphasized that he rejects the practice or actions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) because it greatly deviates from the teachings of Islam. All Muslims are obliged to guide LGBT actors to the right path. Research, these findings disagree with the world leader Barrack Obama who legalized same-sex marriage and indicated that he supports LGBT people. Same-sex couples who wish to marry, can register their marriage at the US civil registry office.