Governor Of Virginia Research Articles

American Slavery, American State: Rethinking Slavery and the Creation of British North America

American Slavery, American State:Rethinking Slavery and the Creation of British North America Kristalyn M. Shefveland (bio) James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2018. ix + 256pp. $28.00. Ryan A. Quintana Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. xi + 254pp. $29.95. The 400th anniversary of the year 1619 in the Virginia colony has given the public and professional historians an opportunity to reflect on the importance of that year: the development of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the first elected legislative body in the British American colonies; and the arrival of 20 Angolans for sale, stolen for slavery by the Portuguese on their slave ship San Juan Bautista before English privateers stole them in an attack in the Gulf of Mexico and brought them to Point Comfort, Virginia on the White Lion. Another privateer ship arrived a few days later, the Treasurer, which likely sold an additional 7–9 Angolans to English settlers. By March 1620, Virginia records indicate at least 32 Africans lived in the colony. It is this latter event that has become a point of serious inquiry and debate for historians of the American South and the Atlantic World. In August 2019, The New York Times magazine published the 1619 Project, a series of essays exploring the legacy of slavery accompanied by a special section in the Sunday edition of the paper along with an essay in the Sports section and plans for a 1619 Project Curriculum for classroom use. Public and scholarly response to this project is ongoing but many historians of Early America counter that we must not obfuscate the years of settlement and slavery that preceded the Jamestown endeavor. In a February 2019 public interview, Virginia governor Ralph Northam parroted an older historical viewpoint, that the Angolans who arrived in 1619 were indentured servants and not slaves. Historians, most notably Rebecca Goetz of NYU, responded immediately on social media to challenge his claims with a series of posts on the long history of the study of slavery and how Northam's position represents an antiquated viewpoint that [End Page 534] is not only wrong but represents an attempt to maintain Virginian innocence while ignoring the facts of slavery.1 The lack of laws regarding slavery present in 1619 has posed an issue for scholars of the British Atlantic, however in recent decades many have rightfully turned to the greater Atlantic world to consider the influence of the Spanish and French colonies on British aspirations and to chip away at Anglocentric notions that the Virginia colony was the first time Africans were present in an English colony, or that the English settlers were not already inheritors of the Atlantic slave trade via the four slave-trading expeditions of John Hawkins in the 1560s. Interested scholars should consult Michael Guasco's Slaves and Englishmen (2014) and a 2017 article written for the Smithsonian Magazine. Goetz has rightfully pointed out that the Africans-as-servants narrative is "no longer tenable" once serious inquiries into the greater Atlantic world are considered. Scholars such as Guasco have proven that the specter and presence of African slavery were already present in the English Atlantic by the time that English colonists arrived in the South at Roanoke. Thus, English colonists likely brought beliefs about Africans' place as slaves and as inferior to Europeans with them as they settled Jamestown. Another point to consider about 1619 is that the English settlement and occupation of Tsenacommacah was by no means certain. Framing the events of democracy in 1619 as a step in the inevitable has been argued against by Guasco: "When we make the mistake of fixing this place in time as inherently or inevitably English, we prepare the ground for the assumption that the United States already existed in embryonic fashion." By not challenging that idea, Guasco argues that it is an insidious logic, that "reinforces the illusion of white permanence necessitates that blacks can only be, ipso facto, abnormal, impermanent, and only tolerable to the degree that they adapt themselves to someone else's fictional universe."2 James Horn's...

“Have You Bought Enough Vietnam?”: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at West Virginia University, 1967–1970

“Have You Bought Enough Vietnam?”: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at West Virginia University, 1967–1970 Nora Sutton From May 5 to May 7, 1970, between one and two thousand students crowded Grumbein’s Island, a pedestrian path in the heart of the downtown campus of West Virginia University (WVU). Students were either protesting President Richard Nixon’s announcement of military operations in Cambodia and the recent killings of four students at Kent State University, or demonstrating their support for the president’s policies and publicly opposing antiwar demonstrators. What began as a vigil for the Kent State victims and antiwar march downtown devolved into a tense gathering of protestors, counterprotestors, and the National Guard. A few demonstrators broke into Woodburn Hall, the home of the university’s ROTC program, and caused a small amount of property damage. Students who wanted university president James Harlow to publicly denounce military action in Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State marched to the administration building, demanding the president hear them. Perhaps fearing an outbreak of violence, President James Harlow and West Virginia governor Arch Moore took drastic measures to quell the protests and authorized the West Virginia National Guard to break up the crowd. The May 1970 protests at WVU were tame compared to other campuses across the country, but this level of militancy surprised the university administration and the surrounding community. It was the largest and most disruptive antiwar action at WVU, but its occurrence was not an aberration—a subset of WVU students had been actively and publicly opposing the war since at least 1967. Antiwar activities at WVU before the Cambodia/Kent State protests reflect nationwide trends. West Virginia students were less militant than those at Michigan State, for example, but the absence of militancy does not equal isolation from the larger student power and peace movements. This [End Page 27] article explores the student-led antiwar activities both on and off campus and situates these activities in a national context. I focus on events occurring from 1967 up to the Cambodia/Kent State protests because resistance was the most active in Morgantown during this time. These three years were filled with cultural, social, and political strife for the United States and WVU students did not live in a vacuum. Despite Dean of Students Joseph Gluck’s characterization of WVU students as believing in “the old slogan of ‘love it or leave it,’” many felt the social and political upheaval taking shape across the country, either as bystanders or as participants.1 Early scholarly studies of the student movement focused on elite universities like Columbia and Berkeley, ignoring sleepy campuses like WVU, but more recent community-centered studies have explored how the movement played out in localities across the country.2 In Campus Wars, Kenneth J. Heineman helps reshape our understanding of the antiwar movement by focusing on land-grant campuses in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Students at these schools were primarily from working- and middle-class backgrounds, and according to contemporary stereotypes, inclined to be supportive of US military action in Vietnam. Heineman posits a formula for understanding antiwar sentiment on these campuses that connects student demographics and increased university involvement in the military-industrial complex.3 He argues that antiwar protest primarily stemmed from the unfairness of the Selective Service System and the increase in military-related research contracts at universities. Indeed, while the working- and middle-class were statistically more likely to support the war, their sons were also more likely to be drafted through the Selective Service System.4 Heineman’s framework is applicable to the study of WVU students, who Joseph Gluck described as, “first generation [college students], out of the hills and hollows.”5 There is cause for suspicion of the hawkish working-class stereotype. In Peace Now!, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones points out that “it was one thing to detest middle-class students who enjoyed draft deferments, quite another to support the war that killed one’s own sons.”6 Public opinion polls in Dearborn, Michigan, and San Francisco, California, from 1966 to 1968 demonstrated higher antiwar inclinations among the working class.7 Although economic issues were important, labor’s...

Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley by Rob Harper

Reviewed by: Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley by Rob Harper Eric Becerra Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley. By Rob Harper. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 292 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $45.) Historians of the colonial-era Ohio Valley have, for decades, written extensively about how racial tensions and the insatiable land lust of white colonists led to thousands of deaths as new Americans took Native land. In Unsettling the West, Rob Harper challenges this interpretation by arguing that early in the revolutionary period, violence in this region was unorganized and sporadic. In his thought-provoking study, Harper demonstrates that Native peoples and colonists maintained relative peace in the Ohio Valley and that widespread killings and the complete Anglo settlement of the Ohio Valley only occurred with the intervention of the state. Building on the work of such scholars as Kathleen DuVal and Eric Hinderaker, Harper argues that the inhabitants of the Ohio Valley, like those of other borderlands, were motivated by their own needs rather than the demands of European empires. Before the United States effectively controlled the region, Indians and colonists in the Ohio Valley established what Harper calls "coalitions," tenuous allegiances that maintained commercial and political ties among the valley's inhabitants (3). Although violence between Indians and colonists occurred at the individual level, these different populations relied on one another for trade, military allegiances, and political support. In 1776, for example, Pennsylvania officials feared Native retaliation after a local Indian was murdered near [End Page 220] Redstone Creek. When the governor attempted to remove nearby colonists, however, eight Seneca arrived to urge the colonists to stay (26). The Seneca, as members of a coalition, believed that the benefits of trading with the colonists outweighed the occasional act of violence between the two communities. Undermining the myth of the individualistic American settler, Harper demonstrates that the colonization of the West, and the mass violence that accompanied it, only developed later due to the actions of the state. Virginia governor Lord Dunmore's aggressive expansion policy and the early republic's attempts to colonize the Ohio Valley empowered the colonists to forcefully capture Native land. Government permission and supplies drove colonization. While colonists often violated state policies, taking more land than was allocated and ignoring government rules about self-governance and trade, it was government policies that shaped colonization on the ground. In the process, the state grew in authority as white colonists came to rely on it. Native nations were also shaped by state intervention; different groups restructured their political systems, often confederating, in response to colonial demands. In the process, they shaped the United States. Unsettling the West adds nuance to our understanding of the Ohio Valley in a way that challenges generations of American lore and pride. Harper's emphasis on the ability of Native nations to use their economic and political leverage to shape colonial demands, together with his focus on state power, serves as a foil to a more traditional narrative centered on the individualistic American settler. While the Ohio Valley was unique, his approach to state formation is particularly useful when studying other borderlands, whether it be the Mississippi River Valley, the Cumberland, or elsewhere. Harper's study is a welcome addition to the historiography. Eric Becerra University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Copyright © 2019 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Syndromic Surveillance on the Mental Health Impact of Political Rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia

ObjectiveTo describe the impact of civil unrest on the mental health of a community in near real-time using syndromic surveillance.IntroductionAs part of a wide-spread community discussion on the presence of monuments to Confederate Civil War figures, the Charlottesville city council voted to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee.1 Multiple rallies were then held to protest the statue’s removal. A Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rally on July 8, 2017 (MMWR Week 27) and a Unite the Right rally on August 12, 2017 (MMWR Week 32) held in Charlottesville both resulted in violence and media attention.2,3 The violence associated with the Unite the Right rally included fatalities connected to motor vehicle and helicopter crashes.Syndromic surveillance has been used to study the impact of terrorism on a community’s mental health4 while more traditional data sources have looked at the impact of racially-charged civil unrest.5 Syndromic surveillance, however, has not previously been used to document the effect of racially-charged violence on the health of a community.MethodsThe Virginia Department of Health (VDH) analyzed syndromic surveillance data from three emergency departments (EDs) in the Charlottesville area (defined to include Charlottesville city and Albemarle county), regardless of patient residence following the Unite the Right rally. Visits to these EDs between January 1 and September 2, 2017 were analyzed using the Enhanced Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) and Microsoft SQL 2012. Encounters were identified as acute anxiety-related visits based on an International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) discharge diagnosis beginning with ’F41’. Analyses were conducted using the ESSENCE algorithm EWMA 1.2 and SAS 9.3.ResultsThe greatest number of visits with a primary diagnosis of anxiety in 2017 (N=20) was observed in MMWR week 34 (August 20-26). This represented a statistically significant increase over baseline with a p-value of 0.01.By race, a significant increase over baseline in visits with a primary diagnosis of anxiety was observed among blacks or African Americans. The largest volume of visits was observed in MMWR week 33 with a total of 8 identified visits or 1.8% of total ED visit volume. The increase in visits for anxiety observed in weeks 33-35 was 2.2 times greater among blacks or African Americans than it was among whites, p = 0.016, 95% CI [1.14, 4.16].ConclusionsPrevious work done in Virginia to identify ED visits related to anxiety included only chief complaint criteria in the syndrome definition. Due to a change in how one ED in the Charlottesville area reported data during the study period, this syndrome definition could not be applied. In order to remove any potential data artifacts, only those visits with an initial diagnosis of anxiety were included in the analysis. The resulting syndrome definition likely underestimated the occurrence of anxiety in the Charlottesville area, both because it lacked chief complaint information and because syndromic surveillance does not include data on visits to mental health providers outside of EDs. This analysis presents a trend over time rather than a true measure of the prevalence of anxiety.This analysis, while conservative in its inclusion criteria, still identified an increase in visits for anxiety, particularly among blacks or African Americans. In today’s political environment of race-related civil unrest, a way to measure the burden of mental illness occurring in the community can be invaluable for public health response. In Charlottesville, the identification of a community-wide need for mental health support prompted many local providers to offer their services to those in need pro-bono.6References1 Suarez, C. (2017, February 6). Charlottesville City Council votes to remove statue from Lee Park. The Daily Progress. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2wYOHhv2 Spencer, H., & Stevens, M. (2017, July 8). 23 Arrested and Tear Gas Deployed After a K.K.K. Rally in Virginia. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://nyti.ms/2tCiBGU3 Hanna, J., Hartung, K., Sayers, D., & Almasy, S. (2017, August 13). Virginia governor to white nationalists: ‘Go home … shame on you’. CNN. Retrieved from http://cnn.it/2vvAGHt4 Vandentorren, S., Paty, A. C., Baffert, E., Chansard, P., Caserio-Schönemann, C. (2016, February). Syndromic surveillance during the Paris terrorist attacks. The Lancet (387(10021), 846-847. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00507-95 Yimgang, D. P., Wang, Y., Paik, G., Hager, E. R., & Black, M. M. Civil Unrest in the Context of Chronic Community Violence: Impact on Maternal Depressive Symptoms. American Journal of Public Health 107(9), 1455-1462. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2017.3038766 DeLuca, P. (2017, August 19). Downtown Charlottesville Library Offers Free Counseling. NBC29.com. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2yIzHbl

The Search for Accountability: United States v. McDonnell and the Fundamental Right to Honest Government

The U.S. Supreme Court in McDonnell v. United States (2016) vacated the conviction of a former Virginia governor for accepting bribes. The court found that arranging a meeting, calling or contacting another official, or hosting an event does not, by itself, rise to the level of an official act under the Hobbs Act and the mail and wire fraud statutes. This article argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in McDonnell v. United States will make it much more difficult for federal prosecutors to prosecute state and local governments for helping private individuals gain preferential access to government decision-makers at the state or local level. The article also argues that the decision will put pressure on state legislatures to significantly tighten state ethics laws to stop this type of conduct that reduces public trust in government.

"On Behalf of His Race and the Lemmon Slaves": Louis Napoleon, Northern Black Legal Culture, and the Politics of Sectional Crisis

"On Behalf of His Race and the Lemmon Slaves"Louis Napoleon, Northern Black Legal Culture, and the Politics of Sectional Crisis Sarah L. H. Gronningsater (bio) In the fall of 1852, a free black New Yorker named Louis Napoleon upended the plans of a Virginia couple, Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, who were hoping to move to Texas with their seven children and eight slaves. The household had sailed to New York City in order to make a steamship connection to New Orleans—at the time, this was one of the fastest routes to the Southwest. Their itinerary, however, presented a problem: New York was technically free soil. The state legislature had made this assertion of territorial sovereignty explicit in an 1841 statute. A strict reading of this law forbade the Lemmons from holding slaves within New York's borders, even for a few hours. Napoleon, a black laborer, wanted a local court to free the Lemmon slaves in accordance with the statute's emancipatory implications.1 The morning after the Lemmons' ship docked in New York, Napoleon petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus from Judge Elijah Paine of the city's Superior Court. Paine granted the request, summoning Jonathan Lemmon and the eight slaves to his bench. Three days later, a contentious trial was underway. The slaves were represented by Napoleon's long-time ally, the prominent abolitionist John Jay, grandson of the founding father, and Erastus D. Culver, a former Whig congressman. As Jay and Culver sparred with opposing counsel, dozens of black men, women, and children gathered in the courtroom to watch. On November 13—a week after the Lemmons' arrival—Paine discharged the slaves. "The laws of the State of New York," he explained, "render it impossible that such property should exist within those limits."2 The black audience was elated. The New-York Tribune reported that "the eight persons were placed in coaches by Louis Napoleon" and "driven off amid great cheering." In December, with the quiet assistance of regional abolitionists, the freed slaves moved to Canada. Members of New York's merchant community raised $5,000 to compensate the Lemmons for their lost property, which the couple accepted.3 [End Page 206] Widely publicized, the Lemmon case quickly achieved national significance. When the Lemmons appealed Paine's decision to the First District of New York's Supreme Court—the state's intermediate appellate court—Virginia governor Joseph Johnson convinced his legislature to fund the costs. New York's legislature responded in kind, asserting the state's right to determine the status of people on its soil.4 In 1857, the First District reviewed the case. The timing was fraught: not only was Bleeding Kansas fresh in the public's mind, but the U.S. Supreme Court had just issued its ruling in Dred Scott, a decision that bolstered the rights of slaveholders and injured those of black Americans. The Lemmons' lawyers, eager to exploit the connections between the cases, argued that slaves were property protected by "the federal constitution" and that the doctrines of Dred Scott "must be maintained."5 The First District disagreed, affirming the original ruling. The Lemmons, with Virginia's support, appealed again, hoping that New York's highest court—the Court of Appeals—would concede a master's constitutional right to travel nationally with his slaves.6 By petitioning for the writ of habeas corpus, Napoleon had triggered the emancipation of eight slaves, precipitated a series of controversial court cases, and provoked interstate political battles. Yet by the winter of 1857–58, Napoleon agreed with Jay that it was in the best interest of the antislavery movement to shut Lemmon down; the two allies wanted the Court of Appeals to dismiss the case. In January, Jay sent New York's Republican governor, John A. King, a petition he had written in Napoleon's name, titled "The Memorial of Louis Napoleon." Jay explained in a cover letter why both he and his client were so anxious for New York to cease backing the Lemmon case; they feared it would ultimately land in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Dred Scott majority might then seize on Lemmon as a chance to reintroduce...

“Undistinguished Destruction”: The Effects of Smallpox on British Emancipation Policy in the Revolutionary War

In 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, offered freedom to any African American who fought for the British cause against the colonial rebels in his province. Dunmore's plan to reconquer Virginia with his “Ethiopian Regiment” ended in failure, not due to a lack of willing volunteers but because of a familiar eighteenth-century killer: smallpox. Five years later, similar proclamations were issued in South Carolina. Yet smallpox again hindered British designs, devastating the eager African Americans who flooded to their lines. This paper uses primary source material and research on smallpox to analyze the experiences of African Americans who actively sought freedom with the British during the Revolutionary War. Focussing on the differing regions of Virginia and South Carolina this paper will assess the impact of smallpox on British military designs for runaway slaves while also evaluating the reasons why the disease had such a devastating effect on African Americans during the period. Overall, this paper will show how smallpox, so common in eighteenth-century Europe, put a fatal end to the first widespread push for emancipation on the American continent and helped derail one of Britain's best hopes for turning the tide in the Revolutionary War.

An Academic Aesthetics?

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “campus” as both a “physical space in a hospital, school or university” and an “academic entity” (1). Similarly, the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the grounds of a college or university,” but also as “university of college life” (2). Both definitions imply links between architecture and social dimensions of university life. A university campus has its predecessor in medieval monasteries that, like for instance the Cistercian Abbey of Fontenay in France founded in 1118 by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, were self-contained complexes that included churches, cloisters, dormitories, and various support buildings (3). Later, universities created similar autonomous environments designed to further their aims—teaching and the pursuit of new knowledge. Today, the image of the greatest universities is often associated with their spaces: the spires of Oxford or the Harvard Yard became part of the vocabulary and metaphors for academic life. In the US, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) formulated the concept of an academical village. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, held several major public offices; he was governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary …

A Review of: The Virginia Tech Massacre: Strategies and Challenges for Improving Mental Health Policy on Campus and Beyond, edited by Aradhana Bela Sood and Robert Cohen

[Author Affiliation]Jeffrey I. Hunt. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.ISBN: 978-0-19-539249-4. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 265 pages.Address correspondence to: Jeffrey I. Hunt, MD, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, E-mail: Jeffrey_hunt@brown.eduOur current healthcare system is not in the business of planting but it should be. This was a statement made late in the book, The Virginia Tech Massacre: Strategies and Challenges for Improving Mental Health Policy on Campus and Beyond in response to the limited focus of the policy response in Virginia after the tragedy. Thirty-three people died as a result of Seung-Hui Ho's actions on April 16, 2007. In the year that followed, the Virginia General Assembly aggressively responded by enacting more sweeping reforms in mental health than had occurred in the previous 30 years combined. More than100 bills were introduced during the 2008 session and ∼$42,000,000 was appropriated for mental health care services. Unfortunately, the desired changes in mental health services did not come to fruition. The bills were limited to crisis stabilization rather than prevention, and the money allocated in 2008 was cut in 2009 as the recession deepened. There was a lack of policy makers who understood the complexities of the mental health system and the need to fund primary prevention and early intervention services in order to develop systems with the potential to avert future mass tragedies. Unfortunately, as the authors point out, policy makers' careers do not last long enough to see the planted trees bear fruit.This book was undertaken to examine the mental health systems in university settings and, more broadly, in the United States. The intended audience was broad, but the book will be of most interest to policy makers, those working in college mental health, and all mental health practitioners who are faced with threat assessment in their daily clinical work. The initial chapters focus on the numerous failures of the system, specifically relating to lost opportunities to prevent Seung-Hui Cho's actions. The later sections discuss contemporary college mental health care services and identify successful approaches as well as barriers to providing care. A global review of how mental healthcare is delivered in the United States and in other developed countries reveals that there are few, if any, model systems. The final and most sobering section discusses the challenges facing policy makers to ensure that well thought out, evidenced- based mental health programs that also emphasize prevention are in place and -most importantly - that they are adequately funded.The lead authors/editors are well suited for their identified goals. Dr. Sood is a senior child and adolescent psychiatrist who was appointed to an expert panel by the governor of Virginia at the time, Thomas Kaine. The panel included eight members from different professional backgrounds who were tasked with reviewing both how and why Seung-Hiu Cho committed the murders, and the response of the Virginia commonwealth to the shootings. The panel was also to make recommendations to improve laws, policies, procedures, systems, and operations of agencies including those for mental health. Dr. Sood was intimately involved in all aspects of the panel and, in particular, had personal access to Cho's family members and the involved faculty and administrators at Virginia Tech. (Cho's family authorized the release of their son's health and education records, and they willingly participated in multiple interviews by the Virginia Tech Panel). The co-editor of the book, Dr. Cohen, is an expert in policy and program development.Although much of the story about Seung-Hui Cho's progression from a fragile, solitary, and silent young man who inspired sympathy to the dark, ruminative, and rageful murderer he became has been reported in the press, the book provides greater insight into the failings of the mental health system prior to and during his time as a college student at Virginia Tech. …

Nature’s Man: Thomas Jefferson’s Philosophical Anthropology by Maurizio Valsania (review)

Nature's Man: Thomas Jefferson's Philosophical Anthropology. By Maurizio Valsania. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. Pp. 204. Cloth, $35.00.)Reviewed by Lorri GloverIn Nature's Man, Maurizio Valsania offers a nuanced and theoretically sophisticated exploration of Thomas Jefferson's ideas about human nature, the qualities he idealized in individuals, and the importance of community to that worldview-his philosophical anthropology. In just over 150 pages of text, the work manages to link a stunning range of topics without ever feeling forced or fleeting. The three chapters read like an extended essay, weaving together what often can seem like disparate pieces to Jefferson's long career and varied writings to give a fresh take on one of the most-studied people in American history.Valsania clearly has a strong command of Jefferson's writings and ideas, and this book is written with confidence and verve. The author is equally adept when contemplating Jefferson's views on women and Native Americans as he is in discussions of Jefferson's land policies while president and attitudes toward equality and equal rights. offers novel insight on often-read Jefferson writings, including, most notably, his head and heart letter to Maria Cosway, A Summary View on the Rights of British America, and the long-delayed, much-celebrated campaign for disestablishment in Virginia, predicated on Jefferson's 1779 proposal to the Virginia legislature. In the latter case, Valsania convinces the reader that, taken with Jefferson's other legislative efforts that year, the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom captures Jefferson's distinctive perception of the individual in community, an effort at privileging individuals over their community, and thus underscores the differences between our world and his. Valsania also presents a reinterpretation of Jefferson's retirement years and what has often been seen as a narrowing of his worldview after leaving the presidency. Age and parochialism are over-argued, Valsania maintains; rather, Jefferson's increasing localism derived from a judicious re-evaluation of political and economic circumstances, characteristic of his enduring experimental temper (70).Embedded in that last interpretation is a thread running through the book: Valsania's seeming admiration for Jefferson. Several times throughout these chapters, the reader is cautioned against dismissing Jefferson as an inconsistent hypocrite. But how many serious scholars-the audience for the book-would contemplate making such a bald, ahistorical judgment? Moreover, Valsania insists that his intent is not to perform a moral evaluation of Jefferson's character, to condemn or acquit him. But in the same paragraph, after considering Jefferson's conduct while governor of Virginia and president of the United States, Valsania writes: He was eminently principled, responsible, and coherent. never acted randomly or for a personal or momentary interest (113).While readers will likely quarrel with that sanguine appraisal, they will also have to be impressed with the sensitivity with which Valsania reads only Jefferson's texts but his context, too. …

Dunmore's new world: the extraordinary life of a royal governor in Revolutionary America--with Jacobites, counterfeiters, land schemes, shipwrecks, scalping, Indian politics, runaway slaves, and two illegal royal weddings

New World tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, whose long-neglected life boasts a measure of scandal and intrigue rare in the annals of the colonial world. Dunmore not only issued the first formal proclamation of emancipation in American history; he also undertook an unauthorized Indian war in the Ohio Valley, now known as Dunmore's War, that was instrumental in opening the Kentucky country to white settlement. In this entertaining biography, James Corbett David brings together a rich cast of characters as he follows Dunmore on his perilous path through the Atlantic world from 1745 to 1809.Dunmore was a Scots aristocrat who, even with a family history of treason, managed to obtain a commission in the British army, a seat in the House of Lords, and three executive appointments in the American colonies. He was an unusual figure, deeply invested in the imperial system but quick to break with convention. Despite his 1775 proclamation promising freedom to slaves of Virginia rebels, Dunmore was himself a slaveholder at a time when the African slave trade was facing tremendous popular opposition in Great Britain. He also supported his daughter throughout the scandal that followed her secret, illegal marriage to the youngest son of George III a relationship that produced two illegitimate children, both first cousins of Queen Victoria. Within this single narrative, Dunmore interacts with Jacobites, slaves, land speculators, frontiersmen, Scots merchants, poor white fishermen, the French, the Spanish, Shawnees, Creeks, patriots, loyalists, princes, kings, and a host of others. This history captures the vibrant diversity of the political universe that Dunmore inhabited alongside the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. A transgressive imperialist, Dunmore had an astounding career that charts the boundaries of what was possible in the Atlantic world in the Age of Revolution.

The Literate South: Reading before Emancipation

The Literate SouthReading before Emancipation Beth Barton Schweiger (bio) The Old South had famously few public schools, but it teemed with readers. The archives are stuffed with evidence of them. Historians cannot possibly read all the diaries, letters, half-finished novels, bad poetry, receipts, recipes, lecture notes, speeches, love letters, commonplace books, and essays these readers left behind. They filled newspaper columns with their editorials and letters, magazines with their poetry, pamphlets with their sermons, mail sacks with their letters, court dockets with their opinions, and ledger books with their figures. They have supplied enough raw materials to keep members of the Southern Historical Association occupied for more than three-quarters of a century, to set scholars parsing the eighty-seven North American slave autobiographies written before emancipation, to offer Bell Wiley “amazingly large quantities” of letters written by ordinary soldiers, and to sustain Michael O’Brien for twelve hundred pages. “The South was a place,” he has written, “into which torrents of print poured.”1 Like people all over the Western world, people in the southern states learned to read and write in unprecedented numbers by the mid-nineteenth century. By 1850, the region boasted one of the highest rates of literacy in the world. More than 80 percent of free adults in the slave states could read, a rate exceeded only by the free states, Scotland, and Prussia, which had the highest rates in Europe.2 An estimated 10 percent of slaves and many free blacks could read, although counting them is difficult (see tables 1 and 2).3 Many of these readers were autodidacts, and many more desired to learn how to read. Anecdotal accounts of these readers abound. Slaves, artisans, Indians, farmers, planters, politicians, and schoolgirls read to make a living, amuse themselves, numb their despair, nurture their spiritual life, or affirm their political views. A growing publishing industry eagerly accommodated their taste for English and American sentimental novels, Bibles, tracts, schoolbooks, technical manuals, almanacs, magazines, newspapers, and poetry. In short, the “Civil War pitted against each other two of the most literate societies on earth.”4 [End Page 331] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. White Adult Literacy, 1850 U.S. Census Source: Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–1970. ICPSR00003-v1. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. doi:10.3886/ICPSR00003.v1. If the Old South was full of readers, they have been nearly impossible to see. The disdain for reading among ordinary folk in Dixie is legendary. The argument began in the first century of English settlement, when Virginia governor William Berkeley boasted, “I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing … for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”5 His words endured to gain a new hearing in the nineteenth century, when they were repeated in scores of publications, including colonial histories.6 His point seemed self-evident to those who equated the South’s dearth of readers with its surfeit of slaves. “What a terrible overthrow would a good system of common schools, and a free press, among the slaves, do in the slave states! Slavery could not live two generations under such an influence,” Charles Elliott wrote in 1850.7 [End Page 332] Anti-literacy laws in half of the slave states ensured that nine-tenths of all slaves would remain illiterate; local ordinances, custom, or the lash sufficed to discourage slave literacy in the others.8 Free blacks were repeatedly barred from conducting and attending schools.9 Law and custom curtailed the freedom of the press and censored the mails to prevent abolitionist materials from circulating.10 Voices across the region called for free public schooling to correct the “brutish ignorance” of poor white people, but until the 1850s, politicians generally refused their requests.11 The latest gilt and blue volumes from Boston publisher Ticknor and Fields or copies of the Edinburgh Review seemed to make little impression, leaving intellectuals to draw their chairs into a nervous circle in Charleston parlors. Travelers routinely noted...

Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World by Mary Beth Norton (review)

Reviewed by: Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World by Mary Beth Norton Sheila Skemp (bio) Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World. Mary Beth Norton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. 247 pp. It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-breaking 1980 book Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Cornell University Press), she had no idea that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that would examine gender constructs throughout early America. The second book in that trilogy, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (Vintage, 1996), reached back to the earliest days of colonization, bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both authoritarian and organic. Separated by Their Sex not only bridges the gap between these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Liberty’s Daughters [End Page 787] and a sequel to Founding Mothers and Fathers) but expands Norton’s geographical focus, reminding readers that the early British colonists lived in a truly Anglo-American Atlantic world. In Separated by Their Sex, Norton is primarily concerned with tracing the historical origins of the notion of “separate spheres,” a construct that rhetorically relegated white women to the private domain, while giving men authority in the public realm. Historians know, of course—and Norton does not argue with them—that no such division existed in the real world. Nevertheless, at some point (and historians differ about when and why it happened) the language of separate spheres began to dominate the rhetoric, if not the reality, of gender relations. Norton admits that she does not know why the language of separate spheres appeared, but she makes a solid case for pointing to the early eighteenth century as the time when such language began to characterize descriptions of women’s place, first in England and then in the colonies. In the beginning, says Norton, status trumped gender. In England, Queen Elizabeth could expect and receive deference from subjects of both sexes. In the colonies, aristocratic women, such as Lady Frances Berkeley, the wife of Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley, could “interfere” in public, political matters without fear of condemnation. While her detractors may have criticized Lady Frances, “she was never said to have stepped outside the boundaries of the ‘private sphere’” (34). Lower-class women, on the other hand, found that for them politics was off limits. Thus, when ordinary English women petitioned Parliament during the English Civil War, they were mocked and reviled in truly misogynistic style. Beginning with the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, notions of women’s nature and women’s place gradually began to change. But it was not until the burgeoning of print culture that, beginning in England and quickly moving across the Atlantic, notions of women as necessarily belonging in the domestic realm started to take hold in earnest. Women were categorized as private; they were excluded from the public and especially from the political arenas. Men became identified with the economic and political realms, and were removed—rhetorically if not in fact—from control over the home. At the same time, the term “sphere” became associated not with status or rank but with normative “masculine” or “feminine” roles, and all women (not just the lower and middling sort) were confined—“naturally”—to the domestic [End Page 788] sphere. The Lockean division between family and state had reached its logical conclusion. The change first began to appear tentatively in England with John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury. Struggling with the implications of Queen Anne’s ascendancy to the throne, Dunton ultimately declared that a “husband’s ‘Business is without-doors’ while a wife’s was ‘properly within-doors.’” Not only should women be excluded from public affairs, said Dunton, but “men should not in any sense be viewed as household governors” (102). But it was Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, in the Tatler and the Spectator, who most firmly and completely assigned men and women to separate realms. Both men presumed “two gender-differentiated sets of readers with diverse interests...

John Brown's Body

John Brown's Body Paul Theerman John Brown, the great nineteenth-century abolitionist, remains a divisive figure in American history. To this day, people argue over the rightness of his path. Even before the outbreak of the Civil War, he used violence to put down slavery, and was met by violence in return. In the matter of John Brown there arose a debate not just about him, but a debate about what to do with him, that is, with his very body. From ancient times, as shown in Sophocles' drama Antigone, to the present day, the most satisfying victory seems to lie not just in vanquishing one's foes, but in dealing with their mortal remains. In the weeks following John Brown's raid, northern abolitionists struggled with both southern politicians and medical practitioners to obtain the bodies of John Brown and his followers. In microcosm, this dispute showed the nation beginning to fray and unravel, as violence entered the dispute, and dissent from one's countrymen gave way to disgust with one's opponents, and then to desire to put them on display as specimens. In 1856 John Brown, the staunch abolitionist farmer from upstate New York, went west to "Bleeding Kansas" to take part in the guerilla wars over the spread of slavery. After a year of outright battle, he returned east to raise funds to carry out his raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. On October 16, 1859, Brown attempted to provoke a general slave uprising by capturing the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Brown led some twenty men into battle; two days later he and the surviving raiders were captured by federal troops under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Although Brown had attacked a federal facility and had been captured by federal forces, his first battles had been with Virginia militiamen, and his troops had killed the local mayor. So when he went to trial on October 25, 1859, a week after his capture, the charge was treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. The trial took place at the Jefferson County courthouse at Charles Town, and the prosecuting attorney was Andrew Hunter, the local attorney for the commonwealth. Few doubted that Brown would be convicted and sentenced to death. But even before the conclusion of the trial, competition had begun for possession [End Page 75] of his body. Arthur E. Peticolas, professor of anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond (now part of Virginia Commonwealth University), wrote to prosecutor Hunter on November 1: Richmond, Nov. 1, 1859 Dear Sir, — We desire if Brown and his coadjutors are executed to add their heads to the collection in our museum. If the transference of the bodies will not exceed a cost of five dollars each we should also be glad to have them. This request will of course not interfere with any clemency which it may be found desirable to extend to those convicted. Attention to this request will confer a great favor. A. E. Peticolas M.D. Prof Anat at Med. College of Va. Mr. Andrew Hunter Peticolas had apparently also written to Virginia governor Henry Wise, for on the following day—the day that Brown was found guilty and condemned to death—Wise wrote to Hunter: Richmond, Va Novr 2nd 1859. A. Hunter, Esqr Dr Sir, — … The Medical faculty of Richmond College ask for the bodies of such as may be executed. The Court may order the bodies to be given over to surgeons. See to that in the sentence. It will not interfere with the pardoning power. And any who are hung ought not to have burial in Virginia. Yrs truly Henry A. Wise1 In nineteenth-century America, the dearth of bodies for anatomical dissection is well attested. Here Peticolas took advantage of the prerogative of the courts to provide the bodies of the condemned to surgeons for anatomical dissection—a decision that was greatly aided by Virginians' visceral hatred towards Brown.2 As it turns out, the abolitionist was far too famous [End Page 76] and national sentiments were far too raw for Peticolas...

Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute

Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute

The last founding father: James Monroe and a nation's call to greatness

In this lively and compelling biography Harlow Giles Unger reveals the dominant political figure of a generation. A fierce fighter in four critical Revolutionary War battles and a courageous survivor of Valley Forge and a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, James Monroe (17511831) went on to become Americas first full-time politician, dedicating his life to securing Americas national and international durability. Decorated by George Washington for his exploits as a soldier, Monroe became a congressman, a senator, U. S. minister to France and Britain, governor of Virginia, secretary of state, secretary of war, and finally Americas fifth president. The country embraced Monroes dreams of empire and elected him to two terms, the second time unanimously. Mentored by each of Americas first four presidents, Monroe was unquestionably the best prepared president in our history. Like David McCulloughs John Adams and Jon Meachams recent book on Andrew Jackson, this new biography of Monroe is both a solid read and stellar scholarshiphistory in the grand tradition.

Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided with the British during the American Revolution (review)

Reviewed by: Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided with the British during the American Revolution Elizabeth Bush Blair, Margaret Whitman. Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided with the British during the American Revolution. National Geographic, 2010 64p. illus. with photographs Library ed. ISBN 978-1-4263-0591-7 $27.90 Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4263-0590-0 $18.95 R Gr. 4-7 Most students who are alert in their history class realize that, while the Patriots took up arms amid cries for freedom from tyranny, they only envisioned that freedom extending to a narrowly defined group of peers—white men of means. Slaves who embraced the cause of Liberty begged to differ, and when Virginia governor Lord Dunmore took punitive measures against rebel citizens by proclaiming freedom for their slaves, hundreds of black men, women, and children flocked to join forces with the Loyalists. Though Blair acknowledges that Patriots also eventually offered limited terms of freedom for blacks who would enlist on the rebel side, she confines most of her discussion to those who supported Dunmore and other British leaders throughout the Colonies. Their valor on the battlefield and suffering throughout a smallpox epidemic are important parts of the story of the war, yet of equal interest is the aftermath that saw the freedmen cheated out of their promised land, treated as second-class citizens in Nova Scotia, or even captured and returned to slavery. The final chapters focus on efforts to establish a free black settlement in Sierra Leone. The text moves briskly, and historical paintings, document excerpts, and sidebar information complement the narrative. End matter includes a timeline, index, source notes, and a resource guide (which surprisingly omits some key recent books). This title will be an important supplement to Revolutionary War collections. [End Page 324] Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Radicalizing Reunion: Helen Keller's The Story of My Life and Reconciliation Romance

The 1903 Doubleday, Page, and Co. edition of Helen Keller's The Story of My Life contains several photographs of Keller with prominent Americans. (1) The last photograph in book is a picture of Helen Keller and Mark Twain, arguably most famous of his time. This image reinforces Keller's status as a cultural icon, and it complements her efforts to fashion herself as a national hero in The Story of My Life (hereafter Story). In this narrative, Keller follows Franklinian pattern, portraying herself as a self-made individual who, through industry and self-reliance, conquered personal hardship and became a national celebrity. In so doing, she invites her readers to consider her work a distinctly American text, which exhibits models of selfhood established in nation's autobiographical traditions. Yet, while Story shows Keller to be a prototypical American, it also reveals her peculiarly southern roots, which Keller continually plays up. In first chapter, she claims that her paternal grandmother a granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early colonial governor of Virginia, and second cousin to Robert E. Lee (13). Here, Keller links herself not only to patrician class of antebellum Virginians but also to Confederacy. She sustains this connection by informing readers that her father was a captain in Confederate Army (13). If Keller wants her readers to recognize her as a paradigmatic American, then why does she associate herself with rebel South? It is no surprise that Keller provides information about her father's past; he figures prominently in her memories of growing up in Alabama. However, her inclusion of Lee, a distant relative, in Keller family genealogy seems a conscious and symbolic statement. (2) By observing conventions of autobiography while linking herself to Confederate South, Keller asks her readers to consider her a representative and a child of South. As and southerner, she has a powerful double identity, which affords her special insight into of conciliation that characterized North-South relationship in Gilded Age years (Silber 2). After 1865, many white northerners and southerners, eager to ease sectional tensions, wrote novels and plays that dramatized North-South reunion. Providing an imaginary space for negotiating the reunion process and redefining nationalism, these romances were important products of culture of conciliation (Silber 3). (3) Set in South during Reconstruction, romances featured marriages between Union veterans and southern women or between Confederate veterans and northern women that symbolized national reunion after Civil War. These texts also romanticized lifestyle of planter class and perpetuated much of sentimentality ... of old Southern myth, which portrayed antebellum South as a pastoral paradise destroyed by war and Yankee occupation (105). Although northern writers established conventions of genre in 1860s, some southerners tried their hands at writing romances after Reconstruction. In fact, during last two decades of nineteenth century, Virginia-born novelist Thomas Nelson Page became one of America's most celebrated authors of reunion fiction (110-113). Both northerners and southerners used this fiction to work through social problems of Gilded Age America, and romances often reflected dominant cultural values of time. According to Nina Silber, many of these texts promoted an ideology of reunion tailored to interests of propertied white males. Affirming traditional class, race, and gender hierarchies, novels and plays of reunion often endorsed social marginalization of poor, African Americans, and women. By idealizing antebellum plantation culture, writers of reunion fiction expressed their sympathy with aristocratic southern values, suggesting that reconciliation remained province of social elite (Silber 106). …

State-Level Action for Health

Health is certainly one of most critical components when measuring quality of life and prosperity for a state. As governor of West Virginia, I am committed to doing what it takes to make certain every citizen is aware of the importance of daily exercise and healthy eating. Further, I am dedicated to changing our state’s culture with respect to good nutrition and physical activity. I believe the burden of obesity and related diseases in West Virginia requires a strong state infrastructure with a specific focus on physical activity, nutrition, and obesity prevention. Fortunately, West Virginia has a solid ethic of collaboration, and our people share a sense of pride, tradition, culture, and customs. The cohesive and protective nature of the state fosters a service philosophy and West Virginia citizens embrace the opportunity to help their own. When I became governor in 2005, I realized there were many ongoing efforts, both formal and informal and under myriad organizations, aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles for West Virginians. I strongly believe it is my responsibility to not only provide a framework in which local, state, and institutional policymakers can work collaboratively to create and support environments that make it easier for West Virginians to choose healthy foods and to be physically active, but also to create state policy that would support existing efforts. I am very pleased that in 2005 the West Virginia Legislature, upon my request, passed the West Virginia Healthy Lifestyles Act. This act signified that the leadership in West Virginia not only acknowledged that we were truly facing a public health epidemic, but that we also were prepared to be both bold and innovative in our efforts to reduce West Virginia’s prevalence of obesity. The West Virginia Healthy Lifestyles Act created a 13-member coalition as well as a clinical advisory committee, appointed by the governor. The Healthy Lifestyle Coalition and its Clinical Advisory Committee focus on establishing and supporting public policy specific to promoting physical activity and nutrition. This legislation also recognized that children and adolescents spend the majority of their time in schools; therefore it is critical that schools incorporate healthful eating and physical activity as part of a total learning environment. Therefore, the legislation specifically targeted the following public school issues:

No More Wilder Effect, Never a Whitman Effect: When and Why Polls Mislead about Black and Female Candidates

The 2008 election renewed interest in the Wilder or Bradley effect, the gap between the share of survey respondents expressing support for a candidate and the candidate's vote share. Using new data from 180 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1989 to 2006, this paper presents the first large-sample test of the Wilder effect. It demonstrates a significant Wilder effect only through the early 1990s, when Wilder himself was Governor of Virginia. Evidence from the 2008 presidential election reinforces this claim. Although the same mechanisms could affect female candidates, this paper finds no such effect at any point in time. It also shows how polls’ overestimation of front-runners’ support can exaggerate estimates of the Wilder effect. Together, these results accord with theories emphasizing how short-term changes in the political context influence the role of race in statewide elections. The Wilder effect is the product of racial attitudes in specific political contexts, not a more general response to underrepresented groups.