History Theses and Dissertations
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Item "The Quiet Battles of the Home Front War": Civil War Bread Riots and the Development of a Confederate Welfare System(1986) Barber, Edna Susan; Grimsted, David A.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)During the American Civil War, more than a dozen food riots erupted in a number of Southern cities. Planned and executed largely by women, these riots were precipitated by extreme food shortages and high market prices, both the result of impressment activity and widespread speculation in foodstuffs. Although several scholars have examined the largest riot which occurred in Richmond, Virginia, in 1863, none have studied them collectively to determine the impact all of these riots exerted on the Confederate war effort or on the roles of Southern women in wartime. Nor has any attempt been made to place these riots in the context of American and European patterns of rioting. In response to riots or as attempts to prevent riots from occurring, a number of state and local governments moved to establish welfare programs to aid the women left destitute by the war. In cities, this took the form of free markets which distributed commodities donated by local farmers. In areas where the population was more dispersed, county or state relief agencies performed a similar function. Women who received supplies had to meet specific requirements to qualify for aid, and, at least in Richmond, the female rioters were excluded from the welfare program because their behavior violated traditional behavioral norms. As the war neared its conclusion, however, this type of riotous activity by Southern women ceased, and the women returned to their more traditional roles in nineteenth-century Southern society. When examined as a group, these riots tend to conform to traditional European food riot patterns such as those described by E.P. Thompson and Louise Tilly, thus giving the women's activities a broader and deeper historical context than they otherwise would have had.Item Deferred Mission, The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Catholic Priests, 1871 - 1960(1985) Ochs, Stephen J.; Olson, Keith W.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)During the last quarter of the nineteenth, and well into the twentieth century, St. Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart (Josephites) carried the main burden of the Roman Catholic Church's meagre efforts among black Americans. The Josephites built churches and schools throughout the South and, more dramatically, pioneered in the ordination of black Catholic priests in the United States. The exclusion of all but a handful of black men from the Catholic priesthood had both symbolized and helped to perpetuate the second class status of blacks within the Catholic Church. Under their first American Superior General, the dynamic John R. Slattery (1893-1904), the Josephites defied prevailing racist ideology. They accepted blacks into their minor and major seminaries and raised three of them to the priesthood between 1891 and 1907. Unfortunately, however, the Josephites could not sustain their pioneering endeavors on behalf of a black clergy in the midst of deteriorating race relations in the United States after the turn of the century. Southern bishops refused to accept black Josephites into their dioceses. Slattery's successors as Superior General, especially Louis B. Pastorelli (1918-1942 ), lacked his faith in black leadership, shared some of the racist assumptions of American society, and found themselves dependent upon the support of southern bishops. They accomodated their ecclesiatical superiors and effectively closed the Josephite college and seminary to all but an occasional mulatto, thereby forfeiting credibility among an important segment of black Catholics. Leadership in the struggle for black priests passed to the missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word. Not until the election of Edward V. Casserly as Superior General (1942-1948), did the Josephites return to their original policy of recruiting black men for St. Joseph's Society. The struggle of the Josephites over the issue of black priests illustrated the depth of the institutional racism that pervaded the Catholic Church, the tendency of the Church to accomodate itself to prevailing regional and national cultures, the limits of Vatican influence over the American Church on sensitive social issues like race, and the determination of black Catholics to secure their own priestly spokesmen within the clerically dominated Catholic Church.Item The MAORT Operation: A History of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) in Hungary 1938-1948(1984) Kissh, Bela; Yaney, George L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)A multinational American company discovered oil in Hungary on November 20, 1937. The flowing wells produced crude for Hungary; 13ter, they supplied some of the military needs of Germany and the demands of the Soviet Red Army after World War II. On September 20, 1948, a newly formed Communist Hungarian government nationalized the company, claiming that some American and Hungarian managers had sabotaged production. The decade-long operation of the Hungarian-American Oil Company, whose Hungarian acronym was MAORT, left behind intermittent, yet discernible trails in company , state, military and diplomatic records. In the aggregate, these documents preserved the history of MAORT, which exploited the Transdanubian oil fields in peace, in war, and under a socialist order. Discovery of crude deposits, attainment of national self-sufficiency in refined oil products, and friendly cooperation between state and company hallmarked the fir st half of MAORT's history . During the war, the state sequestered the company and ruinously accelerated exploitation of the fields; still, Hungary relinquished less oil to Germany than was demanded. After the war, the Red Army came to occupy the fields and held the oil complex as a war trophy until 1947, when a peace treaty was signed. By the time the American managers had regained control over their company, the Hungarian government was in the midst of expropriating private enterprises. To allow, in the presence of massive Soviet arms, a vital segment in the nation's new socialist economy to remain in private foreign hands, was inadmissible. A criminal trial, in which the state's case rested on confessions of industrial sabotage, provided the means and justification for the expulsion of the American managers, the sentencing to prison terms or death of the Hungarian managers, and the nationalization of MAORT in 1948. The company began by serving Hungarian interests, but in its later years it became a pawn in German and Soviet hands.Item The Virgin Islands under the United States Navel Administration, 1917-1931(1982) La Motta, Gregory Raymond; Wright, Winthrop R.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This thesis examines the United States naval administration of the Virgin Islands to determine how the transfer from Danish to American sovereignty affected the island society. This examination provides some insights into the establishment of an American government as part of the history of the Virgin Islands. The paper tries to determine whether the United States naval administration represented more the beginning of a break with the colonial system developed under the Danes, or the continuation of that process of colonialism. This study, largely utilizes the documents contained in several Record Groups of the National Archives. By the information obtained from these documents, the paper analyzes the relationship of social classes to the political and economic systems of the islands. This analysis reveals that the political and economic systems continued to operate for the benefit of the colonial power and a small local elite. Largely due to their racist perceptions of Virgin Islanders, the navy sought to maintain the systems that ensured white domination of the society. This adherence to the existing order disappointed many Virgin Islanders, who hoped that American rule would bring political and social reforms to the colony. Despite the institution of some American cultural practices, the system of colonialism changed little during the fourteen years of United States Navy rule.Item Slot Machines in Charles County, Maryland: 1910-1968(1983) Shaffer, Susan Hickey; Callcott, George H.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Psychologists and sociologists have studied gambling for many years, but historians have paid little attention to the subject. This is a study of the impact of gambling, and specificially slot machines, on rural Charles County, Maryland from 1910 to 1968. Slot machines moved up the Potomac River by riverboat, and gradually they spread throughout the county. In July, 1949, when most American communities had eliminated gambling as a source of immorality and crime, the people of Charles County, moving against the tide, voted to license and legalize them. Initially they brought tremendous growth to the area. During the 1950s, U.S. Highway 301 cut through the center of the county and brought with it a strip of tourist courts, restaurants and slot machine emporiums. Charles County also tapped the gambling market in Virginia, where gambling was illegal, by constructing piers out from the Virginia shore into Charles County waters. Despite their loss in the 1949 referendum, however, the antislot machine forces remained vocal. Ministers, newspapers, judges and concerned citizens argued the machines were immoral and crime producers. As a promise to his political supporters Governor Millard Tawes and the anti-slot forces outlawed the machines from the state, effective 1968. Economically, the machines poured new money into the county government, kept taxes low and increased police. Service related industries benefited by supplying casinos and motels. Slot machines created new wealth for many, poverty for others. Socially the industry brought family disruption and petty crime. Politically, it provided the issue for the opposition party, the Democrats, to come to power. Finally, after 58 years, Charles County faced the future without a gambling crutch.Item A Most Intricate Department: The Commissary General of Military Stores Under Benjamin Flower and Samuel Hodgdon, 1777-1782(1984) Barna, Frank Carl; Olson, Alison G.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This thesis makes use of the little studied records of the Military Stores or Ordnance, Department during the American Revolution to examine the commonly held assumption that the Continental Army was inadequately supplied with the materials necessary for waging war. The evidence suggests that contrary to this assumption, the Ordnance Department, following the reforms of 1778, kept the army well supplied with military stores. This study will examine three phases which illustrate the evolution of the Ordnance Department and the Army as a whole. The first phase, 1775-1777, illustrates the extemporized approach to war waged by Congressional committees lacking in military knowledge and experience. From 1777 to 1779, we witness the maturation and professionalism that evolved following the failure of the old colonial, citizenmilitia approach to war. The final phase, 1779-1783, provides the evidence that the professionalization worked. Under the guidance of General Henry Knox and the leadership of its two wartime administrators, Benjamin Flower and samuel Hodgdon, the Ordnance Department, like the army it supported, evolved into a complex and sophisticated organization. Under Knox and Hodgdon, the Department grew from a divided and unresponsive system under political controls imposed by Congress into an efficient organization responsive to the army's needs. In many ways, the Department became superior to the British system upon which it was initially based and, except for spot shortages arising from poor fiscal or political planning and transportation problems, the Department kept the army well supplied with the weaponry and military stores needed for victory.Item A Window on the Valley: A Study of the Free Black Community of Winchester and Frederick County, Virginia, 1785 - 1860(1986) Ebert, Rebecca Aleene; Grimsted, David; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This is the first substantial study which has been undertaken on the free black community of Winchester and Frederick County, Virginia. It explains who the free blacks were, where they lived, how they obtained their freedom, how they maintained it, how they constituted a community, and how they interacted with slaves and whites. These free blacks engaged in a variety of occupations; they did not dominate any one field of employment. The population was predominately young and individuals and families appeared to remain stable throughout the era studied. In later years, female -headed households became more common. The records available on free blacks in Frederick County are limited. Therefore, this investigation has been primarily through official records generated by the local courts and state government. They have, however, been sufficient to suggest a growing and viable group that was accepted by and contributed to the larger community throughout the ante-bellum years.