History Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778

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    Fight or Flight: The Commitment of German-Americans to the Union Cause during the American Civil War
    (2017) Cade, II, Anthony J; Sumida, Jon T; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    German-Americans fighting for or supporting the Union during the American Civil War felt humiliated on several occasions because of the failures of German units on the battlefields of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and the command mistakes of the German general, Franz Sigel, at New Market. Nativist Americans exploited these events to question the loyalty and fighting ability of all German-Americans fighting for the Union. This thesis examines the commitment of German-Americans to the Union cause and the resiliency they demonstrated when they experienced disgrace and hostility during the Civil War.
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    Teaching the Confederacy: Textbooks in the Civil War South
    (2009) Kopp, Laura Elizabeth; Rowland, Leslie; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    During the Civil War, at least 136 textbooks appeared in the states that made up the Confederacy, more than half of them in 1863 and 1864. The production of so many textbooks under difficult wartime circumstances suggests their significance in the promotion of Confederate values and ideologies. This thesis examines the Confederate textbook campaign, including the motives of authors and publishers, and analyzes the content of the textbooks themselves, including such themes as patriotism, gender roles, war, and death. While similar to antebellum textbooks in many respects, Confederate textbooks portrayed slavery as central to Southern society and offered explicit defenses of the institution. They also sought to promote Confederate nationalism among the new nation's youngest citizens and instructed children to honor and memorialize the Confederacy. The pages of Confederate textbooks constituted vital terrain for the shaping of the hearts and minds of Southern children.
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    "To Aid Their Rebel Friends": Politics and Treason in the Civil War North
    (2008-04-22) White, Jonathan W; Belz, Herman; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In "To Aid Their Rebel Friends" I argue that Civil War-era politicians relied on meanings of treason from old English law and Revolutionary-era America to broaden the definition of treason beyond the narrow definition found in the Constitution. In doing so, they gave new meaning to words and phrases in the Constitution that had been dormant for many years. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." The next sentence states that treason must be an "overt Act," thus precluding judges or politicians from declaring that conspiracy or words might be deemed treason. In defining treason narrowly the Framers hoped to depoliticize a crime that for centuries had been political in nature. In early modern England kings could define treason however they chose and force judges to convict the accused, simply to eliminate political opposition. Moreover, since the fourteenth century it was a treasonable offence to imagine or compass the king's death. The Founders hoped to avoid such occurrences on American soil. Despite the Founders' precaution of carefully defining treason in the nation's fundamental law, the Civil War transformed how treason was understood in American legal and political culture. The definition of treason broadened to include more than just overt acts of war. Included in its meaning were also disloyal or treasonous words. Sedition was punished, though not always as a defined crime. Speech codes were enforced in several northern states, and loyalty oaths were required at all levels of government and in nearly every jurisdiction. Violations of these laws, or refusals to take prescribed oaths, opened up northern citizens to charges of treason and disloyalty. In essence, the line between words and deeds blurred so that someone might be considered a traitor for speaking "traitorously" or for harboring "disloyal" sentiments. Beyond looking at the federal level, this dissertation also examines how understandings of treason broadened at the state and local levels, something that no scholar has yet attempted to do.
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    "A LIGHT WHICH REVEALS ITS TRUE MEANING": STATE SUPREME COURTS AND THE CONFEDERATE CONSTITUTION
    (2004-04-30) Stelluto, Jr., Donald Louis; Belz, Herman J.; History
    During the Civil War, Confederate wartime legislation, chiefly conscription, exemption, and impressments statutes, raised fundamental constitutional issues. These actions by the national government became a prolific source of litigation in many southern states. Yet, in the absence of a national Confederate Supreme Court, it fell to state supreme courts and state jurists to resolve these challenges to the national government's exercise of constitutional war powers and to enunciate key constitutional principles and explain the tenets of Confederate political philosophy. As a result, southern state supreme courts became the primary venues in which national constitutional issues were adjudicated. The constitutional purposes and goals of the Confederacy were national- rather than state-oriented and provided for limited but effective national government, a truly federal union in which state and national governments were to both operate effectively and energetically, and within the national government, the powers of the national government were to be separated to promote efficiency and prevent usurpation. In these cases, state supreme courts enunciated key Confederate constitutional doctrines and principles namely, limited government or constitutionalism, federalism, the separation of powers, and national purposes. State jurists established that the Confederate Constitution was a substantive and purposeful constitutive consisting of conservative principles and innovative forms and features. Operating as a de facto supreme court, these state supreme courts considered scores of wartime decisions. Consistently, across jurisdictions, these justices rejected states' rights as the political philosophy of the Confederacy, they upheld the exercise of constitutional Confederate war powers within a carefully articulated doctrine of federalism, they limited national government within its delegated authority without handicapping its capabilities to fulfill its duties, and maintained a strict separation of government powers between the three national branches. State supreme court cases have been largely ignored by Civil War scholars. However, these decisions reveal the substantive and normative nature of constitutional principles in the Confederacy. The specific holdings in these cases contradict earlier historiographical understandings of the Confederacy as a loose confederation of states with each acting independently.