1.
Geophagia
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Geophagia is the practice of eating earth or soil-like substrates such as clay or chalk. It occurs in animals where it may be a normal or abnormal behaviour. Human geophagia may be related to pica, a disorder in the Diagnostic. Here, a white clay was found alongside the bones of Homo habilis. Geophagia is nearly universal around the world in tribal and traditional rural societies, in the ancient world, several writers noted the use of geophagia. Pliny is said to have noted the use of soil on Lemnos, an island of Greece, the textbook of Hippocrates mentions geophagia, and the famous medical textbook called De Medicina edited by A Cornelius Celsus seems to link anaemia to geophagia. Geophagia was common among slaves who were nicknamed clay-eaters because they had known to consume clay, as well as spices, ash, chalk, grass, plaster, paint. The literature also states, Many men believed that eating clay increased sexual prowess, geophagia among southerners may have been caused by the high prevalence of hookworm disease, in which the desire to consume soil is a symptom. In Africa, kaolin, sometimes known as kalaba, calaba, kaolin for human consumption is sold at most markets in Cameroon and is often flavoured with spices such as black pepper and cardamom. Consumption is greater among women, especially during pregnancy, in Haiti, people afflicted by poverty are known to eat biscuits made from soil, salt, and vegetable shortening. These biscuits hold minimal nutritional value, but manages to keep the poor alive, however, their long-term consumption is reported to cause stomach pains, and could be a source of malnutrition, and is not recommended by doctors. In the United States, cooked, baked, and processed dirt and clay are sold in food stores. In the rural areas of Mississippi and other states, the consumption of clay-rich dirt has been a common custom and has been practiced by poor whites. However, geophagia has become prevalent as rural Americans assimilate into urban culture. Bentonite clay is available worldwide as an aid, kaolin is also widely used as a digestive aid. Attapulgite, another type of clay, is an ingredient in many anti-diarrheal medicines. Geophagia is widespread in the animal kingdom, galen, the Greek philosopher and physician, was the first to record the use of clay by sick or injured animals in the second century AD. This type of geophagia has been documented in species of mammals, birds, reptiles, butterflies and isopods
2.
Poor White
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They first were classified as a social caste in the Antebellum South, consisting of white, agrarian, economically disadvantaged laborers or squatters, who usually owned neither land nor slaves. In certain contemporary contexts the term is used to pertain to their descendants. While similar to other White Americans in ancestry, the Poor White differ notably in regard to their history, Throughout American history the Poor Whites have regularly, Angel. White Trash, The Construction of An American Scapegoat, |publisher=Xroads. virginia. edu |date= |accessdate=2013-01-06}}</ref> the majority of which are often considered disparaging. They have been known as rednecks, hillbillies in Appalachia, crackers in Georgia, White Trash, The Construction of An American Scapegoat. |publisher=Xroads. virginia. edu |date= |accessdate=2013-01-06}}</ref> the majority of which are considered disparaging. They have been known as rednecks, hillbillies in Appalachia, crackers in Georgia and it denoted a separation, reflective of a social hierarchy, with poor used to demonstrate a low position, while white was used to subjugate rather than to classify. Author Wayne Flynt in his book, Dixies Forgotten People, Throughout American history the Poor Whites have regularly, White Trash, The Construction of An American Scapegoat. |publisher=Xroads. virginia. edu |date= |accessdate=2013-01-06}}</ref> the majority of which are considered disparaging. They have been known as rednecks, hillbillies in Appalachia, crackers in Georgia and it denoted a separation, reflective of a social hierarchy, with poor used to demonstrate a low position, while white was used to subjugate rather than to classify. Author Wayne Flynt in his book, Dixies Forgotten People, The Souths Poor Whites, argues that one difficulty in defining poor whites stems from the ways in which the phrase has been used. It has been applied to economic and social classes as well to cultural and ethical values, while other regions of the United States have white people who are poor, this does not have the same meaning as the Poor White in the South. It has been applied to economic and social classes as well to cultural and ethical values, while other regions of the United States have white people who are poor, this does not have the same meaning as the Poor White in the South. In context, the Poor White refers to a distinct sociocultural group and it denoted a separation, reflective of a social hierarchy, with poor used to demonstrate a low position, while white was used to subjugate rather than to classify. Author Wayne Flynt in his book, Dixies Forgotten People, Throughout American history the Poor Whites have regularly, White Trash, The Construction of An American Scapegoat. |publisher=Xroads. virginia. edu |date= |accessdate=2013-01-06}}</ref> the majority of which are considered disparaging. They have been known as rednecks, hillbillies in Appalachia, crackers in Georgia and it denoted a separation, reflective of a social hierarchy, with poor used to demonstrate a low position, while white was used to subjugate rather than to classify. Author Wayne Flynt in his book, Dixies Forgotten People, The Souths Poor Whites, argues that one difficulty in defining poor whites stems from the ways in which the phrase has been used
3.
Southern United States
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The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not fully match the geographic south of the United States, arizona and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries, while the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia permitted slavery prior to the start of the Civil War, they remained with the Union. However, the United States Census Bureau puts them in the South, usually, the South is defined as including the southeastern and south-central United States. The region is known for its culture and history, having developed its own customs, musical styles, and cuisines, the Southern ethnic heritage is diverse and includes strong European, African, and some Native American components. Since the late 1960s, black people have many offices in Southern states, especially in the coastal states of Virginia. Historically, the South relied heavily on agriculture, and was rural until after 1945. It has since become more industrialized and urban and has attracted national and international migrants, the American South is now among the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Houston is the largest city in the Southern United States, sociological research indicates that Southern collective identity stems from political, demographic, and cultural distinctiveness from the rest of the United States. The region contains almost all of the Bible Belt, an area of high Protestant church attendance and predominantly conservative, indeed, studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas, including religion, morality, international relations and race relations. Apart from its climate, the experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners and millions of Hispanics meant the introduction of cultural values, the process has worked both ways, however, with aspects of Southern culture spreading throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed Southernization. The question of how to define the subregions in the South has been the focus of research for nearly a century, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U. S. residents, lived in the South, the nations most populous region. Other terms related to the South include, The Old South, the New South, usually including the South Atlantic States. The Solid South, region largely controlled by the Democratic Party from 1877 to 1964, before that, blacks were elected to national office and many to local office through the 1880s, Populist-Republican coalitions gained victories for Fusionist candidates for governors in the 1890s. Includes at least all the 11 former Confederate States, Southeastern United States, usually including the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. The Deep South, various definitions, usually including Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, occasionally, parts of adjoining states are included
4.
Social class
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Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social historians. However, there is not a consensus on the best definition of the class, the precise measurements of what determines social class in society has varied over time. According to philosopher Karl Marx, class is determined entirely by ones relationship to the means of production, the term class is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth, in order to determine military service obligations. In the late 18th century, the class began to replace classifications such as estates, rank. Historically social class and behavior was sometimes laid down in law, definitions of social classes reflect a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and Structural functionalism, the common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors, objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity, Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of ones own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time and this is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology. Marxists explain the history of civilized societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society, in the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. Furthermore, in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, an industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers and sergeants who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. This would mark the beginning of a society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money. Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, that saw social class as emerging from an interplay between class, status and power. Weber believed that class position was determined by a relationship to the means of production. Weber derived many of his key concepts on social stratification by examining the structure of many countries. He noted that contrary to Marxs theories, stratification was based on more than simply ownership of capital, Weber pointed out that some members of the aristocracy lack economic wealth yet might nevertheless have political power. Likewise in Europe, many wealthy Jewish families in lack prestige and honor, Class, A persons economic position in a society
5.
Cracker (pejorative)
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Cracker, sometimes white cracker or cracka, is a usually derogatory and/or offensive term for white people, especially poor rural whites in the Southern United States. In reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, benjamin Franklin, in his memoirs, referred to a race of runnagates and crackers, equally wild and savage as the Indians who inhabit the desert woods and mountains. The term cracker could have derived from the Middle English cnac, craic, or crak and it is documented in Shakespeares King John, What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath. In the above instances, there is no reference to African American slavery and it has been suggested however, that white slave foremen in the antebellum South were called crackers owing to their practice of cracking the whip to drive and punish slaves. Whips were also cracked over pack animals, so cracker may have referred to whip cracking more generally, the whips used by some of these people are called crackers, from their having a piece of buckskin at the end. Hence the people who cracked the whips came to be thus named, Cracker has also been used as a proud or jocular self-description. With the huge influx of new residents from the North, cracker is used informally by some residents of Florida. However, the term cracker is seldom used self-referentially and remains a slur used to demean Caucasians. In 1947, the student body of Florida State University voted on the name of their athletic symbol, from a list of more than 100 choices, Seminoles was selected. The other finalists, in order of finish, were Statesmen, Rebels, Tarpons, Fighting Warriors, before the Milwaukee Braves baseball team moved to Atlanta, the Atlanta minor league baseball team was known as the Atlanta Crackers. The team existed under this name from 1901 until 1965 and they were members of the Southern Association from their inception until 1961, and members of the International League from 1961 until they were moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1965. Singer-songwriter Randy Newman, on his socio-politically themed album Good Old Boys uses the term cracker on the song Kingfish, the songs subject is Huey Long, populist Governor and then Senator for Louisiana. The term is used in Louisiana 1927 from the same album. Crackin Good Snacks has sold crackers similar to Ritz crackers under the name Georgia Crackers and they sometimes were packaged in a red tin with a picture of The Crescent, an antebellum plantation house in Valdosta, Georgia. The Florida Cracker Trail is a route which cuts across southern Florida, in his 1964 speech The Ballot or the Bullet, Malcolm X used the term cracker in reference to white people in a pejorative context. Theres no white man going to tell me anything about my rights, on November 29,1993, in a speech given at Kean College in New Jersey, Nation of Islam spokesman Khallid Abdul Muhammad called Pope John Paul II a no good cracker. In 2012, Michael Dunn shot and killed Jordan Davis in an argument over loud music coming from a car, Dunn claimed he had heard Something, something cracker, I should fucking kill that mother fucker, and saw the barrel of a shotgun. Zimmermans attorney then asked her if creepy ass cracker was an offensive term and that testimony and response brought about both media and public debate about the use of the word cracker
6.
Hillbilly
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Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in Appalachia and the Ozarks. Due to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term can be offensive to those Americans of Appalachian or Ozark heritage, scholars argue this duality is reflective of the split ethnic identities in white America. The Appalachian Mountains were settled in the 18th century by settlers primarily from the Province of Ulster in Ireland, the settlers from Ulster were mainly Protestants who migrated to Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century from Scotland and Northern England. Many further migrated to the American colonies beginning in the 1730s, scholars argue that the term hillbilly originated from Scottish dialect. The term hill-folk referred to people that preferred isolation from the greater society and it is suggested that hill-folk and billie were combined when the Cameronians fled to the Highlands. Others have suggested the term originated in 17th century Ireland, during the Williamite War, some scholars disagree with this theory. … In America hillbilly was first attested only in 1898, which suggests a later, the term hillbilly spread in the years following the American Civil War. At this time, the country was developing both technologically and socially, but the Appalachian region was falling behind, before the war, Appalachia was not distinctively different from other rural areas of the country. Post-war, although the frontier pushed farther west, the region maintained frontier characteristics, Appalachians themselves were perceived as backward, quick to violence and inbred in their isolation. Fueled by news stories of mountain feuds such as that in the 1880s between the Hatfields and McCoys, the hillbilly stereotype developed in the late 19th to early 20th century. The classic hillbilly stereotype reached its current characterization during the years of the Great Depression when many left their homes to find work in other areas of the country. This movement North became known as the Hillbilly Highway, the movement brought these previously isolated communities into mainstream United States culture. Poor white mountaineers became central characters in newspapers, pamphlets and eventually, authors at this time were inspired by historical figures such as Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. The mountaineer image transferred over to the 20th century where the hillbilly stereotype emerged, pop culture has perpetuated the hillbilly stereotype. The misrepresentation of Appalachian people in the media has led to great cultural distortion of Appalachian beliefs, practices, scholarly works suggest that the media has exploited both the Appalachian region and people by classifying them as hillbillies. These generalizations do not match the cultural experiences of Appalachians, Appalachians, like many other groups, do not subscribe to a single identity. One of the associated with stereotyping is that it is profitable. When hillbilly became a widely used term, entrepreneurs saw a window for potential revenue and they recycled the image and brought it to life through various forms of media
7.
Appalachia
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Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. As of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to approximately 25 million people, sociological studies in the 1960s and 1970s helped to re-examine and dispel these stereotypes. While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled, by 1990, Appalachia had largely joined the economic mainstream, but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators. Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been disagreement over what exactly the region encompasses. The most commonly used definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965. When the Commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, in 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frosts map to include 254 counties in 9 states. A landmark survey of the region in the decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states. In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARCs definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey. The name was altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe. Pánfilo de Narváezs expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15,1528, now spelled Appalachian, it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U. S. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez map of 1562, le Moyne was also the first European to apply Apalachen specifically to a mountain range as opposed to a village, native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America. The name was not commonly used for the mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and often more popular name was the Allegheny Mountains, Alleghenies, in the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either Appalachia or Alleghania. In northern U. S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced /æpəˈleɪtʃənz/ or /æpəˈleɪʃənz/, the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /æpəˈleɪʃə/, also /æpəˈleɪtʃə/, all with a third syllable like lay. In southern U. S. dialects, the mountains are called the /æpəˈlætʃənz/, and this pronunciation is favored in the core region in central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. The occasional use of the sh sound for the ch in the last syllable in northern dialects was popularized by Appalachian Trail organizations in New England in the early 20th century, Native American hunter-gatherers first arrived in what is now Appalachia over 16,000 years ago. The earliest discovered site is the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, several other Archaic period archaeological sites have been identified in the region, such as the St. Albans site in West Virginia and the Icehouse Bottom site in Tennessee
8.
Okie
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An Okie is a resident, native, or cultural descendant of Oklahoma. Like most terms that disparage specific groups, it was first applied by the dominant cultural group and it is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas. In the 1930s in California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma, the Dust Bowl and the Okie migration of the 1930s brought in over a million newly displaced people, many headed to the farm labor jobs advertised in Californias Central Valley. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that Okie denotes much more than being from Oklahoma, by 1950, four million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside the region, primarily in the West. Prominent Okies in the 1930s included Woody Guthrie, most prominent in the late 1960s and 1970s were country musician Merle Haggard and writer Gerald Haslam. S. Californians began calling all migrants by that name, even though many newcomers were not actually Oklahomans, the migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as Okies and Arkies. More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any state. Ben Reddick, a free-lance journalist and later publisher of the Paso Robles Daily Press, is credited with first using the term Oakie, in the mid-1930s and he noticed the OK abbreviation on many of the migrants license plates and referred to them in his article as Oakies. The first known usage was an unpublished private postcard from 1907, many West Coast residents and some politically motivated writers used Okie to disparage these poor, white migrant workers and their families. The term became well-known nationwide by John Steinbecks novel The Grapes of Wrath, will Rogers, a famous movie star and political commentator from Oklahoma remarked jokingly that the Okies moving from Oklahoma to California increased the average intelligence of both states. Once the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they often were forced to work on farms to support their families. Because of the pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves. These homes were set up in groups called Squatter Camps or Shanty Towns. Indoor plumbing was inaccessible to these migrant workers, and so they were forced to resort to using outhouses. Unfortunately, because of the space allotted to the migrant workers, their outhouses were normally located near the irrigation ditches. These irrigation ditches provided the Okie families with a water supply, due to this lack of sanitation in these camps, disease ran rampant among the migrant workers and their families. However, what native Californians failed to realize at the time was that these Okie migrant farm workers did not always live in the conditions that the Dust Bowl left them in. In fact, often these families had owned their own farms and had been able to support themselves
9.
Redneck
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The term redneck is a derogatory term chiefly used for a rural poor white person of the Southern United States. Its usage is similar in meaning to cracker, hillbilly, by the 1970s, the term had become offensive slang, and its meaning had expanded to mean bigoted, loutish, and opposed to modern ways. By 1975, say Chapman and Kipfer, the term had expanded in meaning beyond the poor Southerner to refer to a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative. For example, in 1960 John Barlow Martin felt that Senator John F. Kennedy should not enter the Indiana Democratic presidential primary because the state was redneck conservative country. Indiana, he told Kennedy, was a state suspicious of foreign entanglements, conservative in fiscal policy, William Safire says it is often used to attack white Southern conservatives. The term is used broadly to degrade working class and rural whites that are perceived by urban progressives to be insufficiently liberal. At the same time, some white Southerners have reclaimed the word, using it with pride, the term characterized farmers having a red neck caused by sunburn from hours working in the fields. By 1900, rednecks was in use to designate the political factions inside the Democratic Party comprising poor white farmers in the South. The same group was often called the wool hat boys. Vardaman—chiefly poor white farmers—began to describe themselves proudly as rednecks, even to the point of wearing red neckerchiefs to political rallies, the term redneck in the early 20th century was occasionally used in reference to American coal miner union members who wore red bandannas for solidarity. The sense of a union man dates at least to the 1910s and was popular during the 1920s and 1930s in the coal-producing regions of West Virginia, Kentucky. It was also used by union strikers to describe poor white strikebreakers, writers Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman also use redneck as a political call to mobilize poor rural white Southerners. In Defense of the Redneck was an essay by Ed Abbey. Bumper sticker was Rednecks for Wilderness, murray Bookchin, an urban leftist and social ecologist, objected strongly to Earth First. s use of the term as at the very least, insensitive. But many members of the Southern community have embraced the term as a self-identifier. Johnny Russell was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1973 for his recording of Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer, comedian Jeff Foxworthys 1993 comedy album You Might Be a Redneck If. cajoled listeners to evaluate their own behavior in the context of stereotypical redneck behavior. In Scotland in the 1640s, the Covenanters rejected rule by bishops, eventually, the term began to mean simply Presbyterian, especially in communities along the Scottish border. Because of the number of Scottish immigrants in the pre-revolutionary American South
10.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from the Beecher family, a religious family. It depicts the life for African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and it energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote 30 books, including novels, three memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on issues of the day. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14,1811 and she was the seventh of 13 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher and Roxana, a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxanas maternal grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War, among her classmates was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern. In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase, Emily Blackwell. Areas of the city had been wrecked in the Cincinnati riots of 1829, Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists and it was in the literary club that she met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor at the seminary. The two married on January 6,1836 and he was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. Most slaves continued north to freedom in Canada. The Stowes had seven children together, including twin daughters, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions even in free states. At the time, Stowe had moved with her family to Brunswick, Maine and their home near the campus is protected as a national historic resource in her honor. Stowe claimed to have a vision of a slave during a communion service at the college chapel. However, what more likely allowed her to empathize with slaves was the loss of her eighteen-month-old son and she even stated the following, Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions
11.
Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp
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Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp is the second popular novel from American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was first published in two volumes by Phillips, Sampson and Company in 1856, although it enjoyed better initial sales than her previous, and more famous, novel Uncle Toms Cabin, it was ultimately less popular. Dred was of a more nature than Uncle Toms Cabin. Dred is the story of Nina Gordon, a young heiress to a large southern plantation. It is run competently by one of Ninas slaves, Harry, who endures a murderous rivalry with Ninas brother Tom Gordon, Nina is a flighty young girl, and maintains several suitors, before finally settling down with a man named Clayton. Clayton is socially and religiously liberal, and very idealistic, and has a down-to-earth perpetual-virgin sister, in addition to Harry, the slave characters include the devoutly Christian Milly, and Tomtit, a joker-type character. There is also a family of poor whites, who have but a single, devoted slave, the response to Stowes first work greatly impacted her second anti-slavery novel. Uncle Toms Cabin drew criticism from abolitionists and African-American authors for the martyrdom of Uncle Tom. Dred, by contrast, introduces a black character who is presented as an heir to the American revolution rather than a problem to be expatriated. Dred can thus be placed within an African-American literary tradition as well as a revision of the sentimental novel. One often-overlooked subplot involves Judge Clayton, who issues an opinion that absolves the man who attacked Coras slave Milly of liability. This judge was constrained by the law from providing relief, this fit with Stowes belief that law and judges—and religious leaders and it was humane sentiments rather than the rule of law that would be the lever for antislavery action. The novel is also interesting in the context of runaway slave communities surviving for a long time in swamp areas. Swamps were places where runaway slaves could hide, and therefore became a taboo subject, the best hiding places were found on high ground in swampy areas. Adams, John R. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Library of Congress Catalog Card No. Representing the Slave, White Advocacy and Black Testimony in Harriet Beecher Stowes Dred, Stowes Dred and the Narrative Logic of Slaverys Extension. Studies in American Fiction 28.2, 151-78, hamilton, Cynthia S. Dred, Intemperate Slavery. Journal of American Studies 34.2, 257-77, spaces of Democracy in Harriet Beecher Stowes Dred
12.
Dorothea Lange
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Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Langes photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography, born of second generation German immigrants on May 26,1895, at 1041 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange was named Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn at birth. She dropped her name and assumed her mothers maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old. The other was her contraction of polio at age seven which left her with a right leg. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me, ive never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it. Lange graduated from the Wadleigh High School for Girls and was educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City and she was informally apprenticed to several New York photography studios, including that of the famed Arnold Genthe. In 1918, she left New York with a friend to travel the world. By the following year she had opened a portrait studio. She lived across the bay in Berkeley for the rest of her life, in 1920, she married the noted western painter Maynard Dixon, with whom she had two sons, Daniel, born in 1925, and John, born in 1930. With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange turned her camera lens from the studio to the street, in December 1935, she and Dixon divorced and she married economist Paul Schuster Taylor, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. For the next five years they documented rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers – Taylor interviewing and gathering economic data, distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era. One of Langes most recognized works is titled Migrant Mother, the woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson. In 1960, Lange spoke about her taking the photograph, I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history and she told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and she had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, there was a sort of equality about it. After Lange returned home, she told the editor of a San Francisco newspaper about conditions at the camp, the editor informed federal authorities and published an article that included the photos
13.
Florence Owens Thompson
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Florence Owens Thompson, born Florence Leona Christie, was the subject of Dorothea Langes famous photo Migrant Mother, an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress titled the image, Destitute pea pickers in California, Florence Owens Thompson was born Florence Leona Christie on September 1,1903, in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Her father, Jackson Christie, had abandoned her mother, Mary Jane Cobb, before Florence was born, the family lived on a small farm in Indian Territory outside of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Seventeen-year-old Florence married Cleo Owens, a 23-year-old farmers son from Stone County, Missouri and they soon had their first daughter, Violet, followed by a second daughter, Viola, and a son, Leroy. The family migrated west with other Owens relatives to Oroville, California, by 1931, Florence was pregnant with her sixth child when her husband Cleo died of tuberculosis. Florence then worked in the fields and in restaurants to support her six children, in 1933 Florence had another child, returned to Oklahoma for a time, and then was joined by her parents as they migrated to Shafter, California, north of Bakersfield. There Florence met Jim Hill, with whom she had three more children, during the 1930s the family worked as migrant farm workers following the crops in California and at times into Arizona. Florence later recalled periods when she picked 400–500 pounds of cotton from first daylight until after it was too dark to work and she said, I worked in hospitals. I done a bit of everything to make a living for my kids. The family settled in Modesto, California, in 1945, well after World War II, Florence met and married hospital administrator George Thompson. This marriage brought her far greater security than she had ever enjoyed. On the road, the timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-pickers camp on Nipomo Mesa. They were shocked to find so many people camping there – as many as 2,500 to 3,500, a notice had been sent out for pickers, but the crops had been destroyed by freezing rain, leaving them without work or pay. Years later Florence told an interviewer that when she cooked food for her children that day little children appeared from the pea pickers camp asking, Can I have a bite. While Jim Hill, her husband, and two of Florences sons went into town to get the damaged radiator repaired, Florence. As Florence waited, photographer Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and she took 6 images in the course of 10 minutes. Langes field notes of the read, Seven hungry children. Destitute in pea pickers’ camp … because of failure of the pea crop
14.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
15.
Underclass
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The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the class has a long tradition in the social sciences. However, the term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty. The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists, definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated. Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass, writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U. S. The specific concept of an underclass in the U. S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdals introduction of the term, the definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows, erik Olin Wright defines the underclass as a category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system. The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder, unlike the working class, which is routinely exploited for their labor power, the underclass, generally speaking, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass, the underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in Urban Sociology, the term, underclass, and the phrase, urban underclass, are, for the most part, used interchangeably. Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass, many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U. S. are urban-focused. William Julius Wilsons books, The Declining Significance of Race and The Truly Disadvantaged, are accounts of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as a population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education. He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the ghetto in the American rust belt. Elijah Andersons, Streetwise, employs ethnographic methods to study a gentrifying neighborhood, The Village, bordering a black ghetto, Northton, essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up the unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they lose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment, Lawrence M. Mead defines the underclass as a group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as dysfunctional, much of the urban underclass is made up of street hustlers, welfare families, drug addicts, and former mental patients
16.
House slave
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A house slave was a slave who worked, and often lived, in the house of the slave-owner. House slaves had many such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals. In classical antiquity, many civilizations had house slaves, Athens had various categories of slave, such as, House-slaves, living in their masters home and working at home, on the land or in a shop. Freelance slaves, who didnt live with their master but worked in their masters shop or fields, public slaves, who worked as police-officers, ushers, secretaries, street-sweepers, etc. War-captives who served primarily in unskilled tasks at which they could be chained, for example, rowers in commercial ships, houseborn slaves often constituted a privileged class. They were, for example, entrusted to take the children to school, some of them were the offspring of the master of the house, but in most cities, notably Athens, a child inherited the status of its mother. Sometimes the cause of this was natural, mines, for instance, were exclusively a male domain, on the other hand, there were many female domestic slaves. The example of the enslaved of the American South on the other hand demonstrates that slave populations can multiply, the explanation is perhaps economic, even a skilled slave was cheap, so it may have been cheaper to purchase a slave than to raise one. Additionally, childbirth placed the slave-mothers life at risk, and the baby was not guaranteed to survive to adulthood, a house slave appears in the Socratic dialogue, Meno, which was written by Plato. In the beginning of the dialogue, the master, Meno, fails to benefit from Socratic teaching. Socrates turns to the house-slave, who is a boy ignorant of geometry, the boy acknowledges his ignorance and learns from his mistakes and finally establishes a proof of the desired geometric theorem. This is another example of the slave appearing more clever than his master and we have most of these plays in translations by Plautus and Terence, suggesting that the Romans liked the same genre. And the same sort of tale has not yet extinct, as the popularity of Jeeves. House slaves existed in the New World, in Haiti, before leading the Haitian revolution, Toussaint Louverture had been a house slave. Toussaint is thought to have born on the plantation of Bréda at Haut de Cap in Saint-Domingue, owned by the Comte de Noé. Tradition says that he was driver and horse trainer on the plantation and his master freed him at age 33, when Toussaint married Suzanne. He was a fervent Catholic, and a member of degree of the Masonic Lodge of Saint-Domingue. In 1790 slaves in the Plaine du Flowera rose in rebellion, different forces coalesced under different leaders
17.
Fanny Kemble
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Frances Anne Fanny Kemble was a notable British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and popular writer, whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing and works about the theatre. In 1834, she married an American, Pierce Mease Butler, heir to cotton, tobacco and rice plantations on the Sea Islands of Georgia and they spent the winter of 1838–39 at the plantations, and Kemble kept a diary of her observations. She returned to the theatre after their separation in 1847 and toured major US cities and it has become her best-known work in the United States, although she published several other volumes of journals. In 1877, she returned to England with her second daughter and she lived in London and was active in society, befriending the writer Henry James. In 2000, Harvard University Press published a compilation of her journals. A member of the famous Kemble theatrical family, Fanny was the eldest daughter of the actor Charles Kemble and his Viennese-born wife and she was a niece of the noted tragedienne Sarah Siddons and of the famous actor John Philip Kemble. Her younger sister was the opera singer Adelaide Kemble, Fanny was born in London and educated chiefly in France. On 26 October 1829, at the age of 20, Kemble first appeared on the stage as Juliet in Romeo and her attractive personality at once made her a great favourite, and her popularity enabled her father to recoup his losses as a manager. She played all the womens roles of the time, notably Shakespeares Portia and Beatrice. In 1832, Kemble accompanied her father on a tour of the United States. While in Boston in 1833, she journeyed to Quincy to witness the revolutionary technology of the first commercial railroad in the United States. She had previously accompanied George Stephenson on a test of the L&M prior to its opening in England, the Granite Railway was among many sights which she recorded in her journal. Kemble returned to her career as a solo platform performer beginning her first American tour in 1849. She performed in both Britain and the United States, concluding her career as a performer in 1868. In 1834, Kemble retired from the stage to marry an American, although they met and lived in Philadelphia, Butler was the grandson of Pierce Butler, a Founding Father, and heir to a large fortune in cotton, tobacco and rice plantations. By the time the couples daughters, Sarah and Frances, were born, the family visited Georgia during the winter of 1838–39, where they lived at the plantations at Butler and St. Simons islands, in conditions primitive compared to their house in Philadelphia. Kemble was shocked by the living and working conditions of the slaves and she tried to improve conditions and complained to her husband about slavery, and about the mixed-race slave children attributed to the overseer, Roswell King, Jr
18.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
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A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin is a book by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in Stowes anti-slavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin, first published in 1853 by Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, the book also provides insights into Stowes own views on slavery. After the publication of Uncle Toms Cabin, Southerners accused Stowe of misrepresenting slavery, in order to show that she had neither lied about slavery nor exaggerated the plight of enslaved people, she compiled A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin. The book was subtitled Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story Is Founded, the reaction of Stowe’s contemporaries to A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was very similar to the reaction to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with both very positive and very negative reviews. The responses of abolitionists and Northerners in general were among the positive, lauding the proof of the evils of slavery, the great interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in England also transferred to the Key. One English review of the 1853 publication called it a book, more so if possible than Uncle Tom’s Cabin itself. ”This same review also commends Stowe’s self-control. This impression of Stowe and the reception of the book is different than the reaction to the Key in the South. The pro-slavery response to the Key paralleled the response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, although these reviews claimed that Stowe was misrepresenting slavery, they did not accuse Stowe of using false documentation. Rather they claimed that the examples that Stowe provides are the most extreme instances, which she gathered to give the worst possible impression of the institution of slavery, and of the south. One critic, William Simms, accused her of using faulty argumentation by gathering facts to prove her assumption, another pro-slavery reaction to both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, rather than critiquing the work itself, a critique of Stowe’s character. Many reviews made insinuations about what sort of woman Stowe must be to write about such events as were found in the Key, in spite of the varied reviews of A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it sold quite well. It was a bestseller when it first came out, perhaps simply as a result of the connection to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although it never sold to the quantities of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Media related to A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin at Wikimedia Commons Full text of A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin at the electronic text center of the University of Virginia and it is part of Uncle Toms Cabin and American Culture, A Multimedia Archive directed by Stephen Railton
19.
Plantation economy
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A plantation economy is an economy based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few commodity crops grown on large farms called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of crops as a source of income. Prominent plantation crops included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal, the longer a crops harvest period, the more efficient plantations become. Economies of scale are achieved when the distance to market is long. Plantation crops usually need processing immediately after harvesting, sugarcane, tea, sisal, and palm oil are most suited to plantations, while coconuts, rubber, and cotton are suitable to a lesser extent. In the Thirteen Colonies, plantations were concentrated in the South and these colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. They had good soil and almost year-round growing seasons, ideal for such as rice. The existence of many waterways in the region made transportation easier, each colony specialized in one or two crops, with Virginia standing out in tobacco production Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive. Some indentured servants were also leaving to start their own farms as land was widely available, colonists tried to use Native Americans for labor, but they were susceptible to European diseases and died in large numbers. The plantation owners turned to enslaved Africans for labor. In 1665, there were fewer than 500 Africans in Virginia but by 1750,85 percent of the 235,000 slaves lived in the Southern colonies, Africans made up 40 percent of the South’s population. According to the 1840 United States Census, one out of four families in Virginia owned slaves. There were over 100 plantation owners who owned over 100 slaves, number of slaves in the Lower South,2,312,352. Number of slaves in the Upper South,1,208,758, number of slaves in the Border States,432,586. Fewer than one-third of Southern families owned slaves at the peak of slavery prior to the Civil War, in Mississippi and South Carolina the figure approached one half. The total number of owners was 385,000, amounting to approximately 3. 8% of the Southern. On a plantation with more than 100 slaves, the value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land. Enslaved Africans were brought from Africa by the English and other European powers and they were shipped from ports in West Africa to the New World
20.
Great Dismal Swamp
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The Great Dismal Swamp is a large swamp in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, between Norfolk, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It is located in parts of the southern Virginia independent cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina counties of Gates, Pasquotank, some estimates place the size of the original swamp at over one million acres, stretching from Norfolk, Virginia to Edenton, North Carolina. Lake Drummond, a 3, 100-acre natural lake, is located in the heart of the swamp, the lake, a remarkably circular body of water, is one of only two natural lakes in Virginia. Along the Great Dismal Swamps eastern edge runs the Dismal Swamp Canal, the refuge was officially established through the Dismal Swamp Act of 1974, and today consists of over 112,000 acres of forested wetlands. Outside the boundaries of the refuge, the state of North Carolina has preserved and protected additional portions of the swamp through the establishment of the Dismal Swamp State Park, the park protects 22 square miles of forested wetland. A45, 611-acre remnant of the swamp was declared a National Natural Landmark in 1973. The origin of Lake Drummond, one of two natural lakes in Virginia, is not entirely clear as there is no apparent network of natural streams emptying into the lake. Archaeological evidence suggests varying cultures of humans have inhabited the swamp for 13,000 years, in 1650, Algonquian-speaking Native Americans of coastal tribes lived in the swamp. In 1665, William Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina, was the first European recorded as discovering the swamps lake, settlers did not appreciate the ecological importance of wetlands. In 1763, George Washington visited the area, and he and others founded the Dismal Swamp Company in a venture to drain the swamp, the company later turned to the more profitable goal of timber harvesting. Several African-American maroon societies lived in the Great Dismal Swamp during early American history and these Great Dismal Swamp maroons consisted of black refugee slaves who had escaped to seek safety and liberty. The swamps role in the history of slavery in the United States is reflected in Harriet Beecher Stowes second novel, Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The Underground Railroad Education Pavilion, a set up to educate visitors about the fugitive slaves who lived in the swamp, was opened February 24,2012. The Dismal Swamp Canal was authorized by Virginia in 1787 and by North Carolina in 1790, construction began in 1793 and was completed in 1805. The canal, as well as a railroad constructed through part of the swamp in 1830, the canal deteriorated after the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal was completed in 1858. In 1929, the United States Government bought the Dismal Swamp Canal, the canal is now the oldest operating artificial waterway in the country. Like the Albemarle and Chesapeake canals, it is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and this area is along the Atlantic Flyway of migrating species. S. During this time, a 45, 611-acre portion of the swamp was declared a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service in 1973 due to its combination of geological and ecological features
21.
Hinton Rowan Helper
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Hinton Rowan Helper was an American Southern critic of slavery during the 1850s. In 1857, he published a book which he dedicated to the whites of the South. Anger over his book due to the belief he was acting as an agent of the North attempting to split Southerners along class lines led to Southern denunciations of Helperism, Helper was born near Mocksville, North Carolina. He was the son of a small slave-owning farmer in Western North Carolina and his father died before Helper was a year old, but he was cared for by a wealthy extended family and obtained a good education with the financial help of his uncle. He graduated from Mocksville Academy in 1848, and went to California in 1851 in hopes of finding wealth, in 1855 Helper wrote the book The Land of Gold. Reality versus fiction, which ridiculed the state. In it he argued the Souths growth, prosperity, and cultural development were being held back by slavery and he deployed statistics from the census to show that land values, literacy levels, and manufacturing rates were considerably lower in the South than in the North. He warned of the caused by slavery through deforestation. He proposed that slaveholders be taxed to colonize all free blacks in Africa or Latin America, the success of The Impending Crisis of the South made Helper famous overnight. It also heightened the political crisis by raising fears among Southerners that poor landless Southern whites might turn against slavery if they saw that it did not benefit them. The fear of class divisions within the community was enough to lead many Southerners who had previously been opponents of secession to embrace it after the election of Abraham Lincoln. After the war Helper appeared as a white supremacist, urging the expulsion of former slaves. His hatred of blacks eventually became a phobia, to the point that he would not patronize hotels or restaurants that employed blacks. Southern enemies of Reconstruction were unwilling to forgive his previous opposition to slavery, and he remained a marginal, Lincoln appointed Helper as United States consul in Buenos Aires from 1861 to 1866. He spent most of the years promoting a scheme to build an intercontinental railroad connecting North and South America. The Three Americas Railway was supposed to extend from the Bering Sea to the Strait of Magellan and his schemes never came to anything, and he committed suicide by turning on the gas in his Washington, D. C. apartment. The book, which was a combination of statistical charts and provocative prose, Helper concluded that slavery hurt the Southern economy overall, and was the main reason why the South had progressed so much less than the North. Helper spoke on behalf of the majority of Southern whites of moderate means—the Plain Folk of the Old South—whom he said were oppressed by an aristocracy of wealthy slave-owners
22.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
23.
Confederate States of America
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The Confederate States, officially the Confederate States of America, commonly referred to as the Confederacy, was a breakaway country of 11 secessionist slave states existing from 1861 to 1865. It was never recognized as an Independent country, although it achieved belligerent status by Britain. A new Confederate government was established in February 1861 before Lincoln took office in March, after the Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South – Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The government of the United States rejected the claims of secession, the Civil War began with the April 12,1861, Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In spring 1865, after four years of fighting which led to an estimated 620,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered. Jefferson Davis later lamented that the Confederacy had disappeared in 1865, Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions from those states, while the legitimate governments of those two states retained formal adherence to the Union. Also fighting for the Confederacy were two of the Five Civilized Tribes located in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona. Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of law, while Delaware, though of divided loyalty. A Unionist government in parts of Virginia organized the new state of West Virginia. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal, as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers, teamsters and laborers, the most notable advance was Shermans March to the Sea in late 1864. Much of the Confederacys infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs, railroads, plantations in the path of Shermans forces were severely damaged. Internal movement became increasingly difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men, materiel, and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Daviss administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, after four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. Shortly afterward, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, President Davis was captured on May 10,1865, and jailed in preparation for a treason trial that was ultimately never held. The U. S. government began a process known as Reconstruction which attempted to resolve the political and constitutional issues of the Civil War. By 1877, the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in the former Confederate states, Confederate veterans had been temporarily disenfranchised by Reconstruction policy. The prewar South had many areas, the war left the entire region economically devastated by military action, ruined infrastructure
24.
Conscription
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Conscription, or drafting, is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and those conscripted may evade service, sometimes by leaving the country. As of the early 21st century, many no longer conscript soldiers. The ability to rely on such an arrangement, however, presupposes some degree of predictability with regard to both war-fighting requirements and the scope of hostilities, many states that have abolished conscription therefore still reserve the power to resume it during wartime or times of crisis. Around the reign of Hammurabi, the Babylonian Empire used a system of conscription called Ilkum, under that system those eligible were required to serve in the royal army in time of war. During times of peace they were required to provide labour for other activities of the state. In return for service, people subject to it gained the right to hold land. It is possible that this right was not to hold land per se, various forms of avoiding military service are recorded. While it was outlawed by the Code of Hammurabi, the hiring of substitutes appears to have practiced both before and after the creation of the code. Later records show that Ilkum commitments could become regularly traded, in other places, people simply left their towns to avoid their Ilkum service. Another option was to sell Ilkum lands and the commitments along with them, with the exception of a few exempted classes, this was forbidden by the Code of Hammurabi. The levies raised in this way fought as infantry under local superiors, although the exact laws varied greatly depending on the country and the period, generally these levies were only obliged to fight for one to three months. Most were subsistence farmers, and it was in everyones interest to send the men home for harvest-time, the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon English army, called the fyrd, was composed of part-time English soldiers drawn from the landowning minor nobility. These thegns were the aristocracy of the time and were required to serve with their own armour. Medieval levy in Poland was known as the pospolite ruszenie, the system of military slaves was widely used in the Middle East, beginning with the creation of the corps of Turkish slave-soldiers by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutasim in the 820s and 830s. In the middle of the 14th century, Ottoman Sultan Murad I developed personal troops to be loyal to him, the new force was built by taking Christian children from newly conquered lands, especially from the far areas of his empire, in a system known as the devşirme
25.
Inflation
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In economics, inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time resulting in a loss of value of currency. When the price rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods. Consequently, inflation reflects a reduction in the power per unit of money – a loss of real value in the medium of exchange. A chief measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index, usually the consumer price index. The opposite of inflation is deflation, Inflation affects economies in various positive and negative ways. Economists generally believe that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by a growth of the money supply. However, money supply growth does not necessarily cause inflation, some economists maintain that under the conditions of a liquidity trap, large monetary injections are like pushing on a string. Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied, low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities. However, the view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth. Today, most economists favor a low and steady rate of inflation, the task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is usually given to monetary authorities. Rapid increases in quantity of the money or in the money supply have occurred in many different societies throughout history. By diluting the gold with other metals, the government could issue more coins without also needing to increase the amount of used to make them. When the cost of each coin is lowered in this way and this practice would increase the money supply but at the same time the relative value of each coin would be lowered. As the relative value of the coins becomes lower, consumers would need to give more coins in exchange for the same goods and these goods and services would experience a price increase as the value of each coin is reduced. Song Dynasty China introduced the practice of printing paper money in order to create fiat currency, during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the government spent a great deal of money fighting costly wars, and reacted by printing more money, leading to inflation. Fearing the inflation that plagued the Yuan dynasty, the Ming Dynasty initially rejected the use of paper money, historically, large infusions of gold or silver into an economy also led to inflation. This was largely caused by the influx of gold and silver from the New World into Habsburg Spain. The silver spread throughout a previously cash-starved Europe and caused widespread inflation, demographic factors also contributed to upward pressure on prices, with European population growth after depopulation caused by the Black Death pandemic
26.
Ulysses S. Grant
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Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States. As Commanding General, Grant worked closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War and he implemented Congressional Reconstruction, often at odds with President Andrew Johnson. His presidency has often criticized for tolerating corruption and for the severe economic depression in his second term. Grant graduated in 1843 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, after the war he married Julia Boggs Dent in 1848, their marriage producing four children. Grant initially retired from the Army in 1854 and he struggled financially in civilian life. When the Civil War began in 1861, he rejoined the U. S. Army, in 1862, Grant took control of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and led Union forces to victory in the Battle of Shiloh, earning a reputation as an aggressive commander. He incorporated displaced African American slaves into the Union war effort, in July 1863, after a series of coordinated battles, Grant defeated Confederate armies and seized Vicksburg, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy in two. After his victories in the Chattanooga Campaign, Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general, Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in a series of bloody battles, trapping Lees army in their defense of Richmond. Grant coordinated a series of devastating campaigns in other theaters, as well, in April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending the war. Historians have hailed Grants military genius, and his strategies are featured in history textbooks. After the Civil War, Grant led the armys supervision of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states and he also used the army to build the Republican Party in the South. After the disenfranchisement of some former Confederates, Republicans gained majorities, in his second term, the Republican coalitions in the South splintered and were defeated one by one as redeemers regained control using coercion and violence. In May 1875, Grant authorized his Secretary of Treasury Benjamin Bristow to shut down and his peace policy with the Indians initially reduced frontier violence, but is best known for the Great Sioux War of 1876. Grant responded to charges of corruption in executive offices more than any other 19th Century president and he appointed the first Civil Service Commission and signed legislation ending the corrupt moiety system. In foreign policy, Grant sought to trade and influence while remaining at peace with the world. His administration successfully resolved the Alabama claims by the Treaty of Washington with Great Britain, Grant avoided war with Spain over the Virginius Affair, but Congress rejected his attempted annexation of the Dominican Republic. His administration implemented a standard and sought to strengthen the dollar. Grant left office in 1877 and embarked on a two-year diplomatic world tour that captured the nations attention, in 1880, Grant was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term
27.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. Sherman began his Civil War career serving in the First Battle of Bull Run and he served under General Ulysses S. In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the Western Theater of the war and he proceeded to lead his troops to the capture of the city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. Shermans subsequent march through Georgia and the Carolinas further undermined the Confederacys ability to continue fighting and he accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, after having been present at most major military engagements in the Western Theater. When Grant assumed the U. S. presidency in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army, as such, he was responsible for the U. S. Armys engagement in the Indian Wars over the next 15 years. Sherman advocated total war against hostile Indians to force them back onto their reservations and he steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1875 published his Memoirs, one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil War. British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was the first modern general, Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. His father Charles Robert Sherman, a lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court. He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children, Sherman was distantly related to American founding father Roger Sherman and grew to admire him. Shermans older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge, one of his younger brothers, John Sherman, served as a U. S. senator and Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker, Sherman would marry his foster sister, Ellen Boyle Ewing, at age 30 and have eight children with her. Shermans unusual given name has attracted considerable attention. Sherman reported that his name came from his father having caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees. Since an account in a 1932 biography about Sherman, it has often reported that, as an infant. According to these accounts, Sherman only acquired the name William at age nine or ten and his foster mother, Maria Willis Boyle, was of Irish ancestry and a devout Roman Catholic. Sherman was raised in a Roman Catholic household, though he left the church. Sherman wrote in his Memoirs that his father named him William Tecumseh, Sherman was baptized by a Presbyterian minister as an infant, as an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence – including to his wife – W. T. Sherman. His friends and family called him Cump
28.
Siege of Petersburg
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The Richmond–Petersburg Campaign was a series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 9,1864, to March 25,1865, during the American Civil War. Numerous raids were conducted and battles fought in attempts to cut off the Richmond, many of these battles caused the lengthening of the trench lines, overloading dwindling Confederate resources. Lee finally gave in to the pressure and abandoned cities in April 1865, leading to his retreat and surrender at Appomattox Court House. The Siege of Petersburg foreshadowed the trench warfare that was common in World War I and it also featured the wars largest concentration of African American troops, who suffered heavy casualties at such engagements as the Battle of the Crater and Chaffins Farm. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and was given command of the Union Army. He devised a strategy to apply pressure on the Confederacy from many points. Grant put Maj. Gen. William T, George Crook and William W. Averell to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Most of these failed, often because of the assignment of generals to Grant for political rather than military reasons. Butlers Army of the James bogged down against inferior forces under Gen. P. G. T, Beauregard before Richmond in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. Sigel was soundly defeated at the Battle of New Market in May, banks was distracted by the Red River Campaign and failed to move on Mobile. However, Crook and Averell were able to cut the last railway linking Virginia and Tennessee, on May 4, Grant and Meades Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and entered the area known as the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, beginning the six-week Overland Campaign. Grant spent the remainder of May maneuvering and fighting battles with the Confederate army as he attempted to turn Lees flank. Grant knew that his army and base of manpower in the North could sustain a war of attrition better than Lee. This theory was tested at the Battle of Cold Harbor when Grants army once again came into contact with Lees near Mechanicsville and he chose to engage Lees army directly, by ordering a frontal assault on the Confederate fortified positions on June 3. This attack was repulsed with heavy losses, Cold Harbor was a battle that Grant regretted more than any other and Northern newspapers thereafter frequently referred to him as a butcher. On the night of June 12, Grant again advanced by his left flank and he planned to cross to the south bank of the river, bypassing Richmond, and isolate Richmond by seizing the railroad junction of Petersburg to the south. While Lee remained unaware of Grants intentions, the Union army constructed a pontoon bridge 2,100 feet long, what Lee had feared most of all—that Grant would force him into a siege of Richmond—was poised to occur. This represented a change of strategy from that of the preceding Overland Campaign, Lee at first believed that Grants main target was Richmond and devoted only minimal troops under Gen. P. G. T
29.
Class conflict
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The view that the class struggle provides the lever for radical social change for the majority is central to the work of Karl Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. In the past the term Class conflict was a term used mostly by socialists, from this point of view, the social control of production and labor is a contest between classes, and the division of these resources necessarily involves conflict and inflicts harm. It can involve ongoing low-level clashes, escalate into massive confrontations, however, in more contemporary times this term is striking chords and finding new definition amongst capitalistic societies in the United States and other Westernized countries. This was only a potential, and class struggle was, he argued, not always the only or decisive factor in society, by contrast, Marxists argue that class conflict always plays the decisive and pivotal role in the history of class-based hierarchical systems such as capitalism and feudalism. Marxists refer to its overt manifestations as class war, a struggle whose resolution in favor of the class is viewed by them as inevitable under plutocratic capitalism. Where societies are socially divided based on status, wealth, or control of production and distribution. It is well documented since at least European Classical Antiquity and the popular uprisings in late medieval Europe. One of the earliest analysis of these conflicts is Friedrich Engels The Peasant War in Germany, one of the earliest analyses of the development of class as the development of conflicts between emergent classes is available in Peter Kropotkins Mutual Aid. In this work, Kropotkin analyzes the disposal of goods after death in pre-class or hunter-gatherer societies, chris Hedges wrote a column for Truthdig called Lets Get This Class War Started, which was a play on Pinks song Lets Get This Party Started. And I think that can go on for so long without there being more and more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle. The particular implementation of government programs which may seem purely humanitarian, such as disaster relief, in the USA class conflict is often noted in labor/management disputes. Although Thomas Jefferson led the United States as president from 1801–1809 and is considered one of the founding fathers, among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep and this is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention, do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. In 2005 Buffet said to CNN, Its class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldnt be. In a November 2006 interview in The New York Times, Buffett stated that here’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the class, that’s making war. Later Warren gave away more than half of his fortune to charitable causes through a developed by himself
30.
Andrew Johnson
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Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, the new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote, Johnson was born in poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina. Apprenticed as a tailor, he worked in several towns before settling in Greeneville. He served as alderman and mayor there before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835, after brief service in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the federal House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He became Governor of Tennessee for four years, and was elected by the legislature to the Senate in 1857, in his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill, which was enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862. As Southern slave states, including Tennessee, seceded to form the Confederate States of America and he was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his states secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as governor of Tennessee after most of it had been retaken. When Johnson was sworn in as president in March 1865, he gave a rambling speech. Six weeks later, the assassination of Lincoln made him president, Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency, Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to former slaves. In 1866, Johnson went on a national tour promoting his executive policies. As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnsons ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. Returning to Tennessee after his presidency, Johnson sought political vindication, Johnson is regarded by many historians as one of the worst presidents in American history. While some admire his strict constitutionalism, his opposition to federally guaranteed rights for African Americans is widely criticized
31.
Reconstruction Era
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Johnson followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates. Lincolns last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this. A Republican coalition came to power in all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U. S. Army. The Bureau protected the rights of freedmen, negotiated labor contracts. Thousands of Northerners came South as missionaries, teachers, businessmen, rebuilding the rundown railroad system was a major strategy, but it collapsed when a nationwide depression struck the economy. The Radicals in the House of Representatives, frustrated by Johnsons opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges, in early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmens Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. Meanwhile, self-styled Conservatives strongly opposed reconstruction and they alleged widespread corruption by the Carpetbaggers, excessive state spending and ruinous taxes. Southern democrats and conservatives violently counterattacked and had regained power in each redeemed Southern state by 1877, meanwhile, public support for Reconstruction policies, requiring continued supervision of the South, faded in the North, as voters decided that the Civil War and years of conflict should stop. Reconstruction was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, in the different states Reconstruction began and ended at different times, federal Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877. In recent decades most historians follow Foner in dating the Reconstruction of the south as starting in 1863 rather than 1865, Reconstruction policies were debated in the North when the war began, and commenced in earnest after Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1,1863. As Confederate states came back under control of the US Army, President Abraham Lincoln set up reconstructed governments in Tennessee, Arkansas and he experimented by giving land to blacks in South Carolina. By fall 1865, the new President Andrew Johnson declared the war goals of national unity, Republicans in Congress, refusing to accept Johnsons lenient terms, rejected new members of Congress, some of whom had been high-ranking Confederate officials a few months before. Johnson broke with the Republicans after vetoing two key bills that supported the Freedmens Bureau and provided federal civil rights to the freedmen and that same year, Congress removed civilian governments in the South, and placed the former Confederacy under the rule of the U. S. Army. In ten states, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North, Conservative opponents called the Republican regimes corrupt and instigated violence toward freedmen and whites who supported Reconstruction. Most of the violence was carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan, Klan members attacked and intimidated blacks seeking to exercise their new civil rights, as well as Republican politicians in the south favoring those civil rights. One such politician murdered by the Klan on the eve of the 1868 presidential election was Republican Congressman James M. Hinds of Arkansas, widespread violence in the south led to federal intervention by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871, which suppressed the Klan. Nevertheless, white Democrats, calling themselves Redeemers, regained control of the state by state, sometimes using fraud. The end of Reconstruction was a process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states
32.
Freedmen's Bureau
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The Freedmens Bureau Bill, which established the Freedmens Bureau on March 3,1865, was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. The Freedmens Bureau was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South, the Bureau was made a part of the United States Department of War, as it was the only agency with an existing organization that could be assigned to the South. Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau started operations in 1865, the Freedmens Bureau controlled limited arable land. The Bureaus powers were expanded to help African Americans find family members from whom they had separated during the war. It arranged to teach them to read and write, considered critical by the freedmen themselves as well as the government, Bureau agents also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both local and national courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues. In 1866, Congress renewed the charter for the Bureau, by 1869, the Bureau had lost most of its funding and as a result been forced to cut much of its staff. By 1870 the Bureau had been weakened due to the rise of Ku Klux Klan violence in the South. In 1872, Congress abruptly abandoned the program, effectively shutting down the Bureau by refusing to approve renewal legislation and it did not inform Howard, who had been transferred to Arizona by President Ulysses S. Grant to settle hostilities between the Apache and settlers. Grants Secretary of War William W. Belknap, was hostile to Howards leadership and authority at the Bureau, the Bureau helped solve everyday problems of the newly freed slaves, such as obtaining clothing, food, water, health care, communication with family members, and jobs. It distributed 15 million rations of food to African Americans, although the Bureau set aside $350,000 for this service, only $35,000 was borrowed by planters. Despite the good intentions, efforts, and limited success of the Bureau, most southern white doctors and nurses would not treat freedmen, infrastructure had been destroyed by the war, and people had few means of improving sanitation. Blacks had not had much opportunity to develop their own medical personnel, in this period epidemics of cholera and yellow fever were carried along the river corridors, breaking out across the South. Freedmans Bureau agents, at first, complained that freedwomen were refusing to contract their labor, one of the first actions black families took was to withdraw womens labor from fieldwork. The Bureau did allow some exceptions, such as married women with employed husbands, unworthy women, meaning the unruly and prostitutes, were usually the ones subjected to punishment for vagrancy. After the war, the Freedmens Bureau performed numerous marriages for freed couples who asked for it, as many husbands and wives had been separated during wartime chaos, the Bureau agents helped families in their attempts to reunite after the war. The Bureau had a regional communications system that allowed agents to send inquiries. It sometimes provided transportation to reunite families, Freedmen and freed women turned to the Bureau for assistance in resolving issues of abandonment and divorce. The most widely recognized accomplishments of the Freedmans Bureau were in education, prior to the Civil War, no southern state had a system of universal, state-supported public education and prohibited slaves and free blacks from gaining education
33.
Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father
34.
Whitelaw Reid
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Whitelaw Reid was an American politician and newspaper editor, as well as the author of a popular history of Ohio in the Civil War. After assisting Horace Greeley as editor of the powerful Republican newspaper, the circulation grew to about 60,000 a day, but the weekly edition became less important. He invested heavily in new technology, such as the Hoe rotary printing press and the linotype machine, as a famous voice of the Republican Party, he was honored with appointments as ambassador to France and Great Britain, as well as numerous other honorific positions. Reid served as the nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 1892 election. In 1898, President William McKinley appointed him to the American commission that negotiated peace with Spain after the Spanish–American War, born on a farm near Xenia, Ohio, Reid attended Xenia Academy and went on to graduate from Miami University with honors in 1856. At Miami, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and he was the grandfather of prominent journalist and New York Herald Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid. He was the editor of the New York Tribune and a close friend of Horace Greeley. He was a leader of the Liberal Republican movement in 1872, during the war he wrote under the by-line Agate. A Republican, he had a career as a diplomat, serving as United States Ambassador to France from 1889 to 1892. He was also appointed a special envoy representing the United States at the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in June 1902, the coronation was postponed, however, as the King fell ill, and the re-scheduled ceremony in August took place after Reid had returned home. In 1892, Reid became the Republican vice presidential nominee when President Benjamin Harrison chose to drop Vice President Levi P. Morton from the ticket. Harrison and Reid lost to the Democratic ticket of Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson, Reid was given a spot on the peace commission following the Spanish–American War. Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, is located on his former Westchester County estate, Reid Continue to the role of the Tribune As one of the foremost Republican newspapers in the country. He received the degree LL. D. honoris causa from the University of Cambridge in June 1902 and he was a member of Stanford Universitys board of trustees from 1902 until 1912. He died while serving as the ambassador to Britain on December 15,1912 and his remains are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. After The War, A Southern Tour London, Samson Low, Son, Ohio in the War, Her Statesmen Generals and Soldiers. The Greatest Fact in Modern History, Vol.1 & Vol.2 Baehr, Harry William. The New York Tribune Since the Civil War, New York, Dodd, Mead and Co.1936
35.
The Atlantic
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The Atlantic is an American magazine, founded in 1857 as The Atlantic Monthly in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 2006, the magazine is based in Washington, D. C, created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine, it has grown to achieve a national reputation as a high-quality review organ with a moderate worldview. The magazine has recognized and published new writers and poets. It has published leading writers commentary on abolition, education, the periodical has won more National Magazine Awards than any other monthly magazine. The first issue of the magazine was published on November 1,1857, the magazines initiator and founder was Francis H. Underwood, an assistant to the publisher, who received less recognition than his partners because he was neither a humbug nor a Harvard man. After experiencing financial hardship and a series of changes, the magazine was reformatted as a general editorial magazine. Focusing on foreign affairs, politics, and the cultural trends, it is now primarily aimed at a target audience of serious national readers. In 2010, The Atlantic posted its first profit in a decade, in profiling the publication at the time, The New York Times noted the accomplishment was the result of a cultural transfusion, a dose of counterintuition and a lot of digital advertising revenue. The magazine, subscribed to by over 425,000 readers, the Atlantic features articles in the fields of the arts, the economy, foreign affairs, political science, and technology. The Atlantics president is Bob Cohn, in April 2005, The Atlantics editors decided to cease publishing fiction in regular issues in favor of a newsstand-only annual fiction issue edited by longtime staffer C. Michael Curtis. They have since re-instituted the practice, on January 22,2008, TheAtlantic. com dropped its subscriber wall and allowed users to freely browse its site, including all past archives. TheAtlantic. com covers politics, business, entertainment, technology, health, international affairs, and more. In December 2011, a new Health Channel launched on TheAtlantic. com, incorporating coverage of food, as well as related to the mind, body, sex, family. TheAtlantic. com has expanded to visual storytelling with the addition of the In Focus photo blog, curated by Alan Taylor. A leading literary magazine, The Atlantic has published significant works. It was the first to publish pieces by the abolitionists Julia Ward Howe, for example, Emily Dickinson, after reading an article in The Atlantic by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asked him to become her mentor. In 2005, the magazine won a National Magazine Award for fiction, the magazine also published many of the works of Mark Twain, including one that was lost until 2001. Editors have recognized major cultural changes and movements, for example, the magazine has also published speculative articles that inspired the development of new technologies
36.
Social Darwinism
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The term itself emerged in the 1880s. The term Social Darwinism gained widespread currency when used after 1944 by opponents of these earlier concepts, the majority of those who have been categorised as social Darwinists did not identify themselves by such a label. Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwins own views on human social and his writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, while other passages appear to promote it. Some scholars argue that Darwins view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from other such as Herbert Spencer. Spencer published his Lamarckian evolutionary ideas about society before Darwin first published his theory in 1859, Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited. An important proponent in Germany was Ernst Haeckel, who popularized Darwins thought and used it as well to contribute to a new creed, the Monist movement. The first use of the phrase social Darwinism was in Joseph Fishers 1877 article on The History of Landholding in Ireland which was published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. In fact, Spencer was not described as a social Darwinist until the 1930s, the social Darwinism term first appeared in Europe in 1880, the journalist Emilie Gautier had coined the term with reference to a health conference in Berlin 1877. Around 1900 it was used by sociologists, some being opposed to the concept, Hofstadter later also recognized the influence of Darwinist and other evolutionary ideas upon those with collectivist views, enough to devise a term for the phenomenon, Darwinist collectivism. Before Hofstadters work the use of the term social Darwinism in English academic journals was quite rare, there is considerable evidence that the entire concept of social Darwinism as we know it today was virtually invented by Richard Hofstadter. Eric Foner, in an introduction to an edition of Hofstadters book published in the early 1990s. Hofstadter did not invent the term Social Darwinism, Foner writes, but before he wrote, it was used only on rare occasions, he made it a standard shorthand for a complex of late-nineteenth-century ideas, a familiar part of the lexicon of social thought. Social Darwinism has many definitions, and some of them are incompatible with each other, as such, social Darwinism has been criticized for being an inconsistent philosophy, which does not lead to any clear political conclusions. A social Darwinist could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, the term social Darwinism has rarely been used by advocates of the supposed ideologies or ideas, instead it has almost always been used pejoratively by its opponents. The process includes competition between individuals for limited resources, popularly but inaccurately described by the survival of the fittest. Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to reward the most competitive—is a logical consequence of Darwinism. Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature, while there are historical links between the popularization of Darwins theory and forms of social Darwinism, social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution. Others whose ideas are given the label include the 18th century clergyman Thomas Malthus, Herbert Spencers ideas, like those of evolutionary progressivism, stemmed from his reading of Thomas Malthus, and his later theories were influenced by those of Darwin
37.
Carpetbagger
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In the history of the United States, a carpetbagger was a Northerner who moved to the South after the American Civil War, during the Reconstruction era. Many white Southerners denounced them fearing they would loot and plunder the defeated South, sixty men from the North, including educated free people of color and slaves who had escaped to the North and returned South after the war, were elected as Republicans to Congress. The majority of Republican governors in the South during Reconstruction were from the North, most carpetbaggers probably combine the desire for personal gain with a commitment to taking part in an effort to substitute the civilization of freedom for that of slavery. Carpetbaggers generally supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing the South – civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, Carpetbagger was used by Southerners as a pejorative term, referring to the carpet bags which many of these newcomers carried. The term came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders, such individuals are seeking personal financial gain through such actions. Three groups comprised the Republican Party in the South after the Civil War, scalawags were white Southerners who supported the party, carpetbaggers were recent arrivals in the region from the North, and Freedmen were freed slaves. Although carpetbagger and scalawag were originally terms of opprobrium, in the early 21st century they are used in the scholarly literature to refer to these classes of people. Politically, the carpetbaggers were usually dominant, they comprised the majority of Republican governors, however, the Republican Party inside each state was increasingly torn between the more conservative scalawags on one side and the more Radical carpetbaggers with their black allies on the other. In most cases, the carpetbaggers won out, and many scalawags moved into the conservative or Democratic opposition, most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the South were edited by scalawags—20 percent were edited by carpetbaggers. White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage, beginning in 1862, Northern abolitionists moved to areas in the South that had fallen under Union control. Schoolteachers and religious went to the South to teach the freedmen. The bureau established schools in areas of the South for the purpose of educating the mostly illiterate black. During the time most blacks were enslaved, many were prohibited from being educated, Southern states had no public school systems, and upper-class white Southerners either sent their children to private schools or hired private tutors. After the war, hundreds of Northern white women moved South, while some Northerners went to the South with reformist impulses, many others went south to exploit the chaotic situation for personal gain. Although the stated purpose of these initiatives was to empower freedmen politically and economically and they became wealthy landowners, hiring freedmen and white Southerners to do the labor through the development of sharecropping. Within a year of Andrew Johnsons presidency, most of what was left of the Souths white elite had been restored to power, Men who had avoided bankruptcy regained their plantations and re-established businesses. Carpetbaggers also established banks and retail businesses, issuing monies and goods under high-interest loan programs, Foner notes that joined with the quest for profit, however, was a reforming spirit, a vision of themselves as agents of sectional reconciliation and the Souths economic regeneration. Carpetbaggers tended to be educated and middle class in origin
38.
Scalawag
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In United States history, scalawags were southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War. Like the similar term carpetbagger, the word has a history of use as a slur in Southern partisan debates. The opponents of the scalawags claimed they were disloyal to traditional values of white supremacy, the term is commonly used in historical studies as a neutral descriptor of Southern white Republicans, although some historians have discarded the term due to its history of pejorative connotations. The term is an epithet, yet it is used by many historians anyway, as in Wiggins, Baggett, Rubin. Historian Ted Tunnel writes that Reference works such as Joseph E. Worcesters 1860 Dictionary of the English Language defined scalawag as A low worthless fellow, Scalawag was also a word for low-grade farm animals. In early 1868 a Mississippi editor observed that scalawag has been used from time immemorial to designate inferior milch cows in the markets of Virginia. That June the Richmond Enquirer concurred, scalawag had heretofore applied to all of the mean, lean, mangy, hidebound skiny, only in recent months, the Richmond paper remarked, had the term taken on political meaning. Some accounts record his testimony as a native Southern white man, who says that a negro is as good as he is, by October 1868 a Mississippi newspaper was defining the expression scathingly in terms of Redemption politics. The term continued to be used as a pejorative by conservative pro-segregationist southerners well into the 20th century, but historians commonly use the term to refer to the group of historical actors with no pejorative meaning intended. In the South, Black Freedmen and White Southerners with Republican sympathies joined forces with Northerners who had moved south to implement the policies of the Republican party. The coalition controlled every former Confederate state except Virginia, as well as Kentucky, two of the most prominent scalawags were General James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lees top generals, and Joseph E. Brown, who had been the wartime governor of Georgia. During the 1870s, many left the Republican Party and joined the conservative-Democrat coalition. Franklin gives an assessment of the motives of Southern Unionists and he noted that as more Southerners were allowed to vote and participate, A curious assortment of native Southerners thus became eligible to participate in Radical Reconstruction. They found it expedient to do business with Negroes and so-called carpetbaggers, eventually most scalawags joined the Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted as Republicans and formed the tan half of the Black and it was a minority element in the GOP in every southern state after 1877. Most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the South were edited by scalawags—only 20 percent were edited by carpetbaggers, White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage. In Alabama, Wiggins says scalawags dominated the Republican Party and they included 76 white southerners,35 northerners, and 6 former slaves. In state offices during Reconstruction, white southerners were even more predominant,51 won nominations, compared to 11 carpetbaggers,27 scalawags won state executive nominations,24 won state judicial nominations, and 101 were elected to the Alabama General Assembly
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Great Depression in the United States
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The Great Depression was the worst economic times in American history. Though, it was not just in the United States it was a world wide conundrum, Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining Gross Domestic Product, the Gross Domestic Rate is a very important part of the United States economy. It is so important because it represents each total dollar value of all goods and it was not until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that the effects of a declining economy were felt, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes. Although its causes are uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33, then four years of very rapid growth until 1937. The Depression caused major changes in America. Three years into the depression, President Herbert Hoover, widely blamed for not doing enough to combat the crisis, Roosevelts economic recovery plan, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief, recovery and reform, and brought about a major realignment of American politics. The Depression also resulted in an increase of emigration of people to countries for the first time in American history. For example, some went back to their native countries, and some native US citizens went to Canada, Australia. It also resulted in the migration of people from badly hit areas in the Great Plains and the South to places such as California. Racial tensions also increased during this time, by the 1940s immigration had returned to normal, and emigration declined. A well-known example of an emigrant was Frank McCourt, who went to Ireland and it also shaped modern American literature, resulting in famous novels such as John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Banks began to fail in October 1930 when farmers defaulted on loans, there was no federal deposit insurance during that time as bank failures were considered quite common. This worried depositors that they might have a chance of losing all their savings, therefore, people started to withdraw money, the decreased money supply further aggravated price deflation, putting further pressure on already struggling businesses. The U. S. paper value lost an astonishing 40% value loss, the US governments commitment to the gold standard prevented it from engaging in expansionary monetary policy. High interest rates needed to be maintained, in order to attract investors who bought foreign assets with gold
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Margaret Bourke-White
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Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She died of Parkinsons disease about eighteen years after she developed her first symptoms, Margaret Bourke-White, in the Bronx, New York to Joseph White, a non-practicing Jew from Poland, and Minnie Bourke, who was of Irish Catholic descent. She grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey, and graduated from Plainfield High School in Union County, roger Bourke White is not surprised at her success, My sister Margaret was not unfriendly or aloof. Her interest in photography began as a young womans hobby, supported by her fathers enthusiasm for cameras, despite her interest, in 1922, she began studying herpetology at Columbia University, only to have her interest in photography strengthened after studying under Clarence White. She left after one semester, following the death of her father, a year later, she moved from Ithaca, New York, to Cleveland, Ohio, where she started a commercial photography studio and began concentrating on architectural and industrial photography. In 1924, during her studies, she married Everett Chapman, Margaret White added her mothers surname, Bourke to her name in 1927 and hyphenated it. One of Bourke-Whites clients was Otis Steel Company and her success was due to her skills with both people and her technique. Her experience at Otis is a good example, as she explains in Portrait of Myself, the Otis security people were reluctant to let her shoot for many reasons. Firstly, steel making was an industry, so they wanted to be sure national security was not endangered. When she finally got permission, technical problems began, black-and-white film in that era was sensitive to blue light, not the reds and oranges of hot steel, so she could see the beauty, but the photographs were coming out all black. She solved this problem by bringing along a new style of magnesium flare, which produces white light and her abilities resulted in some of the best steel factory photographs of that era, which earned her national attention. In 1929, Bourke-White accepted a job as editor and staff photographer of Fortune magazine. In 1930, she became the first Western photographer allowed to take photographs of Soviet industry and she was hired by Henry Luce as the first female photojournalist for Life magazine in 1936. Her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam construction appeared on its first cover on November 23,1936. She held the title of staff photographer until 1940, but returned from 1941 to 1942, and again in 1945 and her photographs of the construction of the Fort Peck Dam were featured in Lifes first issue, dated November 23,1936, including the cover. This cover photograph became such a favorite that it was the 1930s representative in the United States Postal Services Celebrate the Century series of postage stamps. During the mid-1930s, Bourke-White, like Dorothea Lange, photographed drought victims of the Dust Bowl, the photograph later would become the basis for the artwork of Curtis Mayfields 1975 album, Theres No Place Like America Today. She also traveled to Europe to record how Germany, Austria, while in Russia, she photographed a rare occurrence, Joseph Stalin with a smile, as well as portraits of Stalins mother and great-aunt when visiting Georgia
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Life (magazine)
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Life was an American magazine that ran weekly from 1883 to 1936 as a humor magazine with limited circulation. Time owner Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936, solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, Life was published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent special until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. After 2000 Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special, Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007. The website life. com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc. s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC. On January 30,2012 the LIFE. com URL became a channel on Time. com. When Life was founded in 1883, it was developed as similar to the British magazine and it was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes and social commentary. The Luce Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, the magazines role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life was wildly successful for two generations before its prestige was diminished by economics and changing tastes, Life was founded January 4,1883, in a New York City artists studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. Mitchell held a 75 per cent interest in the magazine with the remainder by Miller, both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Miller served as secretary-treasurer of the magazine and was very successful managing the side of the operation. Mitchell, a 37-year-old illustrator who used a $10,000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine, Mitchell created the first Life name-plate with cupids as mascots, he later drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil. Mitchell took advantage of a new printing process using zinc-coated plates. This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the humor magazines Judge and Puck. Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Lifes first literary editor, the motto of the first issue of Life was, While theres Life, theres hope. The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers and we shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world. The magazine was a success and soon attracted the leading contributors. Among the most important was Charles Dana Gibson, three years after the magazine was founded, the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for $4, a dog outside his kennel howling at the moon. Encouraged by a publisher who was also an artist, Gibson was joined in Life early days by such illustrators as Palmer Cox
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