Challenging Whites’ Bequests

Author(s):  
Melissa Milewski

Chapter 3 examines cases in which masters had set aside money in their wills for their slaves to be emancipated and sent to Liberia upon their owner’s death. In the 35 years after the Civil War, former slaves who had been sent to Liberia or had been slated to be sent to Liberia brought suits in southern courts over these wills to try to gain funds that had been left for their emigration. There, in postwar courts, their suits appealing to white men’s last testaments would often fare well before judges and juries of white southerners, who sought to uphold the right of white Americans to do what they wished with their property upon their death.

Author(s):  
Nina Silber

The pro-Confederate Lost Cause memory of the Civil War continued to have considerable staying power during the 1930s, seen most notably in the popularity of the book and film versions of Gone With the Wind. At the same time, the Lost Cause was adapted to fit the sensibilities of this era. Many white Americans, for example, were drawn to the suffering of Civil War era white southerners in light of the economic trials of the 30s. Conservatives also doubled-down on the Lost Cause narrative as they pushed back against aspects of the New Deal agenda, as well as a reawakened civil rights movement and anti-lynching campaign. Finally, conservatives adapted the Lost Cause story to target Northern radicals and communists as the same kind of agitators who punished white southerners during Reconstruction. Black activists and communists tried to expose the racist and unpatriotic underpinnings of the Lost Cause but often fell short.


Author(s):  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Zoltan L. Hajnal

This book provides an authoritative assessment of how immigration is reshaping American politics. Using an array of data and analysis, it shows that fears about immigration fundamentally influence white Americans' core political identities, policy preferences, and electoral choices, and that these concerns are at the heart of a large-scale defection of whites from the Democratic to the Republican Party. The book demonstrates that this political backlash has disquieting implications for the future of race relations in America. White Americans' concerns about Latinos and immigration have led to support for policies that are less generous and more punitive and that conflict with the preferences of much of the immigrant population. America's growing racial and ethnic diversity is leading to a greater racial divide in politics. As whites move to the right of the political spectrum, racial and ethnic minorities generally support the left. Racial divisions in partisanship and voting, as the book indicates, now outweigh divisions by class, age, gender, and other demographic measures. The book raises critical questions and concerns about how political beliefs and future elections will change the fate of America's immigrants and minorities, and their relationship with the rest of the nation.


Prospects ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Lee Clark Mitchell

In the mid-1860s, with the nation immured in a devastating Civil War, two artists emerged as the premier representatives of America's Far West. Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) and Mark Twain (1835–1910) captured the nation's imagination with images that challenged ideas about the West as well as about art itself. In little more than a decade, however, Bierstadt's paintings were being ignored while Twain's name began to acquire something of its present canonical status. Unremarkable as this divergence in reputations may seem today (when “fifteen minutes of fame” has been promised to every one of us), a century ago Warhol's prediction would have been inconceivable. That in itself makes the receptions first accorded Bierstadt and Twain as interesting as the dramatic divergence later taken in their careers. What was it, one might well ask, that so appealed to contemporaries, and why should Bierstadt's success so quickly have palled while Twain's only continued to grow?The question encourages us to transgress the boundaries that separate painting from writing, to shift attention from a given medium onto the larger process by which popularity is won. One of the questions that then emerges is whether artists acclaimed in different media make similar demands upon their audience. Do a certain set of common standards, that is, shape an artist's reception, much as they more self-consciously dictate assessments that scholars will make later on? Or is it simply a matter of being in the right artistic place at the right cultural time? Certainly, the receptions accorded Bierstadt and Twain suggest that the former is true -indeed, that in their case a forceful aesthetic logic was at work.


1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (192) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Zorgbibe

“Whenever a large organized group believes it has the right to resist the sovereign power and considers itself capable of resorting to arms, war between the two parties should take place in the same manner as between nations…” This statement by de Vattel in the 19th century seemed destined to take its place as a part of positive law, constituting part of what was known as recognition of belligerency, tantamount to the recognition by the established government of an equal status for insurgents and regular belligerents. When a civil war became extensive enough, the State attacked would understand that it was wisest to acknowledge the existence of a state of war with part of the population. This would, at the same time, allow the conflict to be seen in a truer light. The unilateral action of the legal government in recognizing belligerency would be the condition for granting belligerent rights to the parties. It would constitute a demonstration of humanity on the part of the government of the State attacked and would also provide that government with prospects for effective pursuit of the war. By admitting that it was forced to resort to war, it would at least have its hands free to make war seriously.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e010
Author(s):  
Carlos Píriz

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, some thirty Diplomatic Missions opened their doors and create new sites for the reception of persecution victims under the protection of the right of asylum. However, beyond the humanitarian role, a tendentious collaboration of some of their delegates with the rebels could be seen from the beginning. Argentina and Chile, which held the Diplomatic Deanship in those years, were two prime examples of this. A good number of their representatives used various strategies to help the coup plotters of 1936, such as the refuge, care and irregular extraction of people or espionage. At the same time, they played a role that alternated between searching for consensus with other Diplomatic Missions (mainly the Latin American ones), which really meant demanding that those other legations follow their lead, and denouncing the excesses of the consolidated republican rearguard, especially on the international scene. A situation which tarnishes the image of the legitimate Spanish governments. Once the contest ended, many of those collaborators were praised and rewarded by the Franco regime, and other fascists regimes. This research focuses on demonstrating, based on original documentation and providing new and compelling data, that close (and proven) relationship.


Author(s):  
Marisa Abrajano ◽  
Zoltan L. Hajnal

This conclusion summarizes the book's main findings and considers their implications for the areas of race, immigration, and American politics. The results confirm the important role that immigration plays in American politics and also highlight the enduring though shifting role of race in the nation. Where African Americans once dominated the political calculus of white Americans, Latinos appear more likely to do so today. The movement of so many white Americans to the right has wide-ranging ramifications for both the future balance of partisanship and likely trajectory of race relations in the country. With a clear majority of the white population now leaning towards the Republican Party and a clear majority of the minority population now favoring the Democratic Party, political conflict in the United States is increasingly likely to be synonymous with racial conflict—a pattern that threatens ever-greater racial tension.


Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian

Chapter 4 investigates Armenians’ stance in the 1957 elections and in the ‘general’ Lebanese and the intra-Armenian mini-civil war of 1958. Armenian parties participated in, and contributed to, political tensions in Lebanon. Simultaneously, they used their position in the Lebanese political system to jostle for power within their own community – a development that turned violent and ended only in December 1958, almost two months after the Lebanese mini-civil war had ended. This tension and violent confrontation between Armenian parties and their armed men had a crucial spatial effect: it unprecedentedly territorialized certain neighborhoods of Beirut. Whereas parts of Lebanon were organized by sects and classes, by relative contrast, it was according to political party affiliation that in 1957/1958 many Armenians of Mar Mikael, Sin el Fil, Bourj Hamoud, and Corniche el-Nahr were re-sorted and relocated, often by force. Lebanese Armenians aligned along the right-left fault lines that divided Lebanese politics and society— more than other confessions, indeed. Vice versa, the Lebanese state was Armenianized, as it were, in that it started to pay more attention to Armenian matters than before, intervening directly and by military force in Armenian neighborhoods in order to finally end the internecine Armenian confrontation.


Author(s):  
De Wet Erika

This chapter examines whether the right to self-determination in international law prevents military intervention on the side of the recognized government during a civil war. Post-Cold War state and organizational practice does not convincingly support the claim that direct military assistance at the request of a recognized government is prohibited during a civil war, otherwise known as a ‘non-international armed conflict’ (NIAC). Attempts to explain current state practice by means of counter-terrorism and counter-intervention exceptions to a general prohibition of such assistance also is not grounded in state or organizational practice, nor are such exceptions viable in practice. Instead, state and organizational practice seems to confirm the right of recognized governments to request military assistance from third states, also during civil wars/NIACs, as long as they retain their recognized, de jure status. The potential lack of ‘representativeness’ in such a situation does not seem to limit the extent to which the de jure government can act on behalf of the state (and its people) in matters pertaining to the use of force.


Author(s):  
R. Scott Huffard

This chapter details how white southerners used the economic and cultural power of the railroad to reunify with the North and to move beyond the sectional tensions of the Civil War. For white southerners, the memory of the war and the destruction of the region’s railroads inspired calls for new development. Travel narratives and arguments from boosters like Henry Grady show how these elites saw the railroad as critical to idea that a New South would rise. The chapter then goes into a discussion of how northern railroad corporations like the Illinois Central and Louisville & Nashville pursued southern expansion strategies after the Civil War. Finally, the chapter discusses a key moment of reunification in 1886, when southern railroads shifted the gauge of thousands of miles of track to match the northern standard gauge.


Author(s):  
Barbara B. Diefendorf

The 16th century began in France as a time of relative peace, prosperity, and optimism, but horizons soon darkened under the clouds of religious schism, heresy persecutions, and civil war. French theologians condemned Martin Luther’s ideas as early as 1521, but his views continued to spread underground. The movement remained small and clandestine until the 1550s, when the penetration of John Calvin’s ideas from nearby Geneva resulted in the formation of Reformed churches, whose growing membership demanded the right to worship openly. The accidental death of King Henry II in 1559 left France with a religiously divided court and a series of young, inexperienced kings. Henry’s widow, Catherine de Medici, attempted a policy of compromise that backfired. Militancy increased on both sides of the religious divide, and civil war broke out in 1562. Neither side could secure a decisive win on the battlefield, and neither was satisfied with the compromise peace that ended the war. Indeed, war broke out seven more times before a more lasting peace was secured by the first Bourbon king, Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The edict set the terms for religious coexistence, allowing French Protestants limited rights to worship and certain protections under the law. It also fostered the spread of a movement already underway for the renewal of Catholic spirituality and reform of Catholic church institutions in France. Until the 1970s, the civil and religious wars that afflicted France through the second half of the 16th century were viewed largely as the consequence of political rivalries that spun out of control following the death of King Henry II. More recently, historians have shifted their attention to the social and cultural contexts in which the wars took place, particularly to the fundamentally religious nature of the quarrels. This has led to a profusion of new scholarship on the impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in France, the tensions—and ultimately the violence—generated by competing claims to religious truth, and the difficulty of resolving the quarrels or putting an end to the wars that resulted from them.


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