Idol Pursuits: Artifacts and Authority after the Civil War

Relic Hunters ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Snead
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Cave Wall

A particularly baroque literary appearance of the Kentucky Mummy highlights the transformation of public perceptions of indigenous antiquities in the United States in the Civil War decade. An imaginary romance of Mammoth Cave, Legends of the South (Smith 1869), describes a mysterious, annual journey of a “venerable Indian” down into the cavern. Ultimately the old man disappears into its depths, never to return. Decades later the author pursues the subterranean trail, encountering marvels that include the warning Siste viator—“Stop, traveler”— chalked on the cave wall. Nearby he finds the deceased elder, reduced to a “mummy-like dessication” clad in deerskin. Armed with an amulet taken from the body he pushes onward, ultimately entering a vast sepulcher in which . . . lay the warrior tribe, in their panoply complete. Supine—with their hands crossed upon their breasts, with their faces turned upward, as if acknowledging the presence of a superior being, they lay, like the marble effigies of the knights of old upon their sarcophagi. . . . In this catacomb the author is haunted by a ghostly “Sachem” who chides: “Are you not satisfied that your cruel warfare has exterminated us from the surface of the earth? Must you follow us to these chambers of death to scatter our ashes?” The supernatural figure then describes the wars of his dead people, prophesying that those events would be repeated in post-Civil War United States. “Nations from the rising sun shall make war upon the conquerors,” he pronounces “and then shall the Southern panther rise from his lair, and avenge his wrongs.” This subterranean tale amplified the myriad accounts of the Kentucky Mummy—a discovery two generations in the past by that time. By the mid-nineteenth century such visions of indigenous antiquity were increasingly commonplace, but the linkage between these histories and current events indicate increasingly deep associations with the American landscape. It was not simply abstract indigenous history that was being co-opted, however, but the material legacy of that experience—the ruins and artifacts that were ubiquitous in the increasingly populated countryside.

scholarly journals Road to the Civil War: The Missouri Compromise

Perceptions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Julius Nathan Fortaleza Klinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
True Solution ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Us ◽  
Underlying Causes

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether or not early nineteenth-century lawmakers saw the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as a true solution to the question of slavery in the United States, or if it was simply a stopgap solution. The information used to conduct this research paper comes in the form of a collation of primary and secondary sources. My findings indicate that the debate over Missouri's statehood was in fact about slavery in the US, and that the underlying causes of the Civil War were already quite prevalent four whole decades before the conflict broke out.

Analogies at War

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events

The frequent use of the Vietnam analogy to describe the situation in Iraq underscores the continuing relevance of Vietnam for American history. At the same time, the Vietnam analogy reinforces the tendency to see current events within the context of the past. Politicians and pundits latch onto analogies as handles for understanding the present, but in so doing, they obscure more complicated situations. The con�ict in Iraq is not Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, but this article considers all three in an effort to see how the past has shaped, and continues to affect, the world the United States now faces.

To 1750

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American History ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
The Republic

IN THE LATTER part of the nineteenth century, east coast city dwellers in the United States had difficulty repressing a sense of their own persistent cultural inferiority vis-à-vis London and Paris. At the same time a great many old-stock Americans were dismayed by the stream of immigrants coming to these shores whose diversity called the future cohesion of the Republic into question almost as seriously as the issue of slavery had done in the decades before the Civil War. In such a climate of opinion, the unabashed provinciality of Frederick Jackson Turner's (1861-1932) paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered at a meeting of the newly founded American Historical Association in connection with the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892), began within less than a decade to resound like a trumpet call, though whether it signalled advance or retreat remained profoundly ambiguous....

Beyond the Iconoclastic Republic

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Compulsory Military Service

This introduction traces antebellum American skepticism about public monuments to the distrust of standing armies that was central to the ideology of the American Revolution. The popularity of Independence Day illustrates the iconoclasm of the early republic, which paralleled a widespread resistance to compulsory military service. Remembrance of the Civil War vastly increased the number of public monuments in the United States. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, these memorials became a vehicle for the militarization of American culture.

Abolition, Chinese Indentured Labor, and the State: Cuba, Peru, and the United States during the Mid Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Narváez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Us South ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Indentured Labor

Abolition forced planters in the post-Civil War US South to consider new sources and forms of labor. Some looked to Spanish America for answers. Cuba had long played a prominent role in the American imagination because of its proximity, geostrategic location, and potential as a slave state prior to the Civil War. Even as the United States embraced abolition and Cuba maintained slavery, the island presented Southern planters with potential labor solutions. Cuban elites had been using male Chinese indentured workers (“coolies” or colonos asiáticos) to supplement slave labor and delay the rise of free labor since 1847. Planters in coastal Peru similarly embraced Chinese indentured labor in 1849 as abolition neared. Before the Civil War, Southerners generally had noted these developments with anxiety, fearing that coolies were morally corrupt and detrimental to slavery. However, for many, these concerns receded once legal slavery ended. Planters wanted cheap exploitable labor, which coolies appeared to offer. Thus, during Reconstruction, Southern elites, especially in Louisiana, attempted to use Chinese indentured workers to minimize changes in labor relations.

95 Years of Teaching High School Sociology

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael DeCesare
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High School ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teaching Sociology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of

A neglected part of the history of teaching sociology is the history of teaching high school sociology. The American Sociological Association's centennial in 2005 affords sociologists an opportunity to reflect on the teaching of sociology–anywhere and everywhere that it happens. In the spirit of contributing to the history of teaching sociology in the United States, this paper outlines the roughly 95-year history of the teaching of high school sociology. I rely upon published course descriptions written by high school sociology teachers and empirical studies conducted by academic sociologists. They demonstrate that past high school sociology courses have focused primarily on examining social problems and current events, and on promoting citizenship education. This remains the case today. I offer several reasons why the courses have looked as they have over the past 95 years, and conclude with four predictions about the future of teaching high school sociology.

History of Testing in the United States: PK–12 Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 683 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maris A. Vinovskis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
K 12

This article provides a brief history of K–12 education testing in the United States from colonial America to the present. In early America, students were examined orally. After the mid-nineteenth century, written tests replaced oral presentations. In the late nineteenth century, graded schools gradually replaced the single-teacher, one-room schools. In the beginning of the twentieth century, standardized intelligence tests were increasingly used to categorize and promote students. State departments of education have played a larger role in local school funding and policies in the past hundred years. Since the 1960s, the federal government has expanded its involvement in national education while also promoting the role of states. During the past three decades, the federal government and states increased the use of high-stakes national testing with initiatives such as America 2000, Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and Every Student Succeeds.

Popular Narratives and Mestizo Horsemen: Creating a Racial Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, 1844–1896

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-381
Author(s):  
E. Mark Moreno
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Popular Magazine ◽  
Print Publications

Between 1844 and 1896, two archetypal figures on horseback known as rancheros and chinacos were disseminated through print publications. As war with the United States loomed in 1844, a relatively obscure Mexican writer depicted the ranchero as a “true national type” in a popular magazine. Eighteen years later another archetype on horseback, the chinaco, appeared in newspaper propaganda designed to provoke resistance against an imminent French advance into the Mexican interior. Later writers, such as Justo Sierra and Antonio García Cubas, imbued such figures with racialized mestizo qualities and heroic martial traits, equating mestizo blood with strength and martial capabilities that could build a more advanced Mexican state. The depiction of both figures as of mixed-race origins was a popular perception that carried over into the Porfirian years. This article traces the origins of these figures in popular reading during the years in which Mexico dealt with war with the United States, a civil war, and finally the French Intervention. Through an analysis of popular reading and intellectual commentaries, supplemented by archival research, mestizaje as a foundational concept of Mexican nationhood is traced to these early depictions. Entre 1844 y 1896, las publicaciones impresas de México difundieron dos figuras arquetípicas a caballo, conocidas como rancheros y chinacos. Cuando se avecinaba la guerra con Estados Unidos, un oscuro escritor mexicano describió al ranchero como un “verdadero tipo nacional” en una revista popular. Dieciocho años más tarde, otro arquetipo a caballo, el chinaco, apareció en la propaganda periodística diseñada para incitar a la resistencia contra un inminente avance francés hacia el interior de México. Más adelante, escritores como Justo Sierra y Antonio García Cubas infundieron tales figuras con las cualidades racializadas del mestizo y los rasgos marciales heroicos, equiparando la sangre mestiza con la fuerza y las capacidades marciales necesarias para construir un Estado mexicano más avanzado. La representación de ambas figuras como mezcla de razas constituyó una percepción popular que se mantuvo durante los años del Porfiriato. El presente artículo rastrea los orígenes de estos dos arquetipos en las lecturas populares durante los años en que México libró una guerra contra Estados Unidos, una guerra civil y, finalmente, lidió con la intervención francesa. A través de un análisis de las lecturas populares y los comentarios intelectuales, complementado con una investigación de archivo, se rastrea el origen del mestizaje en cuanto concepto fundacional de la idea de nación mexicana hasta estas representaciones.

Vive la différence? Intergenerational Mobility in France and the United States during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Bourdieu ◽  
Joseph P. Ferrie ◽  
Lionel Kesztenbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Europe Today

Although rates of intergenerational mobility are the same in the United States and Europe today, attitudes toward redistribution, which should reflect those rates—at least in part—differ substantially. An examination of the differences in mobility between the United States and France since the middle of the nineteenth century, based on data for both countries that permit a comparison between the socioeconomic status of fathers and that of sons throughout a period of thirty years, demonstrates that the United States was a considerably more mobile economy in the past, though such differences are far from apparent today.

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