Aus Nordcarolina: The Jewish American South in German Jewish Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-272
Author(s):  
Anton Hieke

Abstract For many German Jewish papers of the nineteenth century, the United States of America was held up as an ideal. This holds true especially for the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, then Germany’s most influential Jewish publication. In America, Jews had already achieved what their co-religionists in Germany strove for until complete legal emancipation with the formation of the German Empire in 1871: the transition from ‘Jews in Germany’ via ‘German Jews’ to ‘Germans of the Jewish faith.’ Thus, the experiences of Jews from Germany in America represented the post-emancipation hopes for those who had remained behind.2 When examined for the representation of Jewry living in the American Southern states,3 it becomes apparent that German Jewish papers in their coverage of America largely refrained from a regionalization. Most articles and accounts concerning Jewish life in the South do not show any significant distinctiveness in the perception of the region and its Jews. The incidents presented or the comments sent to the papers might in fact have occurred in respectively dealt with any region of the United States at the time, barring anything that remotely dealt with slavery or secession prior to 1865. When the Jewish South was explicitly dealt with in the papers, however, it either functioned as an ‘über-America’ of the negative stereotypes in respect to low Jewish piety, or took the place of an alternative America of injustice and slavery—the ‘anti-America.’ Jewish Southerners who actively supported the region during the Civil War, or who had internalized the South’s moral values as supporters of the Confederacy and/or slavery were condemned in the strongest words for endangering the existence of ‘America the Ideal.’ As the concept of the United States and its Jewish life is represented in a largely unrealistic manner that almost exclusively focused on the positive aspects of Jewish life in America, the concept of the Jewish South was equally far from being accurate.

Author(s):  
Perla M. Guerrero

Latinas/os were present in the American South long before the founding of the United States of America, yet knowledge about their southern communities in different places and time periods is deeply uneven. In fact, regional themes important throughout the South clarify the dynamics that shaped Latinas/os’ lives, especially race, ethnicity, and the colorline; work and labor; and migration and immigration. Ideas about racial difference, in particular, reflected specifics of place, and intersections of local, regional, and international endeavors and movements of people and resources. Accordingly, Latinas/os’ position and treatment varied across the South. They first worked in agricultural fields picking cotton, oranges, and harvesting tobacco, then in a variety of industries, especially poultry and swine processing and packing. The late 20th century saw the rapid growth of Latinas/os in southern states due to changing migration and immigration patterns that moved from traditional states of reception to new destinations in rural, suburban, and urban locales with limited histories with Latinas/os or with substantial numbers of immigrants in general.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Strickland

Jeff Strickland tells the powerful story of Nicholas Kelly, the enslaved craftsman who led the Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the history of the antebellum American South. With two accomplices, some sledgehammers, and pickaxes, Nicholas risked his life and helped thirty-six fellow enslaved people escape the workhouse where they had been sent by their enslavers to be tortured. While Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey remain the most recognizable rebels, the pivotal role of Nicholas Kelly is often forgotten. All for Liberty centers his rebellion as a decisive moment leading up to the secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1861. This compelling micro-history navigates between Nicholas's story and the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, while also considering the parallels between race and incarceration in the nineteenth century and in modern America. Never before has the story of Nicholas Kelly been so eloquently told.


Fascism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Stefan Roel Reyes

Abstract This article examines how the Southern proslavery defense produced a distinctly proto-fascist ideology. Rather than comparing the Antebellum South to twentieth century racist regimes, this study compares Southern fascist thought to Germany’s nineteenth century Völkisch movement. The author uses Roger Griffin’s Palingenetic Ultranationalism to explore how the Antebellum South promoted an illiberal vision of modernity. The author argues that proto-fascists rejected liberalism, had a profound sense of social decay, and advanced a vision of a new man, new political structure, and a new temporality. The striking similarities between nineteenth and twentieth century fascist movements mandates that the Antebellum American South should be included in comparative fascist studies. The results of this study contextualize the comparisons made between American racism and fascism along with deepening our understanding of fascism’s protean qualities.


1985 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Samson

In this paper, an author discovers his heritage: the income taxes which evolved in the South of the United States during the nineteenth century. These taxes are of interest because many tax concepts which are now taken for granted were developed during this time. Of particular interest are the common factors and events which led most southern states and the Confederacy to experiment with an income tax. These experiments influenced the structure of the United States federal and state income taxes in the next century.


1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-590
Author(s):  
Gunnar Heckscher

It is a well-known fact that the writings of John C. Calhoun were read and admired by German political theorists in the latter part of the nineteenth century. When the problems of federalism became predominant in the German Empire, it was found natural to turn to American experience and to study the works of the leaders of contending factions in the United States before the Civil War.There may, however, be another reason why Calhoun, in particular, proved such a valuable source for the German authors. His theory of the concurrent majority, in many parts, presents a striking resemblance to the arguments advanced on the continent of Europe in defense of legislatures built on representation, not of individuals, but of groups, interests, or estates. It can be assumed that Calhoun, when speaking of the safeguards necessary against the despotism of the numerical majority, was thinking primarily of the federal system and states' rights. On the other hand, he can hardly have regarded this arrangement as the only possible solution to his problem. He defines the government of the concurrent majority as one “where the organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving to each interest, or portion, or order,—where there are established classes,—the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at its expense.” Especially in view of the expression “where there are established classes,” it seems safe to say that Calhoun probably knew of the existence of representation by estates of the realm in European countries, and regarded such systems with favor.


1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Rodger

This article is the revised text of the first W A Wilson Memorial Lecture, given in the Playfair Library, Old College, in the University of Edinburgh, on 17 May 1995. It considers various visions of Scots law as a whole, arguing that it is now a system based as much upon case law and precedent as upon principle, and that its departure from the Civilian tradition in the nineteenth century was part of a general European trend. An additional factor shaping the attitudes of Scots lawyers from the later nineteenth century on was a tendency to see themselves as part of a larger Englishspeaking family of lawyers within the British Empire and the United States of America.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.


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