Finding’s Keeping

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-45
Author(s):  
Jarod Roll
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transportation Networks ◽  
Corporate Control ◽  
White Men ◽  
Mineral Deposits ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Market Revolution ◽  
Mineral Wealth ◽  
National Market ◽  
Lead Mining

This chapter explains the discovery of lead mineral deposits and development of lead mining in southwest Missouri in the 1850s. Far from markets and transportation networks, working miners discovered and claimed rich deposits of lead mineral in this isolated region in the midst of a national market revolution that made lead more profitable than ever. Their discoveries soon attracted the attention of lead-starved smelting companies from St. Louis and elsewhere that tried to take control of the mineral wealth from the miners, most of whom were white men. The miners resisted corporate control because they believed that the mines rightfully belonged to them by virtue of discovering and developing them. By the time of the Civil War, miners and the smelting companies had negotiated a compromise based on leasing. Miners worked leasehold mines and sold their lead mineral to smelting companies for favorable prices, thus preserving the rights and privileges of the men who discovered the lead, and also creating good opportunities for miners who moved to the area. While the war devastated mining in the region, the companies rebuilt the mining district after the war by reinstating the favorable terms for working miners.

Wartime

Keep the Days ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 47-69
Author(s):  
Steven M. Stowe
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Men ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Moment

This chapter looks at women diarists from the southern slave-owning class looking at civil war. Some wrote a great deal about the battles and politics, while others wrote only occasionally about the far-reaching conflict. But all of the diarists comment on the sheer, local craziness of war—the reversals, weird occurrences, and outright destruction of lives and the material world. War demanded that they write in their diaries, but war also made writing inadequate. War shook up everything normal, and so the diarist found herself writing how normal time turned into something else—wartime. Women found themselves writing about cannonades and enemy soldiers at the door, about strange mutations in everything “every-day,” in the routines of home, the choice of clothing and food, and in the novel presence of working-class white men in the shape of Confederate soldiers. Wartime challenged women’s inventiveness as diarists, and it shows how the diary as a text—open, changeable, tied to the moment—brings wartime close to readers today.

“Dem Was Hard Times, Sho’ Nuff”

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Peter Irons
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
White Men ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Hard Times

This chapter is almost entirely in the words of two very different groups of people: the first is four White men, all distinguished in state and federal offices, who defended slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War; the second is composed of thirteen former slaves, in accounts of their lives recorded and transcribed in the 1930s by a New Deal agency, the Federal Writers Project. The four slavery defenders are John Calhoun of South Carolina, a former vice president, who predicted an eventual breakup of the Union over slavery; George Fitzhugh, a lawyer who claimed that Black slaves were “happy” and well-cared-for by their masters; Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who resigned from the Senate in 1861 to become president of the Confederacy; and Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who served as Davis’s vice president. Countering the myth of the “happy slave,” its victims recounted the brutality they endured, the breakup of slave families by selling wives from husbands and children from parents, and the “breeding” of “big black bucks” with multiple women to produce more slaves.

Going National: The Life Insurance Industry's Campaign for Federal Regulation after the Civil War

1991 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip L. Merkel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Life Insurance ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
Federal Regulation ◽  
State Laws ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
National Market

Life insurance corporations were among the first businesses to expand their activities across state lines in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet their efforts were often impeded by protectionist state laws and uneven state regulations. The industry reacted by forming a trade association that pressed for federal regulation of multistate insurance sales. This article examines the life insurance industry's attempts in Congress and in the courts to alter the balance of federalism and to promote free trade in a growing national market.

Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Ecology ◽  
Positive Outcome ◽  
Mineral Deposits ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Bauxite Mining ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
National Importance ◽  
Mineral Wealth ◽  
Increasing Demand

Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes explores the interface between geology and botany, and mining and conservation. Many areas of unusual geology that contain ore-bearing bodies also support unique ecological communities of plants and animals. Increasing demand to exploit rich mineral deposits can lead to a conflict between mining and conservation interests in such landscapes. This book brings together experts in the field of mining and conservation to grapple with this pressing issue and to work toward a positive outcome for all. Chapters are grouped into four themes: Introduction, Concepts and Challenges; Endemism in Ironstone Geosystems; Progress in Bauxite Mining; and Ways Forward. The book focuses on natural and semi-natural ecosystems, where landscape beauty, biodiversity and conservation value are at their highest measure and the mineral wealth they contain can bring affluence of regional or even national importance. Examples of conflicts ranging from threatened floristic endemics to human ecology are included, from Africa, the Americas and Australasia. Mining in Ecologically Sensitive Landscapes is an important reference for environmental managers, NGOs, restoration ecologists, academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students of ecology and environmental studies, conservation biologists, as well as mine managers, mining environmental specialists, consultants, regulators and relevant government departments.

A Burden Too Heavy to Bear

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-48
Author(s):  
Diane Miller Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Suicidal Behavior ◽  
Mental Distress ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
White Men ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
Fear Of Failure ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
And Control

Examines the psychological impact of the Civil War on Confederate soldiers who suffered debilitating psychological and emotional wounds that sometimes resulted in institutionalization in insane asylums, or in suicidal behavior. Historians have not focused on Civil War participants as victims of war trauma until recently. This chapter deepens our understanding of these experiences by asserting that external war-related pressures like witnessing death and mayhem combined with internal pressures like fear of masculine failure or being called a coward heavily taxed soldiers and their psyches. Factors that contributed to psychological distress among Confederate servicemen include: exposure to battle, fear of being called a coward, fear of failure, youthfulness, homesickness, and depression.Suicide offered southern white men a way to maintain mastery and control over their deaths in war zones where chaos and disorder prevailed. Attitudes toward Confederates who killed themselves during the war were more supportive and less stigmatizing than one might think. Many soldiers also ended up institutionalized in asylums after being diagnosed as insane. Caregivers and family members rarely connected signs of mental distress with wartime experiences.

scholarly journals Toxic Exposure of Songbirds to Lead in the Southeast Missouri Lead Mining District

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Nelson Beyer ◽  
J. Christian Franson ◽  
John B. French ◽  
Thomas May ◽  
Barnett A. Rattner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mining District ◽  
Toxic Exposure ◽  
Southeast Missouri ◽  
Lead Mining
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