Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South. By James C. Giesen. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. xvi, 221. Illustrations, maps, notes, acknowledgments, index. $40.00.) As much cultural history as agricultural history, Boll Weevil Blues explores how individuals, institutions, and classes jockeyed for place amid the thirty-five-year-long boll weevil crisis. In doing so, it reshapes our understanding of that crisis. The cotton-eating insect was, indeed, real; but the hysteria attending its slow eastward advance across the South was abetted by people hoping to benefit from its arrival. The author seeks signs of agency within each level of society and finds planters, politicians, agricultural educators, sharecroppers, and bluesmen all struggling to make the boll weevil pay. The author organizes his study chronologically and spatially to follow the insect's lead. He begins in 1890s and 1900s Texas. Giesen's next stop is the early 1910s Mississippi Delta. From there he follows the bug in the later teens into southeast Alabama and finally into 1920s Georgia. While each section is undergirded with solid economic data, Giesen focuses on different aspects of the crisis in each of the four regions. In Texas, he follows the self-promoting Seaman Knapp (though funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as much "a showman" as an educator). Successfully riding the boll weevil to greater prominence, Knapp laid down a winning template followed throughout the South. The boll weevil, Giesen argues, created the agricultural extension service and enriched the South's agricultural colleges. In the case of the Mississippi Delta, Giesen focuses on the iron-fingered social control sought by planters and the rise of the agribusiness giant, the Delta and Pine Land Company. In Alabama, he chronicles the spectacular rise and fall of diversification accompanying the pest into the wiregrass country. And Georgia had its own Seaman Knapps who leveraged newly fat budgets for their agricultural colleges. Arkansas historians may find the section on the delta of most interest. True, Giesen does not include the Arkansas Delta, but much of the human and political geography of the 1910s Mississippi Delta may bear upon the Arkansas experience. As was the case with almost every other aspect of their system, delta planters thought about fighting the boll weevil in terms of maintaining social control over their black labor force. …
{"title":"Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South","authors":"Kyle G. Wilkison","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-2629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-2629","url":null,"abstract":"Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South. By James C. Giesen. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. xvi, 221. Illustrations, maps, notes, acknowledgments, index. $40.00.) As much cultural history as agricultural history, Boll Weevil Blues explores how individuals, institutions, and classes jockeyed for place amid the thirty-five-year-long boll weevil crisis. In doing so, it reshapes our understanding of that crisis. The cotton-eating insect was, indeed, real; but the hysteria attending its slow eastward advance across the South was abetted by people hoping to benefit from its arrival. The author seeks signs of agency within each level of society and finds planters, politicians, agricultural educators, sharecroppers, and bluesmen all struggling to make the boll weevil pay. The author organizes his study chronologically and spatially to follow the insect's lead. He begins in 1890s and 1900s Texas. Giesen's next stop is the early 1910s Mississippi Delta. From there he follows the bug in the later teens into southeast Alabama and finally into 1920s Georgia. While each section is undergirded with solid economic data, Giesen focuses on different aspects of the crisis in each of the four regions. In Texas, he follows the self-promoting Seaman Knapp (though funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as much \"a showman\" as an educator). Successfully riding the boll weevil to greater prominence, Knapp laid down a winning template followed throughout the South. The boll weevil, Giesen argues, created the agricultural extension service and enriched the South's agricultural colleges. In the case of the Mississippi Delta, Giesen focuses on the iron-fingered social control sought by planters and the rise of the agribusiness giant, the Delta and Pine Land Company. In Alabama, he chronicles the spectacular rise and fall of diversification accompanying the pest into the wiregrass country. And Georgia had its own Seaman Knapps who leveraged newly fat budgets for their agricultural colleges. Arkansas historians may find the section on the delta of most interest. True, Giesen does not include the Arkansas Delta, but much of the human and political geography of the 1910s Mississippi Delta may bear upon the Arkansas experience. As was the case with almost every other aspect of their system, delta planters thought about fighting the boll weevil in terms of maintaining social control over their black labor force. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"71 1","pages":"230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71135853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The battle of Prairie Grove, December 7, 1862, has commanded the attention of many writers. As one of the most sanguinary conflicts in the Trans-Mississippi during the Civil War, it has fascinated military scholars. As an event greatly affecting the political, economic, and military situation in Arkansas and Missouri during 1863, it has been closely studied by other historians. It has even figured as the locale for romantic fiction. But all such writing has been, for the most part, largely secondhand. The primary recountings of the engagement too often are reminiscences penned many years after the battle when memories were dim and confused, or are meager jottings of trivial details with little value. The account of the battle and its aftermath found in the journal of Lt. Charles DeWolf, Seventh Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A., is an exception. It is unusual in several respects. In the first place, it is an on-the-spot account. Each day's entry in the journal was carefully written at the close ofthat day or on the morning immediately following. It is the work of an articulate man, a rural schoolteacher fairly well trained for his day and with a feeling for historical detail. It is the product of a sensitive man, dedicated to a cause he thought right. In his account of Prairie Grove, he conveys "the splendors and horrors of a battlefield." Lt. Charles W. DeWolf was born in Lima, New York, February 2, 1834, and while still a young man moved to Iowa. By 1858, he had found a position in a rural school in Saline County, Missouri. On May 20, 1859, he married Elizabeth Wesley Newton of Keokuk, Iowa, the beloved Libbie of his journal. With the outbreak of the Civil War, DeWolf answered Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers. He joined the newly organized Black Hawk Cavalry as chief bugler. This organization was later consolidated with several unattached companies and became the Seventh Missouri Cavalry Volunteers. At the time of the battle of Prairie Grove, this regiment was part of the First Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Frontier. DeWolf rose from private in Company E to first lieutenant and was honorably discharged for physical disability on March 12, 1864. After the war, he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and from there to Garnett, Kansas, where he died March 23, 1927. Always interested in the battle of Prairie Grove, DeWolf was instrumental in engineering the reunion of Prairie Grove survivors on the occasion of its forty-fourth anniversary. This reunion, held on December 7, 1906, was one of the most successful and gained a great deal of publicity in midwestern and southern newspapers. The journal of Lieutenant De Wolf is written in fine script in a notebook eight by thirteen inches containing forty-eight leaves (ninety-six pages). It covers a period from December 1, 1 862, through May 29, 1863, and was obviously one of a series of such notebooks. The other books, in all probability, have been destroyed. The text appears here largely as it does i
{"title":"A Yankee Cavalryman Views the Battle of Prairie Grove","authors":"H. N. Monnett","doi":"10.2307/40035685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/40035685","url":null,"abstract":"The battle of Prairie Grove, December 7, 1862, has commanded the attention of many writers. As one of the most sanguinary conflicts in the Trans-Mississippi during the Civil War, it has fascinated military scholars. As an event greatly affecting the political, economic, and military situation in Arkansas and Missouri during 1863, it has been closely studied by other historians. It has even figured as the locale for romantic fiction. But all such writing has been, for the most part, largely secondhand. The primary recountings of the engagement too often are reminiscences penned many years after the battle when memories were dim and confused, or are meager jottings of trivial details with little value. The account of the battle and its aftermath found in the journal of Lt. Charles DeWolf, Seventh Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A., is an exception. It is unusual in several respects. In the first place, it is an on-the-spot account. Each day's entry in the journal was carefully written at the close ofthat day or on the morning immediately following. It is the work of an articulate man, a rural schoolteacher fairly well trained for his day and with a feeling for historical detail. It is the product of a sensitive man, dedicated to a cause he thought right. In his account of Prairie Grove, he conveys \"the splendors and horrors of a battlefield.\" Lt. Charles W. DeWolf was born in Lima, New York, February 2, 1834, and while still a young man moved to Iowa. By 1858, he had found a position in a rural school in Saline County, Missouri. On May 20, 1859, he married Elizabeth Wesley Newton of Keokuk, Iowa, the beloved Libbie of his journal. With the outbreak of the Civil War, DeWolf answered Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers. He joined the newly organized Black Hawk Cavalry as chief bugler. This organization was later consolidated with several unattached companies and became the Seventh Missouri Cavalry Volunteers. At the time of the battle of Prairie Grove, this regiment was part of the First Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Frontier. DeWolf rose from private in Company E to first lieutenant and was honorably discharged for physical disability on March 12, 1864. After the war, he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and from there to Garnett, Kansas, where he died March 23, 1927. Always interested in the battle of Prairie Grove, DeWolf was instrumental in engineering the reunion of Prairie Grove survivors on the occasion of its forty-fourth anniversary. This reunion, held on December 7, 1906, was one of the most successful and gained a great deal of publicity in midwestern and southern newspapers. The journal of Lieutenant De Wolf is written in fine script in a notebook eight by thirteen inches containing forty-eight leaves (ninety-six pages). It covers a period from December 1, 1 862, through May 29, 1863, and was obviously one of a series of such notebooks. The other books, in all probability, have been destroyed. The text appears here largely as it does i","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"71 1","pages":"151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/40035685","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68739953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2012-04-01DOI: 10.1525/phr.2012.81.3.492
Julie M. Weise
Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico. By Deborah Cohen. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. x, 318. Notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, index. $39.95.) Why are there so many undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States in the twenty-first century? The raging immigration debate provides a myriad of false "answers" to this question. More than fifty years after the fact, a deep understanding of the bracero "guest" worker program of 1942-1964 is an absolute prerequisite for truly comprehending the "why" of undocumented Mexican immigration today. This Mexico-U.S. temporary worker program brought more than four million Mexican men to perform agricultural labor in U.S. fields. Hundreds of thousands of them worked in the Arkansas Delta, making the bracero program an important part of Arkansas history as well. Deborah Cohen's Braceros is the most important book in a generation to appraise these critical and formative years of Mexico-U.S. migration. As such, its relentlessly empirical indictment of the nationstate framework fills in a critical blind spot in both U.S. and Mexican histories. Obliterating this blindness to the profoundly transnational histories of both nations, Cohen gives interpreters of history an indispensable tool to research, understand, and communicate the long and controversial history of Mexican immigration to the United States. At heart, Cohen's book seeks to de-familiarize and reconsider the commonly understood logic of Mexican migration. "Why," she ponders, "would so many men wait hours, days even, for the chance to do stoop labor in U.S. fields?" (p. 21). Cohen argues that the question cannot be answered through the usual arguments that employ a flat understanding of economics or debate whether this "guest worker" program constituted exploitation or opportunity for Mexican men. Rather, she asserts that the meaning of the bracero program in Mexican men's lives can only be understood within the "commonsense" of their time-a transnational commonsense that celebrated all things modern. Mexican government officials believed braceros would return from their temporary work assignments in the United States with the skills and capital needed to make their futures squarely in Mexico, pulling that nation along with them on the path to modernization. Yet braceros' wages went mostly to consumable and consumer goods, which the men purchased in order to shore up their identities as modern Mexican patriarchs who could provide for their families even in an underdeveloped economy. To be fully modern, these men wanted the respect and authority they could command only in Mexico but had to purchase it with the money they could earn only in the United States. As a result, Cohen writes, "Nowhere were braceros offered a complete and secure modern package, for what they had come to know, want, and depend on required both sides of the border and the ability to
{"title":"Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico","authors":"Julie M. Weise","doi":"10.1525/phr.2012.81.3.492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2012.81.3.492","url":null,"abstract":"Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico. By Deborah Cohen. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. x, 318. Notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, index. $39.95.) Why are there so many undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States in the twenty-first century? The raging immigration debate provides a myriad of false \"answers\" to this question. More than fifty years after the fact, a deep understanding of the bracero \"guest\" worker program of 1942-1964 is an absolute prerequisite for truly comprehending the \"why\" of undocumented Mexican immigration today. This Mexico-U.S. temporary worker program brought more than four million Mexican men to perform agricultural labor in U.S. fields. Hundreds of thousands of them worked in the Arkansas Delta, making the bracero program an important part of Arkansas history as well. Deborah Cohen's Braceros is the most important book in a generation to appraise these critical and formative years of Mexico-U.S. migration. As such, its relentlessly empirical indictment of the nationstate framework fills in a critical blind spot in both U.S. and Mexican histories. Obliterating this blindness to the profoundly transnational histories of both nations, Cohen gives interpreters of history an indispensable tool to research, understand, and communicate the long and controversial history of Mexican immigration to the United States. At heart, Cohen's book seeks to de-familiarize and reconsider the commonly understood logic of Mexican migration. \"Why,\" she ponders, \"would so many men wait hours, days even, for the chance to do stoop labor in U.S. fields?\" (p. 21). Cohen argues that the question cannot be answered through the usual arguments that employ a flat understanding of economics or debate whether this \"guest worker\" program constituted exploitation or opportunity for Mexican men. Rather, she asserts that the meaning of the bracero program in Mexican men's lives can only be understood within the \"commonsense\" of their time-a transnational commonsense that celebrated all things modern. Mexican government officials believed braceros would return from their temporary work assignments in the United States with the skills and capital needed to make their futures squarely in Mexico, pulling that nation along with them on the path to modernization. Yet braceros' wages went mostly to consumable and consumer goods, which the men purchased in order to shore up their identities as modern Mexican patriarchs who could provide for their families even in an underdeveloped economy. To be fully modern, these men wanted the respect and authority they could command only in Mexico but had to purchase it with the money they could earn only in the United States. As a result, Cohen writes, \"Nowhere were braceros offered a complete and secure modern package, for what they had come to know, want, and depend on required both sides of the border and the ability to","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"71 1","pages":"90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/phr.2012.81.3.492","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66909199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. By James Marten. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 339. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.) When considering the hundreds of books written about the four years of the American Civil War, it is startling that there have been relatively few written about its veterans in the remaining decades of their lives. James Marten seeks to rectify this oversight in his broadly researched and compelling Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. Dubbed by Marten as "the nineteenth century's 'Greatest Generation,'" the men who came of age in the early 1860s were defined by their military service (p. 1). The contradictory status of these veterans as both masculine heroes and government dependents after the war illustrates broader struggles over the role of government and the responsibility of citizens as the United States grew in population, power, and prestige during the Gilded Age. Sing Not War pulls from a wide variety of sources to define the long-term effects of injuries and disabilities on veterans, the quest for pensions and compensation, and the political motivations of veterans as they aged. Though at times yielding to temptation to include one anecdote too many, Marten allows veterans a voice through their personal stories. Building on these individual experiences, Sing Not War describes how many veterans were ultimately viewed not as honorable citizens receiving a just reward but as men emasculated by their dependence on a government hand-out. These views of veterans, however, divided along sectional lines. Marten notes, "veterans in the North were seen through multiple lenses"; as beggars, tramps, noble warriors, or saviors of the Republic depending on the political climate. Confederate veterans, by contrast, "would always be those proud, ragged, honorable men" (p. 20). Though touted by many as proper compensation for the men who saved the Union, federal pensions gave recipients a dependent status deeply at odds with Gilded Age standards of masculinity. Confederate veterans, as recipients of much smaller pensions, were viewed as retaining independence and avoided this muddying of masculine perceptions. Marten makes a strong contribution in exploring the mental impact of the war on veterans, an issue often neglected by the handful of other works about Civil War veterans. …
{"title":"Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America","authors":"Rebecca A. Howard","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-1070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-1070","url":null,"abstract":"Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. By James Marten. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 339. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.) When considering the hundreds of books written about the four years of the American Civil War, it is startling that there have been relatively few written about its veterans in the remaining decades of their lives. James Marten seeks to rectify this oversight in his broadly researched and compelling Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America. Dubbed by Marten as \"the nineteenth century's 'Greatest Generation,'\" the men who came of age in the early 1860s were defined by their military service (p. 1). The contradictory status of these veterans as both masculine heroes and government dependents after the war illustrates broader struggles over the role of government and the responsibility of citizens as the United States grew in population, power, and prestige during the Gilded Age. Sing Not War pulls from a wide variety of sources to define the long-term effects of injuries and disabilities on veterans, the quest for pensions and compensation, and the political motivations of veterans as they aged. Though at times yielding to temptation to include one anecdote too many, Marten allows veterans a voice through their personal stories. Building on these individual experiences, Sing Not War describes how many veterans were ultimately viewed not as honorable citizens receiving a just reward but as men emasculated by their dependence on a government hand-out. These views of veterans, however, divided along sectional lines. Marten notes, \"veterans in the North were seen through multiple lenses\"; as beggars, tramps, noble warriors, or saviors of the Republic depending on the political climate. Confederate veterans, by contrast, \"would always be those proud, ragged, honorable men\" (p. 20). Though touted by many as proper compensation for the men who saved the Union, federal pensions gave recipients a dependent status deeply at odds with Gilded Age standards of masculinity. Confederate veterans, as recipients of much smaller pensions, were viewed as retaining independence and avoided this muddying of masculine perceptions. Marten makes a strong contribution in exploring the mental impact of the war on veterans, an issue often neglected by the handful of other works about Civil War veterans. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"71 1","pages":"84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71134765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2011-12-01DOI: 10.1525/tph.2012.34.3.91
Billie H. Frazier
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Pub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim270020199
G. Jensen
Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. By Chad L. Williams. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Pp. xiii, 452. Introduction, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) Chad Williams' Torchbearers of Democracy provides an excellent examination of the many challenges facing African- American soldiers before, during, and after the Great War. Scholars of American military history will appreciate Williams' level of detail, while general readers will enjoy the overall readability of the work. President Woodrow Wilson's call to arms, characterizing the war as an opportunity to display the potential of American democracy, resonated loudly within the black community. African-American citizens, viewing the war as an opportunity to prove themselves as equals to whites, enlisted in great numbers. But for some, the war had an even greater potential. W. E. B. Du Bois believed that African- American soldiers would serve as "Torch Bearers" for freedom and equality not only for themselves but also for the rest of the oppressed world. While the African- American community dreamed of domestic and international equality, the American military establishment largely mirrored the beliefs of its officer corps, a group of men sympathetic to white southern sensibilities on racial matters. They decided it was best to segregate blacks and limit the role they played in the war. After all, to grant African-American soldiers an equal role would put the racial status quo in jeopardy, a prospect that white southerners within the military would not accept. As a result, the majority of black draftees and volunteers found themselves relegated to work details in America and in war-torn Europe. African-American soldiers, however, were not exclusively limited to work as stevedores or laborers. During the buildup of American forces, the War Department created two all-black combat units: the Ninety-second and Ninety-third divisions. As Williams notes, though, the experiences of the two divisions differed sharply, largely due to institutional racism. The Ninety-second division, which remained attached to the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), received shabby training, was staffed by racist white officers, and was placed in an unenviable position during its early involvement in the war. The result was an outfit that performed in an inconsistent manner and that earned a reputation for lacking courage under fire, thereby becoming the great example, in the minds of whites, of the inability of black soldiers to perform well in combat. …
民主的火炬手:第一次世界大战时期的非裔美国士兵。查德·l·威廉姆斯著。教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社，2010。第13页，452页。引言、插图、注释、参考书目、索引。34.95美元)。查德·威廉姆斯的《民主火炬手》对非裔美国士兵在一战之前、期间和之后所面临的诸多挑战进行了极好的审视。研究美国军事史的学者会欣赏威廉姆斯的细节水平，而普通读者会喜欢这本书的整体可读性。伍德罗·威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)总统呼吁武装起来，将这场战争描述为展示美国民主潜力的机会，这在黑人社区引起了巨大共鸣。非洲裔美国人将这场战争视为证明自己与白人平等的机会，于是大量参军。但对一些人来说，这场战争有着更大的潜力。W. E. B.杜波依斯相信，非裔美国士兵将成为自由和平等的“火炬手”，不仅为他们自己，也为其他被压迫的世界。当非裔美国人社区梦想着国内和国际的平等时，美国的军事机构在很大程度上反映了其军官团的信念，这群人在种族问题上同情南方白人的情感。他们认为最好是隔离黑人，限制他们在战争中的作用。毕竟，给予非裔美国士兵平等的角色会使种族现状处于危险之中，这是军队中的南方白人不会接受的前景。结果，大多数黑人应征者和志愿者发现自己被降级到美国和饱受战争蹂躏的欧洲去做琐碎的工作。然而，非裔美国士兵的工作并不仅限于装卸工人或劳工。在美国军队的建设过程中，陆军部创建了两个全是黑人的战斗单位:第92师和第93师。正如威廉姆斯所指出的那样，这两个阶层的经历截然不同，这主要是由于制度性种族主义。隶属于美国远征军(American Expeditionary Force, AEF)的第92师接受了简陋的训练，配备了种族主义白人军官，在战争初期处于一个不令人羡慕的位置。结果，这支部队表现不稳定，赢得了在炮火下缺乏勇气的名声，从而成为白人心目中黑人士兵在战斗中表现不佳的一个很好的例子。…
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{"title":"Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army after 1861","authors":"Lorien Foote","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-1673","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-1673","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"70 1","pages":"83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71131262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A truly continental history in both its geographic and political scope, "The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763" investigates eighteenth-century diplomacy involving North America and links geographic ignorance about the American West to Europeans' grand geopolitical designs. Breaking from scholars' traditional focus on the Atlantic world, Paul W. Mapp demonstrates the centrality of hitherto understudied western regions to early American history and shows that a Pacific focus is crucial to understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years' War.
《难以捉摸的西部与帝国之争，1713-1763》在地理和政治范围内都是一部真正的大陆历史，它调查了18世纪涉及北美的外交，并将对美国西部的地理无知与欧洲人的宏大地缘政治设计联系起来。保罗·w·马普(Paul W. Mapp)打破了学者们对大西洋世界的传统关注，展示了迄今为止尚未得到充分研究的西部地区在美国早期历史中的中心地位，并表明太平洋的关注对于理解七年战争的起因、过程和后果至关重要。
{"title":"The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763","authors":"Paul W. Mapp","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-1670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-1670","url":null,"abstract":"A truly continental history in both its geographic and political scope, \"The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763\" investigates eighteenth-century diplomacy involving North America and links geographic ignorance about the American West to Europeans' grand geopolitical designs. Breaking from scholars' traditional focus on the Atlantic world, Paul W. Mapp demonstrates the centrality of hitherto understudied western regions to early American history and shows that a Pacific focus is crucial to understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the Seven Years' War.","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71135486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present. By Grif Stockley. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008. Pp. xxiii, 530. Illustrations, acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) The twin themes of Grif Stockley's carefully researched and clearly written study are that Arkansans have been and continue to be "ruled by race" and that, even before the civil rights movement, African Americans were not passive in the face of discrimination. A civil liberties attorney, Stockley is manifestly committed to equality and justice, but as an historian he carefully weighs conflicting evidence and interpretations to produce an informed, nuanced account. Largely a synthesis, the book incorporates generous quotations from other historians but also includes primary material and makes use of the author's own research on the civil rights era. Although slavery existed in the territory and state of Arkansas for only forty-six years, Stockley argues it established a pattern of white supremacy based on economic exploitation that also produced "a racial pecking order based on white ancestry, skin color, and class . . . that would profoundly affect not only race relations between whites and blacks but those among blacks themselves," including "black racism and black selfhatred" (p. xviii). The book begins by discussing slaves' perspectives on their lives. While cognizant of their limitations, Stockley uses extensive quotations from interviews with former slaves conducted by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s that give them a voice. These accounts are often harrowing, revealing the brutality and inhumanity of slavery, but Stockley also notes diversity, including former slaves who expressed affection for their one-time owners. After briefly assessing historiographical treatments, he judiciously concludes, "As much as slaves tried and sometimes were successful in influencing their treatment through their own behavior, slavery was ultimately in the hands of whites" (p. 23). Delta slaveholders, Stockley observes, treated slavery as an economic enterprise. Slavery and the pursuit of wealth through cotton cultivation lay at the heart of white Arkansan support for secession in 1861. Slaves ran away to Union lines, but emancipation left the freedmen largely at the mercy of planters who continued to exploit and punish them despite Reconstruction reforms that accorded blacks voting rights and some political officeholding. Little Rock saw residential integration, and interracial mixing in business continued until the 1890s, by which time segregation and disfranchisement of African Americans took hold in the state. As conditions worsened, some rural blacks migrated to Liberia, and in the early twentieth century African Americans mounted shortlived boycotts against new segregation laws in Hot Springs, Little Rock, and Pine Bluff. …
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