Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites

Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites
Author: Mitchell Snay
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2010-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807135356

After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security while the Ku Klux Klan used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. In Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups and illuminates the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested. After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues, which began during the war to support the northern effort, spread to the South after the war and mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security. Opposing the Leagues was the Ku Klux Klan, which used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups in Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, illuminating the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. Despite their separate and often opposing goals, the Fenians, Union Leagues, and the Klan, Snay reveals, shared many characteristics. To various extents, they were secret societies that sought to advance their mission through both political and extra-political means. Both the League and the Klan employed elaborate rites of initiation and secret passwords common to nineteenth-century fraternal organizations. They also shared a similar political culture of secrecy, conspiracy, and countersubversion. All three groups were quasi-military in structure and activities and shared a desire for the control of land. Among the three organizations, Snay shows, the Fenians provide the clearest case of nationalist aspirations along the lines of ethnicity, though the rise of racial consciousness among both southern whites and blacks also might be seen as expressions of ethnic nationalism. According to Snay, the political culture of Reconstruction encouraged the nationalist ambitions of these groups, but channeled their separatist impulses along civil rather than ethnic lines by focusing on questions of freedom, citizenship, and suffrage. In addition, the Republican emphasis on color-blind equality limited overt expressions of national identities based solely on ethnicity or race.Unlike southern whites and blacks, Irish Americans are seldom mentioned in Reconstruction histories. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested.

Veterans North and South

Veterans North and South
Author: Paul A. Cimbala
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN:

Based largely on Civil War veterans' own words, this book documents how many of these men survived the extraordinary horrors and hardships of war with surprising resilience and went on to become productive members of their communities in their post-war lives. Nothing transforms "dry, boring history" into fascinating and engaging stories like learning about long-ago events through the words of those who lived them. What was it like to witness—and participate in—the horrors of a war that lasted four years and claimed over half a million lives, and then emerge as a survivor into a drastically changed world? Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War takes readers back to this unimaginable time through the words of Civil War soldiers who fought on both sides, illuminating their profound, life-changing experiences during the war and in the postbellum period. The book covers the period from the surrender of the armies of the Confederacy to the return of the veterans to their homes. It follows them through their readjustment to civilian life and to family life while addressing their ability—and in some cases, inability—to become productive members of society. By surveying Civil War veterans' individual stories, readers will gain an in-depth understanding of these soldiers' sacrifices and comprehend how these discrete experiences coalesced to form America's memory of this war as a nation.

Horace Greeley and the Politics of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America

Horace Greeley and the Politics of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
Author: Mitchell Snay
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2011-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442210028

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was a major figure in nineteenth century American history. As a newspaper editor, politician, and reformer, Greeley was involved with the major events and trends of the era. He was the influential editor of the New York Tribune from 1841 until his death and was instrumental in the rise of the Whig and Republican parties. Snay's biography places Greeley in his historical context—considering the ways that he shaped and was influenced by the rise of the Jacksonian party system, the varieties of antebellum reform, the evolution of urban class relations, and the politics of slavery and emancipation.

Irish American Civil War Songs

Irish American Civil War Songs
Author: Catherine V. Bateson
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2022-09-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 080717839X

Irish-born and Irish-descended soldiers and sailors were involved in every major engagement of the American Civil War. Throughout the conflict, they shared their wartime experiences through songs and song lyrics, leaving behind a vast trove of ballads in songbooks, letters, newspaper publications, wartime diaries, and other accounts. Taken together, these songs and lyrics offer an underappreciated source of contemporary feelings and opinions about the war. Catherine V. Bateson’s Irish American Civil War Songs provides the first in-depth exploration of Irish Americans’ use of balladry to portray and comment on virtually every aspect of the war as witnessed by the Irish on the front line and home front. Bateson considers the lyrics, themes, and sentiments of wartime songs produced in America but often originating with those born across the Atlantic in Ireland and Britain. Her analysis gives new insight into views held by the Irish migrant diaspora about the conflict and the ways those of Irish descent identified with and fought to defend their adopted homeland. Bateson’s investigation of Irish American song lyrics within the context of broader wartime experiences enhances our understanding of the Irish contribution to the American Civil War. At the same time, it demonstrates how Irish songs shaped many American balladry traditions as they laid the foundation of the Civil War’s musical soundscape.

Irish Nationalists in America

Irish Nationalists in America
Author: David Thomas Brundage
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 019533177X

In this insightful work, David Brundage tells a dramatic story of more 200 years of American activism in the cause of Ireland, from the 1798 Irish rebellion to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

A Massacre in Memphis

A Massacre in Memphis
Author: Stephen V. Ash
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0809067978

An unprecedented account of one of the bloodiest and most significant racial clashes in American history In May 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Memphis erupted in a three-day spasm of racial violence that saw whites rampage through the city's black neighborhoods. By the time the fires consuming black churches and schools were put out, forty-six freed people had been murdered. Congress, furious at this and other evidence of white resistance in the conquered South, launched what is now called Radical Reconstruction, policies to ensure the freedom of the region's four million blacks—and one of the most remarkable experiments in American history. Stephen V. Ash's A Massacre in Memphis is a portrait of a Southern city that opens an entirely new view onto the Civil War and its aftermath. A momentous national event, the riot is also remarkable for being "one of the best-documented episodes of the American nineteenth century." Yet Ash is the first to mine the sources available to full effect. Bringing postwar Memphis to vivid life, he takes us among newly arrived Yankees, former Rebels, boisterous Irish immigrants, and striving freed people, and shows how Americans of the period worked, prayed, expressed their politics, and imagined the future. And how they died: Ash's harrowing and profoundly moving present-tense narration of the riot has the immediacy of the best journalism. Told with nuance, grace, and a quiet moral passion, A Massacre in Memphis is Civil War–era history like no other.

Illuminating the Dark Arts of War

Illuminating the Dark Arts of War
Author: David Tucker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1441156860

Since 9/11, the dominant view is that we have entered an era of 'new conflict' in which technology has empowered non-state actors who now pose unprecedented and unmanageable threats to U.S. national security. This unique work studies a range of threats, from homegrown and foreign terrorism to the possibility of cyber- or Chinese sabotage and fears of religious subversion to challenge every aspects of this 'new conflict' argument and expose its underlying exaggerations and misunderstandings. Examining such issues as political violence, the role of religion in terrorism, the impact of technology, and the political aspects of homeland security, this unique survey demonstrates how such activities as terrorism are limited by their clandestine nature. It also addresses why we need to switch our strategic focus and increase the role citizens have in dealing with such threats. This historically informed and critical analysis fills a void in the debates on the threats and conflicts that the U.S. confronts at home and abroad and will appeal to anyone interested in national security and terrorism.

The Old South

The Old South
Author: J. William Harris
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

This is the second edition of the successful Society and Culture in the Slave South volume of the Rewriting Histories series. Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this dynamic area.