Monthly Archives: January 2015

The 13th Amendment Passes in the U.S. House!

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150 years ago this weekend, slavery in the United States was dealt a deadly blow. On January 31st, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in the House of Representatives (it had passed in the Senate in April of the previous year) by a vote of 119 to 56. The amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, could then be put before the states for ratification. While the Emancipation Proclamation had only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, the 13th Amendment made the abolition of slavery a national policy. The amendment reads simply:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

With just these few words, upon its ratification in December 1865 the amendment promulgated the death of slavery in the United States. The February 1st edition of The New York Tribune described the scene in Congress upon the amendment’s passage, saying “the tumult of joy that broke out was vast, thundering, and uncontrollable.  Representatives and Auditors on the floor, soldiers and spectators in the gallery, Senators and Supreme Court Judges, women and pages, gave way to the excitement of the most august and important event in American Legislation and American History since the Declaration of Independence. God Bless the XXXVIIIth Congress!”

Yet it was clear to some that more would be needed to secure true freedom for the former slaves. Arguing against the disbandment of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass stated that “even if every State in the Union had ratified that Amendment, while the black man is confronted in the legislation of the South by the word ‘white,’ our work as abolitionists, as I conceive it, is not done.” Douglass had the foresight to realize that despite the major victory that was the 13th Amendment’s passage, there was still much work to be done before blacks in the newly-reunited States would be truly free.

The American Civil War = Internationally Important!

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As the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War draws near, the CLAW program would like to draw attention to a couple of works which demonstrate that the conflict had meanings and effects that were felt beyond the borders of the nation at war.

One such book is part of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Series published by the University of South Carolina Press. In The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War, editors David Gleeson and Simon Lewis present a collection of essays that explore the conflict as more than just a War Between the States, a war with transnational concerns. The essays in this collection examine the Civil War’s place in a global context as well as its impact on the world beyond North America. https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2014/7325.html 

-Nimrod Tal’s review from The Civil War Monitor: http://civilwarmonitor.com/blogs/gleeson-lewis-eds-the-civil-war-as-a-global-conflict-2014

-William Coleman’s review from Reviews in History: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1687

Another work worth noting is Don H. Doyle’s The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. In his book Doyle places the war in a global context and explores how much the conflict affected and was affected by international interests. He finds that the Civil War was seen abroad as part of a much broader struggle for democracy, and that the conflict indeed was a critical moment in the global struggle over democracy and democratic ideals. http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=9780465029679

-Scott Porch’s review from The Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-cause-of-all-nations-don-doyle-20141224-story.html

–The Economist’s review: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21640292-why-war-between-north-and-south-mattered-rest-world-whole-family

News from H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online

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Below you’ll find news from the H-Atlantic section of the Humanities and Social Sciences Online, as well as links for the various bits of news.

New Book on Atlantic Slavery and Childhood:

In his new book Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (Yale University Press), Benjamin N. Lawrance reconstructs the stories of the six children aboard the schooner La Amistad whose lives were forever altered by the slave revolt. By exploring their stories, Lawrance sheds new light on Atlantic slavery, slave smuggling, and child slavery in the nineteenth century.

https://networks.h-net.org/node/16821/discussions/58492/ann-new-book-atlantic-slavery-childhood-list-member

 

New Online Collections in Atlantic World history from Readex and the Library Company of Philadelphia:

Readex, in partnership with the Library Company of Philadelphia, will launch three new collections in March of 2015: African History and Culture, 1540-1921; Black Authors, 1556-1922; and Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920, each of which is based on the Library Company’s preeminent Afro-Americana collection.

https://networks.h-net.org/node/16821/discussions/58514/new-online-collections-atlantic-world-history-readex-and-library

 

Faculty and Postdoctoral Fellowships from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition:

Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition desires applications for its 2015-2016 Fellowship Program. The GLC seeks to promote an understanding of the institution of slavery from the earliest times to the present day, and especially welcomes proposals that would utilize Yale University’s special collections or other research collections in the New England area. For more details about fellowship requirements and application process, follow the link:

https://networks.h-net.org/node/16821/discussions/58603/fund-postdoctoral-and-faculty-fellowships-2015-2016-gilder-lehrman

 

Also, for those doing research on Atlantic World society or economy, this fellowship might be of interest to you: https://networks.h-net.org/node/16821/discussions/58623/deadline-approaching-program-early-american-economy-and-society

Congrats to Adam Mendelsohn!

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The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program would like to announce that Adam Mendelsohn, a member of the CLAW Steering Committee, has won a 2014 National Jewish Book Award for his book The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (New York University Press). In his book Mendelsohn explores how “rag picking” and dealing in secondhand clothes served as a pathway for Jews to enter the middle and upper classes. Congratulations to you, Adam!

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/2014-national-jewish-book-award-winners-and-finalists   

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Hines Prize 2015

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The Hines Prize is awarded to the best first book relating to any aspect of the Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World. The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program’s book series. If you have a manuscript on a topic pertaining to the Carolina Lowcountry and/or Atlantic World, please send a copy to CLAW Director Simon Lewis at lewiss@cofc.edu before May 15, 2015. If you have graduate students with potential manuscripts that could contend for the Prize, please make sure that they know of this biennial opportunity.

Previous winners of the Hines Prize are as follows:

  • 2013 – Dr. Tristan Stubbs – The Plantation Overseers of Eighteenth-Century Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia
  • 2011 – Dr. Michael D. Thompson – In Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and Life along Charleston’s Waterfront, 1783-1861
  • 2009 – Barry Stiefel – Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World: A Social and Architectural History
  • 2007 – T.J. Desch-Obi – Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World
  • 2005 – Nicholas Michael Butler – Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1820
  • 2003 – Bradford Wood – This Remote Part of the World: Regional Formation in Lower Cape Fear, North Carolina, 1725-1775

The 2013 Hines Prize winner was Dr. Tristan Stubbs, who received the award for his dissertation manuscript The Plantation Overseers of Eighteenth-Century Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. The study focuses on plantation overseers in eighteenth-century Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, subjects long-neglected in the historiography of American slavery. These men were the arbiters of violent punishment for many thousands of bondpeople. They represented not only the cruel régime imposed by slaveholders, but also the vicious authority of slave societies that designated the oversight system the first line of defense against enslaved resistance. Although violence was practiced and encouraged by plantation owners in the early years of the eighteenth century, the latter decades witnessed a shift in their attitudes. By late century, planters lambasted overseers for their intrinsic violence, their passionate tempers, and their universal barbarity towards slaves. As winner of the Hines Prize, Dr. Stubbs receives prize-money of $1000 as well as expedited publication by USC Press in their Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World series.

 

Mapping the Freedman’s Bureau: An Interactive Research Guide

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New Website Helps Researchers Locate Reconstruction-Era Records for African American Genealogy and History

For Immediate Release

Contacts:
Angela Walton-Raji (angelaw859@aol.com)
Toni Carrier (toniheadr@aol.com)

Did you know that the majority of Freedmen’s Bureau records are now digitized and available online for free? Did you know that there are also digitized images of the records of other institutions that served newly-freed African Americans during Reconstruction, such as the Freedman’s Savings and Trust?

Angela Walton-Raji and Toni Carrier have built a new website called “Mapping the Freedmen’s Bureau – An Interactive Research Guide” (www.mappingthefreedmensbureau.com) to assist researchers in locating and accessing records of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Freedmen’s hospitals, contraband camps and Freedman’s Bank branches.

Researchers can use the website’s interactive map to learn which of these services were located near their area of research interest. If the records are online, the map provides a link to the records that tell the stories of newly-freed former slaves in the United States. The site also maps the locations where African Americans who served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) fought in battle.

The goal of this mapping project is to provide researchers, from the professional to the novice, a useful tool to more effectively tell the family story, the local history and the greater story of the nation during Reconstruction.

“Mapping the Freedmen’s Bureau – An Interactive Guide” is available at http://www.mappingthefreedmensbureau.com.