Corruption European Style: The 1861 Frémont Scandal and Popular Fears in the Civil War North

Union General John C. Frémont excited considerable controversy during the Civil War, and not just due to his dubious military competence and early advocacy of emancipation. Many republican‐influenced citizens suspected Frémont of the corrupt misuse of power, and undermining the essential moral basis of the republic. While ultimately his ineffectual generalship might have reassured Northerners that “the Pathfinder” was hardly likely to succeed in his suspected schemes, it is striking that even during the war for national survival, citizens remained deeply concerned with the possible threat of power (particularly in the hands of corrupt, designing men) to liberty.     

美国内战时期联邦海军反干涉战略探析

联邦海军在美国内战中担负着打击叛乱势力和防范外来干涉的双重任务。尤其是在内战初期陆上战局不利、存在明显外来干涉危险的形势下,联邦海军有效地发挥了其国防屏障作用和战略威慑功能,在遏制英国干涉图谋的过程中发挥了重要作用。及时把握住技术变革所带来的历史机遇,以技术创新弥补整体实力的差距,是联邦海军反干涉战略得以成功的前提,战略的内核则体现为立足本国国情、实施积极防御和有限威慑的务实路线。     

The politics of neutrality: the American Friends Service Committee and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

Abstract

From the early months of the Spanish civil war (1936–9) the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the American Quakers’ central service organization, was engaged in a large-scale relief operation on both sides of the front line. While Quaker aid workers on the ground were running hospitals, orphanages and child feeding stations on the Republican and Nationalist side, the operation triggered a sometimes heated debate at home. Quakers had to bridge the tension between the universalist ethos of a transnationally connected and internationally active religious group whose individual parts, in turn, closely integrated into, and were largely dependent on a national framework of action consisting of governments, the media and national-based groups of donors and supporters. Against this backdrop the article will reflect on the complex and shifting meaning of humanitarian neutrality. In the article the author will show how the claim to neutrality, always contested and precarious, could work as a gate opener for humanitarian aid vis-à-vis state and non-state actors alike, as a platform for co-operation with international institutions as well as a deliberately used capital on an increasingly competitive ‘humanitarian market place’.     

Archaeology of a Naval Battlefield: H. L. Hunley and USS Housatonic

The American Civil War shipwrecks H. L. Hunley and USS Housatonic have been the focus of intensive archaeological investigations since the discovery of Hunley in 1995. H. L. Hunley , the world's first successful combat submarine, sank the Union blockader USS Housatonic in 1864, but sank immediately afterwards. In work done prior to the recovery of Hunley in 2000, site-formation processes for both vessels were a primary research focus—a necessary precursor to identifying battlefield behaviour. This paper presents research on the Hunley / Housatonic Naval Engagement Site, where both wrecks are treated as complementary components of a single battlefield site.
© 2006 The Authors     

S. Weir Mitchell’s Prose and Poetry on the American Civil War

The prose and poetry of S. Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) – related to the American Civil War – encompass a very significant portion of his non-medical writings. The Civil War, more than any other single event, shaped his future career as one of the founders of American neurology. Indeed, it should not be surprising how the war was also such a driving force in his non-medical writings. His novels, once widely read, now are scarcely noted. His accounts of the social, political and economic events of the Civil War are of historical interest to students of the period. Neuroscientists as a group, like others, are apt to be unfamiliar with these writings, with the possible exception of “The Case of George Dedlow.” A major purpose of this essay is to introduce readers, especially neuroscientists, to Weir Mitchell’s fictional works in which neurological cases so often appear. One appreciates more the medical aspects of his novels, written as they were by a first-hand observer. His non-medical writings, poetry and prose, are to a large extent timeless and can be appreciated by today’s readers.     

The Southern Conservative Thought of John C. Calhoun and the Cultural Foundations of the Canadian Identity

Besides the largely ignored fact of general Canadian support for the Southern Confederacy during the American Civil War, the consociational dimensions of Canadian Confederation, as something opposed to American unionism in cultural terms, finds its historical roots legitimized in the Southern conservative writings of John C. Calhoun. It is the tension between an institutionally entrenched foundation of consociational pluralism and growing urban cosmopolitanism within Canadian history that has defined the debates and divides over the meaning of the Canadian identity, just as it is. Alternatively it is the tension between enforced constitutionalist unionism and consociational cultural tradition within the American South that has largely defined their historical experience. Both Canada and the American South find the tensions of their cultural identities rooted in the consociational values originally laid out by nineteenth century Southern conservative political thought.     

Civil War heritage as American diplomacy, 1957–1965

This paper explores the role of Civil War heritage in U.S. public diplomacy during the Cold War era. Especially during the celebration of the Civil War’s centennial, between 1961 and 1965, the Americans endeavoured to harness the conflict’s heritage to promote U.S. interests in Europe. How they intended to do this is demonstrated primarily through an examination of Colonel Sidney Morgan’s mission to Europe to find how the commemoration of the Civil War could be used for public diplomacy. Additionally, by exploring how Civil War heritage was spread and used in the British public sphere, the paper examines and underlines the key role saved to unofficial cultural agents, such as Civil War re-enactment clubs and private people, in heritage diplomacy. The focus on unofficial agents and networks enable this study to show how heritage diplomacy works at the un-institutionalised level and to explore the interaction between the official and unofficial level in heritage diplomacy. The historical perspective and methodology cast new light on the use of history, historical memory and heritage for diplomatic ends and introduces both historians and heritage scholars with new avenues to explore, such as the role of memory and historical consciousness in shaping international relations.     

美国内战时期南部邦联政府的财政政策

美国内战期间,南部邦联财政政策的主要目标是筹措资金。为达到此目的,南部邦联政府采取了征税和发行国库券与债券等措施。由于通过征税获得的财政收入微乎其微,南部邦联政府的财政资金便主要依靠发行国库券和债券。此举固然使得南部邦联政府短期获得一部分可支配资金,但由于南部邦联没有坚实雄厚的财政基础,又得不到外来有力的资金援助和支持,因此南部邦联财政政策并未实现既定目标,反而引发了通货膨胀和物价飞涨,加剧了南部邦联的民心涣散,最终加速了南部邦联的失败。     

The Intervention Crisis of 1862: A British Diplomatic Dilemma?

In the fall of 1862, William Ewart Gladstone opened a cabinet debate whether Great Britain should intervene in the American Civil War. Influenced by the staggering death toll and lack of results, the British cabinet contemplated a humanitarian intervention. Coinciding with the debate was a cabinet crisis in France over French policies toward Italy and more importantly the overthrow of the Greek king. The revolution in Greece reopened the Eastern Question and forced the Palmerston Government to carefully consider its foreign policy. By closely looking at the chronological overlap of the intervention debate, the French cabinet crisis, and the Greek Revolution, this article shows the interplay of the entangled global crises during the fall of 1862 and their impact on trans-Atlantic diplomacy. The British Government had to determine whether the situation in North America or the containment of Russia and the Eastern Question required attention more urgently. The British Government determined that threats closer to home mattered more.     

A Note on Marinus of Alexandria

Abstract

Neurology in its modern sense was first studied in the well‐known neurological institutions of France and England. In America, however, this new field of medicine was developed by a physician in a private practice, Dr. William Alexander Hammond. This article addresses the question how Hammond was able to limit his practice to neurology. It is argued that Hammond was a famous military physician before becoming the first practitioner of clinical neurology in America. This fame translated into a large referral base.     

MILITARY ASSISTANCE,FOREIGN POLICY,AND NATIONAL SECURITY

From the inauguration of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) in 1950, until its termination in the early 1960s, Norway was among the main European beneficiaries of military assistance from the United States. Previous research on this subject has mainly seen the MDAP from the perspective of the recipient, analysing what effect the influx of large amounts of equipment had for the shape and development of the Norwegian Armed Forces. This article discusses the motives for US military assistance to Norway, and analyses this activity as an expression of US Cold War objectives concerning Norway and NATO’s northern flank. The article also explores how these objectives influenced policy making relevant to military assistance, and gives particular attention to the role of US representatives in Oslo. These actors played an important role in highlighting the political and strategic benefits of extensive aid to Norway.     

近50年来我国的美国黑人史研究

中国学近50年来对美国黑人史的研究可分为三个时期。20世纪50—70年代,美国黑人史研究在中国成为一个研究热点,取得一批重要成果,但不可避免带有政治化的倾向。80年代,黑人史研究略显沉寂,处于承上启下阶段。90年代以来,取得很大的进展,研究的领域和深度都有所拓展和深入。但总的看来,我国的美国黑人史研究还远未成熟,尚处于起步和奠基阶段。     

‘What’s left of the flag’: the Confederate and Jacobite ‘lost cause’ myths,and the construction of mythic identities through conflict commemoration

The use of battlefields and associated conflict sites provide tantalising hooks upon which to hang tapestries of grand narratives relating to regional and national identities, often defined by what the identities are not. This paper examines the unlikely connection between Jacobite and Confederate romanticism, and how battlefields, conflict related sites, and symbolic material culture are mobilised through active commemoration by some heritage groups in support of a created, mythic identity of a ‘Southern Celt’. Furthermore, it examines the production of a mythic history that whitewashes and recasts the Confederacy, the reality of the Civil War, and the Confederate Flag, while at the same time minimising, hiding, or ignoring competing narratives.     

Reimagined communities: Union veterans and the reconstruction of American nationalism

ABSTRACT. American commemoration of the Union dead and the role this played in the development of post‐war American nationalism is a topic of growing interest. Those who survived, however, are too often left out of the discussion: unsettling reminders of the sectional conflict at the time, the veterans' role in the reconstruction of American nationalism was rather more ambiguous than historians have made it seem. To trace the lineaments of American national identity after the Civil War requires some assessment of the ways in which the veteran was incorporated into or detached from the home front during the war itself and, later, from post‐war society. The evidence suggests that, in contrast to the ambiguity surrounding the veteran, the dead could, in many ways, be more easily accommodated by the new nationalist discourse emerging from the war. Positioning the veteran at the centre of the debate on war and nationalism, indeed, challenges the very concept of an imagined community emerging from or through civil conflict.