Standing Upon a Volcano: Cincinnati’s Newspapers Debate Emancipation, 1860–1862

Newspaper editors in Cincinnati saw the abolition question on a spectrum before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. Most favored some form of confiscation of Confederate slaves for use in the Union war effort; some favored emancipation of slaves as a means to weaken the Confederacy; but almost all vociferously opposed any idea that unrestrained black freedom might be an outcome of the Civil War. While it appears to historians that there was an “inexorable logic” in the development of Union war aims, it is clear from the point of view of Cincinnati that the inexorability of that logic was heavily contested.     

The Iron and Steel Industry of the Lipetsk Industrial Node

The Lipetsk iron and steel industry, in existence since 1899, began a major expansion program in the middle 1950's, designed to make it one of the principal steel producers of the Soviet Union. The status of the expansion program as of 1969–70 is analyzed in detail, including a rundown of ore, flux and coke sources. The use of sintered ore from near-by deposits of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, high-temperature oxygen-enriched air blasts in the blast furnaces, large-capacity blast furnaces and steelmaking oxygen converters are expected to reduce the costs of production below existing levels in the Soviet iron and steel industry and to foster an efficient operation based on modern, automated equipment. (See also Shabad, Basic Industrial Resources of the USSR, pp. 98–101; maps, pp. 40, 96; News Notes, Soviet Geography, February 1970, p. 143; June 1972, pp. 409–410; June 1973, p. 407.)     

‘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.     

But There Was No War: The Impossibility of a United States Invasion of Canada after the Civil War

The notion that the United States threatened to invade the Canadian colonies after the Civil War persists to this day. Alleged British and Canadian support for the Confederate States angered Washington so much that Canadians feared military action. This menace started the Confederation movement that created the Dominion in 1867. This article argues otherwise by pointing to the careful diplomacy during the war—and rapid changes afterwards—each worked against the threat of a war. Tensions rose and fell with events such as the Trent Affair of 1861 and the St. Albans Raid of 1864, but each country otherwise sought to avoid trouble. Neither side deployed troops to the border during the war. After Appomattox, Union soldiers headed north but only to return home. Demobilization, combined with military deployments to the former Confederacy and the West, and resolute diplomacy afterwards, further prevented conflict. Not even the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870 could disturb the peace.     

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.     

A New Right to Property: Civil War Confiscation in the Reconstruction Supreme Court

During the Civil War, both the Union Congress and the Confederate Congress put in place sweeping confiscation programs designed to seize the private property of enemy citizens on a massive scale. Meeting in special session in August 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the First Confiscation Act, authorizing the federal government to seize the property of those participating directly in the rebellion. ¹ The Confederate Congress retaliated on August 30, 1861, passing the Sequestration Act. ² This law authorized the Confederate government to forever seize the real and personal property of "alien enemies," a term that included every U.S. citizen and all those living in the Confederacy who remained loyal to the Union.     

Novel Micro‐Scale Steel‐Making from Molten Cast Iron Practised in Medieval Nomadic Communities of East Mongolia

Evidence of novel steel‐making was found in a number of small cast‐iron fragments recovered by the Mongolia–American archaeological survey of eastern Mongolia. These iron artefacts come from medieval period habitation and manufacturing sites and they consistently display irregular surface features characteristic of a solidification reaction from a partially molten state. Their microstructure consists of large near‐spherical islands of pearlite spread on a background of fine white cast‐iron eutectic. Reflected in this peculiar structure is an extremely small‐scale steel‐making process where one or more small pieces of cast iron were heated above the eutectic temperature for rapid decarburization in the partially molten state. We provide a detailed account of the technological aspects of this micro‐scale steel‐making method as observed in the microstructure and chemical composition of the objects examined. This small‐scale technology was ideally suited to the pastoral nomadic way of life that characterized medieval eastern Mongolia; however, it probably would not have been appropriate for sedentary communities with access to large‐scale urban manufacturing centres. Based on this observation, we discuss the role of nomadic lifeways and associated political environments that likely influenced the development of this innovative steel‐making technique.     

Cargoes of Iron Semi‐Products Recovered from Shipwrecks off the Carmel Coast,Israel

Underwater surveys along the Israeli Carmel coast have revealed six cargoes of iron semi‐products associated with shipwrecks. They are described and dated according to the associated artefacts. Metallographic and chemical analyses on samples from the biggest cargo have determined the stages of the chaîne opératoire, identified the properties of the iron and characterized the iron trade along the Israeli coast. The new discoveries contribute to our understanding of the circulation of iron in the South Levant, which was characterized by an almost complete absence of local iron production. During the Byzantine and Crusader periods, this absence was compensated by long‐distance sea trade, depending on political circumstances and restrictions. Three main types of iron semi‐products were identified: (a) partly consolidated blooms, (b) short pointed bars and (c) elongated pointed bars. The cargoes discovered represent a time period of nearly a millennium. Altogether, 148 iron semi‐products were studied. Of these, 166 were from cargo a, which was dated by coins to around 1130–1200 ce . Those coins could have been imported from Europe for Crusader military and civil uses in the Levant. The iron from cargoes b, d and f, dated perhaps to the Byzantine period, could have been imported from Anatolia or Venice for military and civil purposes.     

(Why) Did Reconstruction Fail? Legislating and Constitutionalizing Civil Rights

Abstract

The Thirty-ninth Congress, which was elected in November 1864 and began its first session in December 1865, undertook three tasks: to restore the Union after the Civil War, to amend the Constitution to ensure citizenship to the freedmen, and to legislate federal guarantees for their civil rights. Considering the political constraints of their situation—a hostile President and intransigence in many of the states of the former Confederacy—this essay aims to catalogue and assess the achievements of that Congress. While the Fourteenth Amendment in the long run served its intended purpose and the Civil Rights and Reconstruction Acts secured for a while the integration of the freedmen into the polity, Reconstruction failed to win widespread consent and proved impossible, at least politically, to continuously enforce.     

Transatlantic financiers and the Civil War

This essay examines the sympathies and actions of transatlantic financiers in Britain during the Civil War. Motivated largely by their financial and ideological connection to the Northern states, major Anglo‐American banks sympathized with the Union and campaigned to keep Britain out of the conflict. Unable to procure the support of Britain's leading banking houses, the Confederacy turned to lesser capitalists and speculators for financial assistance. By highlighting Britain's economic links to the Northern states and pointing to the potential dangers of meddling in the conflict, financiers in the City of London provided statesmen in the Westminster Parliament with a powerful justification for the policy of neutrality.     

Metallurgical Characterization of A Coated Roman Iron Coin By Analytical Investigations

A coated Roman iron coin from Villa Loig in Salzburg, Austria was investigated. The coating is a copper alloy consisting of Cu, Pb, Sn, Zn and negligible amounts of Ag, a variant of gunmetal known as ‘leaded red brass’. The numismatic term for such a coin is subferratus (Latin). From an archaeometallurgical point of view, information about the chemical composition, the microstructure and the manufacturing technique are of interest. To achieve these objectives, different analytical techniques and metallographic examinations were applied. Droplet‐shaped iron inclusions were observed in the red brass coating, while at the grain boundaries, inside the iron core, copper and lead were detected (liquid metal embrittlement). The dendritic microstructure of the coating, the spheroidal‐shaped iron inclusions in the coating and the liquid metal embrittlement show that the iron coin was plated by immersing it in a molten copper alloy. The iron core is a low‐carbon steel with slag stringers, both of which are characteristic of a bloomery iron. Deformation twins (Neumann lines) were observed in the microstructure of the iron core and indicate that the coining was performed after the flan was cooled.     

Iron Age iron files from England

There are more than 40 iron files known from the pre-Roman Iron Age in England, of which 26 come from settlements with evidence of manufacturing activities. The files vary considerably in size and form. The coarse-cut files were probably intended for working soft or fibrous materials such as wood or horn, whereas the finer-cut files were probably for working more compact or harder materials, including metals. This corresponds to the metallographic evidence from a sample of 17 files, of which only seven finer-cut ones have been found to be quench-hardened. The discovery of metal particles in five files provides further evidence of use.     

Geographical Problems in the Iron and Steel Industry of the USSR

Technological advances in the Soviet iron and steel industry are producing changes in the locational pattern of the industry. The increasing concentration of production in large iron and steel plants requires the use of large iron-mining establishments of the order of 30 million tons of crude ore. Iron and steel plants were once viewed in the Soviet Union as oriented toward the market of a particular economic region. But the growing plant capacity and a trend toward specialization in particular types of finished products tend to expand the marketing zone of individual plants far beyond the boundaries of single economic regions. Future planning of the industry is in terms of five basic iron and steel zones: Central Russia, Urals, South, Siberia and Kazakhstan, of which the Urals and the South are fully integrated and the three others are in varying stages of formation. The declining share of coke in the blast-furnace charge tends to shift the locational pattern increasingly toward iron-ore sources, and this accounts to a certain extend for the gradual shift of iron and steel capacity toward Central Russia, with its ore reserves of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly.     

THE FORMATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX OF THE KURSK MAGNETIC ANOMALY

The industrial complex in the area of the vast iron-ore bearing province known as the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (Central Russia) has been shaped in the past by an advantageous economic-geographic situation in the heart of the European USSR, by the availability of labor resources and by the presence of a wide range of agricultural raw materials for industry (sugar beets, sunflower, hemp). Further development will hinge on the massive use of mineral resources, both iron ore for the iron and steel industry, and cement materials in the overburden of open-pit iron mines. In 1975 the KMA will supply one-sixth of all the iron ore mined in the Soviet Union. About 60 percent of the ore (direct-shipping ore and concentrates derived from low grade-quartzites) moves to nearby plants at Lipetsk and Tula, and 25 percent moves to the Urals. If plans for a 12-million-ton integrated iron and steel plant for the Comecon countries materialize, 40 percent of the ore will be consumed locally, still leaving 60 percent for shipment to other steel plants. See also Soviet Geography, November 1974, pp. 593–94.     

The Mechanism and Kinetics of In Situ Conservation of Iron Cannon on Shipwreck Sites

Analysis of the pre‐disturbance values of the in situ corrosion parameters on historic iron shipwrecks and artefacts has established that the arithmetic product of the pH and corrosion potential is dependent on the burial environment and provides a unique insight into the objects' state of decay. The value of the product changes during in situ conservation treatment with sacrificial anodes, and reaches a minimum at which point the treatment is completed. Treatment times vary with water‐depth, being faster on shallower sites and shorter for more extensively corroded artefacts. The model was developed using data from the Duart Point wreck (1653), the Monitor‐styled warship HMVS Cerberus (1926) and a series of wrecks in Australia and the USA.     

Iron and bronze production in Iron Age IIA Philistia: new evidence from Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel

A metallurgically-oriented excavation in Area A at Tell es-Safi/Gath yielded evidence for iron and bronze production dating to the early Iron Age IIA. Two pit-like features, which differed considerably from one another in colour, texture and content, were excavated. Evidence shows that each feature represents a different in situ activity related to iron production, inferred by the presence of hammerscales, slag prills and slag. An upturned crucible was found on top of one of the features. Analysis of the crucible slag showed that it was used for bronze metallurgy. Tuyères, both round and square in cross-section, were found in and around the two features. The presence of the two industries together presents a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between copper and iron working. This is especially important against the background of the scarcity of evidence for iron production in the Levant during the early phases of the Iron Age.     

科默·V·伍德沃德与美国南部史学

科默·V.伍德沃德在美国是享有盛誉的南部史专家,同时也是一位非常活跃的社会活动家。在长期的学术实践中他形成了注重史学的社会功能、强调历史发展的非连续性和善用反讽的史学研究风格。他以自己对美国南部历史与现实的深切关怀,积极推动了南部史的研究。其贡献既表现在对新的史学领域和问题的开拓,也体现在围绕他的著述所展开的学术商榷、学术批评中,以及由此而形成的良性的学术研究氛围上。     

The Calibanisation of the South in the German public ‘Euro crisis’ discourse

This article highlights the renaissance of the essentialist topos of the ‘lazy and irrational’ ‘Südländer’ (Southerner, Southern countries, South) in the German political and media discourses during the ‘Euro crisis’. It argues that it served to legitimate the political and economic measures taken in Southern European countries that pushed them into still more peripheral positions within the European Union (EU) and deepened the cleavage between North and South. Culture, or better culturalism and racism as its political ideological version, thus were used as a trap, as an intellectual battleground for justifying extremely complex economic and political decisions in a simplistic fashion throughout a crucial period of European history. The article furthermore demonstrates how a postcolonial reading may productively decode the processes of Othering taking place within Europe itself, especially between the so-called core and peripheral countries.