Showing papers in "Saber and Scroll in 2016"

“Of The People, By the People, For the People”: The Transformation of Gettysburg Battlefield Park From a Site of Official Culture to a Popular Tourist Attraction

Abstract: In November 1863, thousands descended upon the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the thousands who had descended upon and fallen upon the field around the town four months earlier. They came for a ceremony of official culture: the dedication of a national cemetery for thousands of citizen-soldiers of the Union. Famed orator Edward Everett delivered a classical oration recounting the battle and memorializing the dead, which would make even Pericles proud, and then Abraham Lincoln delivered his immortal 272 words. In the ostensibly secular but popularly religious society of nineteenth century America, it seemed like the embattled nation had a potential pilgrimage shrine for its citizens—a national religious site, in the mode of Canterbury Cathedral in England, which similarly was sanctified by death. Southerners were excluded from this initial commemoration, but in his own, little-remembered Gettysburg address on November 18 (the night before the official ceremonies), Secretary of State William Seward proclaimed the administration’s hope that once again there would “be only one country, having only one hope, one ambition, and one destiny.” Little did any of the people present in November 1863 know the tremendous role Southerners would play in adopting this sacred field for popular pilgrimages in the years after the war. Nor could those on the stage know the extent to which the general populace would appropriate the hallowed ground for their own purposes beyond the purview of official culture. Popular voyages to battlefields were not a new phenomenon in the postCivil War era of American history. Thomas A. Chambers outlined this practice in his recent book, Memories of War: Visiting Battlegrounds and Bonefields in the Early American Republic. It was not immediately embraced after the Revolution or the War of 1812; “Battlefield tourism did not fully develop until fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. In its formative years attention to battlefields grew alongside the ‘Northern Tour’ and an American fascination with landscape.” Although this grew in popularity in the ante-bellum period, “Americans maintained “Of The People, By the People, For the People”: The Transformation of Gettysburg Battlefield Park From a Site of Official Culture to a Popular Tourist Attraction

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes

Abstract: In favour of this exemption of the Americans from the authority of their lawful sovereign, and the dominion of their mother-country, very loud clamours have been raised, and many wild assertions advanced. . . . These antipatriotick prejudices are the abortions of folly impregnated by faction. . . . We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Aethelred and Cnut: Saxon England and the Vikings

Abstract: 69 Never has a single occurrence changed history. While it is tempting to point to the Norman Conquest of 1066 as the event that caused the fall of the AngloSaxons, the change had begun decades before by other events from both within and without England. The rise of the Saxons meant the waning of the Roman British and their relocation into what is now Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. The Saxons were able to survive numerous Viking raids and internal strife before the end began its journey. In the midst of Viking invasions, both invading Vikings and neighboring Saxons alike absorbed the numerous Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This struggle for solidified power brought a political unity to the island and laid the foundation for what would become England. While many factors played a role in the eventual fall of the Saxons, one of the pivotal pieces in the evolution of Anglo-Saxon England was the conflict between Aethelred II (978-1016), called the Unready, and Cnut (1016-1035), the son of Aethelred’s Viking rival. The failure of Aethelred to repel the Vikings provided an atmosphere in which an emboldened Cnut was able to successfully conquer and consolidate Anglo-Saxon England as well as much of Scandinavia. Cnut strengthened the central authority of the crown and increased the stability of the kingdom while opening a door for the rise of earls to play a larger part in England. In the process of Cnut’s conquest, Anglo-Saxon relations with Normandy grew and planted the seeds of future conquest. A discovery of how Cnut’s reign in the aftermath of Aethelred changed the course of Anglo-Saxon England must begin with a glimpse into a previous time. A view of the evolution of England from the time before the invasion at Lindisfarne in 793 and into the centuries of turmoil that followed set the stage for the culmination of unity under Cnut. This stabilization in the face of waves from both Viking raiders and settlers occurred under Saxon kings such as Alfred (871-899) and Aethelstan (924-939). After a period of relative peace, renewed invasions from the north threatened Saxon stability. What would play out between the new invaders and the Saxon kings would set the stage for the penultimate reign of the Saxons. The necessity of foreign allies in the face of Viking incursions would also factor into how Saxon England would meet its fate. Before the Viking raid of the monastery at Lindisfarne, conflict, both with the Britons as well as each other, characterized Anglo-Saxon history in England. The Saxons had established multiple kingdoms in England after the fall of Roman Britain Aethelred and Cnut: Saxon England and the Vikings

Medical Services Available During the Revolutionary War Including Treatment for Soldiers Wounded in Action

Abstract: The Revolutionary War signals the beginning of true American history, the point at which we evolved from thirteen fledgling colonies maintaining a separate existence from one another under the watchful, restrictive eye of Great Britain into a collective force of American citizens, fighting together for independence, freedom, and autonomy. While every boy and girl learns about the American Revolution during grade school, and although aspects of the Revolutionary War permeate our daily culture from annual holidays to celebratory liquor labels, there is a lot left unexplored within the history of the Revolutionary War.

Ancient Horse-Cultures of the Eurasian Steppes

Abstract: On the vast grassland steppes of Eurasia in the Early Iron Age, a new kind of culture emerged in which everything in life centered on one particular animal: the horse. Evidence suggests that if the incubating grasslands had not existed, these horse -cultures may never have developed. Steppe peoples embraced horsemanship with a skill above that of all other societies. Solid boundaries and enough space and grazing to support herds of horses that swelled into the thousands made this possible. These inhabitants also seeded a wide range of profound advances, skills, and beliefs that impacted peoples of both steppe and non-steppe lands in Europe, the Near East, and far eastern Asia. However, while physical and intangible evidence appear to support the hypothesis that some societies outside the steppes may have adopted enough traits to claim a horse-culture heritage, whether they fully developed into such a culture in a non-steppe environment remains open to conjecture.

Overcoming Fear: Realizing Production at the Willow Run Bomber Plant

Abstract: Henry Ford’s farm in Ypsilanti, Michigan, twenty-five miles west of Detroit became the site and home to the Willow Run plant. The fourteen-hundred acre farm produced soybeans and included an apple orchard. The farm was something akin to a boys camp. There, boys who had lost their fathers in World War I found a place to study and work during the summer months. In 1941, the trickling sound of the Willow Run creek that ran through the farm and from which the plant took its name, gave way to the sound of machines. Bulldozers began clearing the site in 1941 to make way for the massive Willow Run Bomber Plant. The main building alone was sixty-seven acres under one roof. By May 1942, thirty-thousand workers had produced their first B-24 Liberator. Efficiency continued to improve and by November 1943 Willow Run had produced one-thousand Liberators. A month after D-day Ford Motor Company made good on its promise to build one bomber an hour. At its pinnacle, Willow Run employed 42,331 workers. When production ceased in June 1945 the plant had produced a total of 8,685 Liberators. The numbers are impressive but impersonal, because they mask the labor relation and housing difficulties both hourly and salaried employees had to overcome. To realize production at the Willow Run Bomber, workers had to overcome the culture of fear that existed at Ford Motor Company and their fear of an unfamiliar diverse workplace.