Union Civilian Leaders

The American Civil War was a war of civilians. The fact that 3 million or so of them happened to be in uniform was almost incidental, since the soldiers, sailors, and officers of both the Union and Confederate armies were mostly civilian volunteers who retained close contacts with their civilian social worlds, who brought 1f9Culent civilian attitudes into the ranks with them, and who fully expected to return to civilian life as soon as the shooting was over. By the same token, civilian communities in both North and South kept closely in touch with their volunteers all through the war, sustained by peak rates of literacy in both sections and by the military postal services, and nourished by newspapers whose reliance on electrical telegraphy and field correspondents helped erode the customary cognitive distance between soldiers in the field and civilians at home. Above all, the American Civil War was (as Lincoln described it) a people\u27s contest\u27\u27 because it was fought over domestic political issues within a republican political framework, where the consent of the governed (rather than the ambition of an aristocratic or military caste) was understood to be the ultimate arbiter. At almost any point in the war, the military conflict could have been ended by popular civilian decision, since congressional and presidential elections were held in both the North and the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. If any of those elections had gone that way, there is very little to indicate that either Union or Confederate soldiers would have defied that determination; the only serious moment of military resistance to civilian control, after Lincoln\u27s removal of George McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac, fizzled without measurable result. Hardly any other military conflict in the nineteenth century was so much a matter of civilian support, commitment, and willpower. [excerpt

Railway Dams in Australia: Six Historical Structures

With the European settlement of Australia in the 19th century, the industrial development of the continent was closely related to the construction and extension of railway lines. Numerous railway dams were built to provide water for the steam locomotives and several are still used today. In this paper, the authors reviewed six railway dams. One, the 75-Miles dam, was a thick concrete arch dam, the first concrete arch dam in Australia and possibly in the world. The Tallong dam, completed in 1883, is an unique brick buttress-slab structure. The de Burgh dam, 1907-1908, was the first reinforced-concrete thin-arch dam in Australia. The other three structures were thin concrete arch dams but their reservoirs rapidly silted up, one being subjected to the most extreme recorded sedimentation rate in Australia. The background of the railway engineers is discussed. It is shown that, in the 19th century, the railway engineers had a broad-based education, and their expertise led to advanced dam designs (e.g. 75-Miles dam, de Burgh dam)

“Above all Greek, above all Roman Fame”: Classical Rhetoric in America during the Colonial and Early National Periods

The broad and profound influence of classical rhetoric in early America can be observed in both the academic study of that ancient discipline, and in the practical approaches to persuasion adopted by orators and writers in the colonial period, and during the early republic. Classical theoretical treatises on rhetoric enjoyed wide authority both in college curricula and in popular treatments of the art. Classical orators were imitated as models of republican virtue and oratorical style. Indeed, virtually every dimension of the political life of early Ameria bears the imprint of a classical conception of public discourse. This essay marks the various specific aspects of the reception and influence of the classical rhetorical tradition in the learning, speaking and writing of Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

The Edinburgh Goldsmiths II: Biographical Information for Freemen, Apprentices and Journeymen

This book provides biographical information on the goldsmiths of Edinburgh emphasizing those connected to the Incorporation of Goldsmiths for the City of Edinburgh. It is novel in that the scope of the book extends beyond the freeman goldsmiths to include family information on centuries of apprentices and journeymen who entered training as goldsmiths in Edinburgh. Information is provided on parents, siblings, spouses and children when possible as well as details of the training and careers of the goldsmiths. The book is being published in a series of parts (individual files) that are alphabetical by surname. Part 1 contains an introduction and the letters A-C with approximately 318 biographical entries

Lunar nomenclature Interim report

Revised index of proposed names for craters on lunar far side with identifying bibliographical dat

Mathematics in Literature

A lightly edited version of a Public Talk intended for a general audience, this essay examines significant appearances of mathematics, mathematical education, and attitudes to mathematics in, particularly, English and French literature. Both serious and light-hearted sources are considered. No attempt is made to be comprehensive