A Confederate Education in the New South: Southern Academia and the Idea of Progress in the Nineteenth Century.

The idea of progress inspired former Confederate officers who entered academia to transform Southern higher education from its antebellum classical and republican orientation to a postbellum focus on science and utility. Defeat taught these academics that Southern institutions had failed to supply graduates with the scientific skills necessary to compete economically, industrially, and militarily with the North. They concluded that the Confederacy\u27s collapse demonstrated the necessity of abandoning the republican conception of progress, characterized by fears of cyclical decay, in favor of the modern idea of progress which emphasized inevitable and unlimited material and social improvement. Confederate-veterans-turned academics believed scientific education promised to create a prosperous New South founded upon industry and technology. Furthermore, they concluded that progress, controlled by an all-knowing Providence, necessitated Confederate defeat in order that the United States could resolve the problems of slavery and secession so the nation might fulfill its destiny of achieving a perpetual and progressive republic. They also applied their faith in science to history in an effort to prove scientifically that the war was not fought for slavery but for democratic principles. This permitted Confederate veterans-turned-academics to honor the memory of the Confederacy, reconcile with the North without recrimination for their failure to win Southern independence, and move forward to build the New South. These academics did not see the Lost Cause and the New South as separate or competing myths or creeds, but instead viewed them as part of a single progressivist ideology. The Civil War generation of academics intellectually defined the Southern idea of progress and passed it on to their students, thereby creating a perpetual expectation for the arrival of the New South

The Lion 1991

https://dclu.langston.edu/archives_yearbooks_19901999/1001/thumbnail.jp

2001 Vol. 9 No. 1

https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/lawpublications_lawnotes/1039/thumbnail.jp

Ailing, Aging, Addicted: Studies of Compromised Leadership

What role did drug abuse play in John F. Kennedy\u27s White House, and how was it kept from the public? How did general anesthetics and aging affect the presidency of Ronald Reagan? Why did Winston Churchill become more egocentric, Woodrow Wilson more self- righteous, and Josef Stalin more paranoid as they aged—and how did those qualities alter the course of history? Was Napoleon poisoned with arsenic or did underlying disease account for his decline at the peak of his power? Does syphilis really explain Henry VIII\u27s midlife transformation? Was there more than messianism brewing in the brains of some zealots of the past, among them Adolf Hitler, Joan of Arc, and John Brown? Most important of all, when does one man\u27s illness cause millions to suffer, and when is it merely a footnote to history? To answer such questions requires the clinical intuition of a practicing physician and the scholarly perspective of a trained historian. Bert Park, who qualifies on both counts, offers here fascinating second opinions, basing his retrospective diagnoses on a wide range of sources from medicine and history. Few books so graphically portray the impact on history of physiologically compromised leadership, misdiagnosis, and inappropriate medical treatment. Park not only untangles medical mysteries from the past but also offers timely suggestions for dealing with such problems in the future. As a welcome sequel to his first work, The Impact of Illness on World Leaders, this book offers scholars, physicians, and general readers an entertaining, albeit sobering, analysis. Bert E. Park, M.D., is a practicing neurological surgeon, an adjunct professor of history, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Historians will be grateful for Park\u27s meticulous and wide-ranging citations and well-crafted index. This book will entertain, provoke, and stimulate historians, physicians, and general readers alike, and should stimulate further scholarship concerning the pathography of world leaders. —Bulletin of the History of Medicinehttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_history_in_general/1003/thumbnail.jp

2001 Vol. 9 No. 1

https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/lawpublications_lawnotes/1039/thumbnail.jp