American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Man Who Put Equlity into the Contitution In 1947 Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote a memorable dissent in Adamson v. California (332 U.S. 46, 68-123). He insisted that the Fourteenth Amendment required the various states to strictly heed the Bill of Rights—the first eight...

The Letters of C. Vann Woodward

Unpublished Letters of a Great Historian Historians who write about the United States constitute a notable subgroup of the “greatest generation. Born during the first two decades of the twentieth century, they came of age during the Depression and wartime. They were at the height of the...

CIVIL WAR SESQUICENTENNIAL: Unionism

Unionism in the Slave States in Wartime Two key facts about wartime Southern Unionism stand out. First, the largest numbers of Southern Unionists were black. Second, most Southern whites were not Unionists. Let us address these two essential truths. The enslaved peoples of the S...

Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia From Secession to Commemoration

The Old Dominion\u27s Civil WarA New Look at Virginia This anthology features contributions from eight current or recent graduate students at the University of Virginia. All look at the Old Dominion between 1860 and the early 1870s. Rather than revisit the oft-trod terrain of milit...

The Myth of Autism

This thesis is a study of autism in and intimations thereof in various narrative works of different types and from different time periods. My interpretation of autism, upon which my literary analysis is based, is in accordance with the insights of a field of psychological theory known as metabletics, which studies various conditions (autism, for example) in light of the wider social, cultural, and historical contexts to which they belong. I interpret autism as an expression of a comprehensive cultural condition that affects Modern society (especially in the Western world) as a whole and finds its historical roots in the advent of linear perspective vision, which occurred in the 15th century. As I examine intimations and/or expressions of autism in the various narrative works I explore, I elaborate upon the ways in which autistic symptoms (as well as the narratives in question) are connected to the traits of linear-perspective-based consciousness. My goal is to inspire a more robust and sensitive understanding of and approach to autism than the traditional medical/diagnostic approach. After supplying the necessary background information about linear perspective vision and its effects upon Modern, Western society as a whole and then briefly attending to the implications of what some have interpreted as intimations of autism in pre-Modern narratives, I explore the autistic impulses within popular narrative works from different stages of Modern history, beginning with Shakespeare\u27s Hamlet and concluding with David Fincher\u27s 1999 film, Fight Club. In so doing, I trace the development of the autism phenomenon from within the concurrent (and enveloping) development of the condition of Modern man. After this, I devote a chapter to the portrayal of autism in contemporary children\u27s fiction, which I argue to be our key to understanding and approaching the autism phenomenon in a manner that is beneficial to autistic children and to society as a whole

True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction

“Clayton Butler has breathed life into a phenomenon”—a “’tiny minority’” of white Unionists who fought to preserve the United States alongside African Americans, despite being labeled “traitors or Tories” by their white Confederate counterparts. Butler shows, however, that Reconstruction surpassed the limits of their willingness to cross racial lines

The Thin Light Of Freedom: Civil War And Emancipation In The Heart Of America

Before and After Appomattox For the past decade and a half, Edward Ayers devoted himself to administrative duties, first as Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia and then from 2007 to 2015 as the University of Richmond\u27s president. While fine for UVA and Richmond, these arrangeme...

Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation

At first glance, Separate appears to offer a history of the Supreme Court’s infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, which validated for many decades to come the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The final hundred-plus pages of this elegantly-written volume do indeed bring Plessy into full focus. But Steve Luxenberg also addresses an even more weighty topic—how and why a nation that rewrote its Constitution to embrace the principle of equality defaulted on that commitment. The shameful story that unfolds here does much to explain the impasse reached by the United States in the tension-filled summer of 2020

Becoming Lincoln

Politics “always came first” for Abraham Lincoln, writes William W. Freehling (128). The future “Great Emancipator” hesitated, however, to make America’s original sin part of his political agenda. Only after “twenty years of antislavery silence” did he start to find a new voice (100). Freehling insists that Lincoln, all along, was driven “to save the Founders’ flawed republic” (106). He wanted to resuscitate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and give all men “an unfettered start, and a fair chance” (307). But his sensitive political antenna constrained him. Most Illinois whites were unmoved by the wrongs inflicted on Southern slaves and unwilling to see black people enjoy equal rights

Analytical modelling of multi-spacecraft reconnection layer measurements at the magnetopause

An approach to determine and analyse the structure of Petschek-type magnetic reconnection is developed. This is achieved by extending an analytical model based on the Rankine-Hugoniot wave equation for shock jump conditions and is described in terms of its past applications and limitations. The model is applied to data from the CLUSTER multi-spacecraft mission using a boundary condition method optimised by two interlinked genetic algorithms. Case studies for a range of locations within the magnetopause region and local conditions are described and subjected to fluid and particle analyses to confirm the presence of reconnective signatures. Genetic algorithms are used to optimise the fit of the model, by modifying the boundary condition selection and internal structure parameters. This information then facilitates the construction of a more accurate modelled layer structure for each event. The calculated values for state variables within these layers are compared quantitatively and qualitatively to the magnetopause boundary crossings present in the CLUSTER data. Case study results are summarised and compared before being compiled into quantitative statistics for describing the local and possibly global applicability of the model. The fast application of these methods by means of an automatic process to a large set of data is described, as are the wider possibilities arising from this and the limitations of model, methods and data. These results are used to support several assertions. Firstly, that this model is indeed applicable, within its limitations, to the study of reconnection events within the magnetospheric environment. It can also facilitate deeper studies of individual reconnection events, in addition to being employed as a basis to classify wider statistical trends in spatio-temporal structures