A Secession Crisis Enigma: William Henry Hurlbert and The Diary of a Public Man

Unearthing a Hidden Identity Dan Crofts must have had a wonderful time researching and writing this book. How could it not be fun to solve what Jacques Barzun and Henry Graf called “the ‘most gigantic’ problem of uncertain authorship in American historical writing (1)? First, so...

Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South: A Reevaluation

Michael S. Frawley is asking us to do some fresh thinking about the late antebellum economy of the Gulf South. His focus is on three states, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, that formed the heart of the Old South’s Cotton Kingdom. His claim is that both contemporary observers (think principally Frederick Law Olmstead) and modern historians (think principally Fred Bateman and Thomas J. Weiss) have seriously underestimated the importance of manufacturing in this trio of slave states. To prove his point, he has plowed through an astonishing array of sources, beginning with the manuscript 1860 United States Census of Manufacturing. He convincingly argues, however, that census data is an inadequate measure of the extent of manufacturing establishments in these Gulf states. Too many concerns were simply overlooked. So he has turned to the extensive R. G. Dun credit reports, to city directories, to newspapers, to contemporary journals, and to local histories to compile a more complete roster of manufacturing concerns. The results are striking. “The census marshals…missed almost 20 percent of the firms in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas,” he discovered (p. 128)

Daydreams and Nightmares: A Virginia Family Faces Secession and War

One Family’s Experience Demonstrates Wartime Trials in Divided Virginia If anyone is writing better Virginia history right now than Brent Tarter, I do not know who that person might be. His books and articles are must reading for all of us who are interested in the rich history of the Old ...

Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union

Understanding the Vitality of the Border States “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game, Abraham Lincoln told his Illinois friend Orville Hickman Browning in September 1861. “Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. Those all ag...

The Secret Life Of Bacon Tait A White Slave Trader Married To A Free Woman Of Color

Bacon Tait\u27s Secret Life Revealed Archival sources are at the core of almost everything historians do. Private correspondence, business records, autobiographical musings, family oral tradition -- we count on these sorts of materials as we attempt to reconstruct the past. So what do we do when someo...

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article