Measuring Rural Revolutionary Mobilization: The Militiamen, Soldiers, and Minutemen of Fauquier County, Virginia 1775 - 1782

The story of the rural soldiers and militiamen of Virginia that served in the American Revolution remains open to historical research and exploration. Recent scholarship of Virginia’s military contribution to the Revolution focuses heavily on relationships of power among social groups that operated within the colony’s hierarchy, concluding that a lack of white, lower-class political and economic representation disabled mobilization among the Old Dominion’s more settled regions. My study emphasizes the revolutionary backcountry’s story by using Fauquier County, Virginia as a case study. A study of Rural Virginia during the Revolution presents scholars with significant challenges. Literacy rates among the general population were meager, meaning that Virginians in the backcountry left few letters and diaries for historians to interpret. Further complicating the reconstruction of Virginia’s rural revolutionary past were the destructive events of the nineteenth century. The tumults of the Civil War destroyed many Revolutionary War records of several Virginia counties, erasing much of what the Old Dominion’s revolutionary generation documented. For these reasons, Fauquier County represents an ideal subject of study. Court minutes, tax records, property records, and even a few letters and diary entries survived history’s fires to provide enough data from which to synthesize a social history to explore rural Virginia’s revolutionary story and mobilization patterns. The revolutionaries in Fauquier County were not always in concert with those throughout the rest of the colony. In contrast to most of Virginia, the county rallied enthusiastically to pre-Declaration calls for companies of minutemen. Hundreds of rural farmers from Fauquier across the socioeconomic spectrum served in the most successful of Virginia’s fleeting minute battalions known as the Culpeper Minutemen. These men defined themselves as backcountry Virginians against their more cosmopolitan peers from the longer-established eastern settlements. As the war matured and exacted its toll, however, fault lines between the local gentry and local yeomen widened, and the county settled into a recruiting pattern like most other Revolutionary Virginian counties. Understanding the issue of representation and its effect on how communities respond to a crisis remains a highly relevant topic that continues to challenge the public and its elected representatives to this day

A Lumped Parameter Model for the Filling of an Automotive Fuel Tank

One of the problems facing automotive fuel tank designers today is that of premature shut-off during the filling process. Premature shut-off occurs when the fuel dispensing nozzle stops before the automotive fuel tank is completely full. A simplified lumped parameter model has been developed in order to predict the pressures and flow rates associated with fuel tank filling

Characterizing Coxian Distributions of Algebraic Degree q and Triangular Order p

In this research note we present a procedure to characterize the set of all Coxian distributions of algebraic degree q that have Coxian representations of order p where p > q

A Call to Clarify the Scope of Authority Question of Qualified Immunity

It is no secret the doctrine of qualified immunity is under immense scrutiny. Distinguished jurists and scholars at all levels have criticized the doctrine of qualified immunity, some calling for it to be reconsidered or overruled entirely. Amidst this scrutiny lies uncertainty in the doctrine’s application. Specifically, the federal courts of appeal are split three ways on the question of whether an official exceeding the official’s scope of authority under state law at the time of the alleged constitutional violation can successfully assert qualified immunity. Some courts of appeal do not require the official to demonstrate he acted within the scope of his authority. Other courts of appeal require the official to identify state law affirmatively authorizing, and narrowly tailored to, his discrete acts. Still other courts of appeal hold that the official must demonstrate he acted within the clearly established scope of his authority. This Article suggests that the third approach requiring the official to demonstrate he acted within the clearly established scope of his authority—should be adopted. Adopting this approach would bring clarity and equilibrium to the doctrine of qualified immunity at a critical time, while also leaving the important doctrine in place. And, of all three approaches, the third approach best comports with the tradition of immunity, most closely aligns with the history and purpose of key civil rights laws, and presents the most workable rule

A Call to Clarify the Scope of Authority Question of Qualified Immunity

It is no secret the doctrine of qualified immunity is under immense scrutiny. Distinguished jurists and scholars at all levels have criticized the doctrine of qualified immunity, some calling for it to be reconsidered or overruled entirely. Amidst this scrutiny lies uncertainty in the doctrine’s application. Specifically, the federal courts of appeal are split three ways on the question of whether an official exceeding the official’s scope of authority under state law at the time of the alleged constitutional violation can successfully assert qualified immunity. Some courts of appeal do not require the official to demonstrate he acted within the scope of his authority. Other courts of appeal require the official to identify state law affirmatively authorizing, and narrowly tailored to, his discrete acts. Still other courts of appeal hold that the official must demonstrate he acted within the clearly established scope of his authority. This Article suggests that the third approach requiring the official to demonstrate he acted within the clearly established scope of his authority—should be adopted. Adopting this approach would bring clarity and equilibrium to the doctrine of qualified immunity at a critical time, while also leaving the important doctrine in place. And, of all three approaches, the third approach best comports with the tradition of immunity, most closely aligns with the history and purpose of key civil rights laws, and presents the most workable rule

Study of the Added Mass of Cylinders and Spheres

The added mass for cylinders and spheres is examined for unidirectional constant acceleration. In the case of cylinders, a numerical model is developed to determine the forces acting on the cylinder. The results of the model are compared to published experimental results and demonstrated to be a reasonable representation of the forces of an accelerating fluid acting on a stationary cylinder. This model is then used to investigate the effect of a constant non-zero velocity before the constant acceleration portion of the flow. Two different non-zero initial velocities are used as well as three different constant unidirectional accelerations and three different diameters. All sets of numerical experiments are shown to produce results that correlated very well when presented in terms of dimensionless forces and dimensionless distance. Two methods are presented for splitting the total force into unsteady drag and added mass components. The first method is based on the linear form of the equation that relates the dimensionless force, added mass, unsteady viscous drag and the dimensionless displacement. The slope includes the unsteady drag coefficient and the y-intercept includes the added mass coefficient. The second method, the Optimized Cubic Spline Method (OCSM), uses cubic splines to approximate the added mass coefficient and the unsteady drag coefficient variation with dimensionless distance. The parameters are optimized using the method of least squares. Both methods are compared with the experimental results. The OCSM produces better results therefore it is applied to the numerical experiment results. The added mass coefficient for the initial portion of the acceleration of a sphere is studied experimentally using a high speed camera to determine the displacement of the sphere and subsequently the acceleration of the sphere. From the acceleration data and a mathematical model of the process, the dimensionless force on the sphere is calculated. The added mass is then determined using two approaches. For the first case the viscous drag is neglected and in the second case viscous drag is included by applying the OCSM. For small values of dimensionless distance, both methods produce added mass values close to those predicted by potential flow theory

EXPERIMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF A NOVEL DUAL OPENING DEWAR FOR USE ON A LIQUID AIR ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM INSTALLED ON REMOTE, ISLANDED, RENEWABLE MILITARY MICROGRIDS

Islanded, renewable energy microgrids for use at remote Department of Defense (DOD) facilities reduce logistical burdens associated with fossil fuel–based electrical power sources and provide greater operational flexibility; however, energy generation can be intrinsically intermittent on these microgrids. This intermittent electrical generation can be mitigated with energy storage. Liquid air energy storage (LAES) is one promising technology proposed to meet this energy storage issue due to its high energy density. Small-scale microgrids may not have enough excess capacity to store pressurized liquid air (LA), and instead may rely on unpressurized LA storage and their associated unpressurized power recovery options. Using commercial off-the-shelf components, this thesis conducts a comparative tradespace study for a variety of dual opening, unpressurized Dewar designs for use with Stirling- or Peltier-based power recovery cycles. The dual opening design is found to not be efficacious for short-term storage necessary for microgrid use due to excessive conductive losses to the outer Dewar shell; however, the design may be useful as an LA receiver and immediate-use energy storage medium for a connected Stirling generator. A proposed alternative solution using Dewar self-pressurization for LA storage and transport for DOD microgrid applications is presented for future work.Outstanding ThesisLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited