Chief Bowlegs and the Banana Garden: A Reassessment of the Beginning of the Third Seminole War

This study examines in depth the most common interpretation of the opening of the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). The interpretation in question was authored almost thirty years after the beginning of the war, and it alleges that the destruction of a Seminole banana plant garden by United States soldiers was the direct cause of the conflict. This study analyzes the available primary records as well as traces the entire historiography of the Third Seminole War in order to ascertain how and why the banana garden account has had such an impactful and long-lasting effect. Based on available evidence, it is clear that the lack of fully contextualized primary records, combined with the failure of historians to deviate from or challenge previous scholarship, has led to a persistent reliance on the banana garden interpretation that continues to the present. Despite the highly questionable and problematic nature of this account, it has dominated the historiography on the topic and is found is almost every written source that addresses the beginning of the Third Seminole War. This thesis refutes the validity of the banana garden interpretation, and in addition, provides alternative explanations for the Florida Seminoles\u27 decision to wage war against the United States during the 1850s

Before King Came: The Foundations of Civil Rights Movement Resistance and St. Augustine, Florida, 1900-1960

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called St. Augustine, Florida, the most racist city in America. The resulting demonstrations and violence in the summer of 1964 only confirmed King’s characterization of the city. Yet, St. Augustine’s black history has its origins with the Spanish who founded the city in 1565. With little racial disturbance until the modern civil rights movement, why did St. Augustine erupt in the way it did? With the beginnings of Jim Crow in Florida around the turn of the century in 1900, St. Augustine’s black community began to resist the growing marginalization of their community. Within the confines of the predominantly black neighborhood known as Lincolnville, the black community carved out their own space with a culture, society and economy of its own. This paper explores how the African American community within St. Augustine developed a racial solidarity and identity facing a number of events within the state and nation. Two world wars placed the community’s sons on the front lines of battle but taught them to value of fighting for equality. The Great Depression forced African Americans across the South to rely upon one another in the face of rising racial violence. Florida’s racial violence cast a dark shadow over the history of the state and remained a formidable obstacle to overcome for African Americans in the fight for equal rights in the state. Although faced with few instances of violence against them, African Americans in St. Augustine remained fully aware of the violence others faced in Florida communities like Rosewood, Ocoee and Marianna. St. Augustine’s African American community faced these obstacles and learned to look inward for support and empowerment rather than outside. This paper examines the factors that vii encouraged this empowerment that translates into activism during the local civil rights movement of the 1960s

Identity, Dissent, and the Roots of Georgia’s Middle Class, 1848-1865

This dissertation, which focuses on Georgia from 1848 until 1865, argues that a middle class formed in the state during the antebellum period. By the time secession occurred, the class coalesced around an ideology based upon modernization, industrialization, reform, occupation, politics, and northern influence. These factors led the doctors, lawyers, merchants, ministers, shopkeepers, and artisans who made up Georgia’s middle class to view themselves as different than Georgians above or below them on the economic scale. The feeling was often mutual, as the rich viethe middle class as a threat due to their income and education level while the poor were envious of the middle class. Many middle class occupations, especially merchants and shopkeepers, began to be seen as dangerous, greedy outliers in the southern community. The middle class, the negative view asserted, were more interested in money and did not harmonize in the otherwise virtuous, agrarian society. This study continues through the end of the Civil War and argues that the middle class in Georgia was a source of dissent and opposed secession and then the Confederacy. This is not to say that all middle class Georgians opposed secession or the war, but many middle class Georgians vehemently opposed secession and never accepted the Confederacy. Even if they did, many quickly turned their back once it was obvious the war was not going to be short and the Confederacy was taking away many civil liberties. These were not poor, mountain folk as many previous studies have identified those who dissented from the southern cause. Instead, these were successful, mostly urban men and women who felt the war would ruin them economically while at the same time the planters, who had become their political enemies, continued to dominate power in the state post-secession. All of these factors led many middle class Georgians to reject secession and the Confederacy. In turn, the antebellum middle class in Georgia laid the foundation for the post-war power structure and the rise of the southern middle class in the New South era

John Brown Gordon: Soldier, Southerner, American. (Volumes I and II) (Georgia).

Born in the Upson County, Georgia in February 1832, John Brown Gordon attended the University of Georgia, practiced law in Atlanta and, in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, developed coal mines in northwestern Georgia. He responded to the Confederate call to arms by raising a company of volunteers. In spite of his want of formal military schooling, Gordon displayed courage, boldness, vigilance, aggressiveness, and sound military sense on every battlefield upon which he fought. His rise from captain to corps commander was unmatched in the Army of Northern Virginia. Emerging from the war as one of the South\u27s most respected generals, Gordon drifted into politics. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1873 despite formidable opposition from several of Georgia\u27s most prominent politicians. In Washington, Gordon quickly established himself as a spokesman for Georgia and for the South as a whole. He defended the integrity of southern whites while working for an end to federally supported Republican governments in the South and for a restoration of home rule. In addition to defending and promoting southern interests, he also preached a nationalism that supplanted sectional antagonism and replaced it with a commitment to the growth of a strong and united country. Throughout his postwar career, Gordon contributed significantly to the process of national reconciliation. Even in the wake of charges of corruption surrounding his 1880 resignation from the Senate, he remained the most popular man in Georgia, if not in the South. Energetically engaged in a variety of speculative ventures, Gordon was widely recognized as a major proponent of the New South. His occasionally spectacular successes, however, were overshadowed by his business failures and led to his return to politics in 1886 when he was elected governor. He permanently retired from public office in 1897 following two terms as governor and another as senator. He devoted his final years to extensive lecture tours, serving as commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans, and writing Reminiscences of the Civil War--all of which helped to promote national reconciliation. He died at his winter home in Miami, Florida in January 1904

The national PTA, race, and civic engagement, 1897-1970

(print) x, 277 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cmIntroduction the National PTA, race, and civic engagement -- "No hats to be worn" : organizing the National Congress of Mothers -- "To work more effectively and gain better leadership experience" : the founding of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers -- "For convenience of a better education and training for my people" : organizational growth and stability -- Making America "strong from within" : school lunches, civics, and intergroup relations -- Diminishing as it advanced : the unification of the PTA -- Epilogue : civil society and public education.Item embargoed for five year

A Stranger Amongst Strangers: An Analysis of the Freedmen's Bureau Subassistant Commissioners in Texas, 1865-1868

This dissertation is a study of the subassistant commissioners of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas from late 1865 to late 1868. Its focus is two-fold. It first examines who these men were. Were they northern born or southern? Did they own slaves? Were these men rich, poor, or from the middle-class? Did they have military experience or were they civilians? How old was the average subassistant commissioner in Texas? This work will answer what man Freedmen's Bureau officials deemed qualified to transition the former slave from bondage to freedom. Secondly, in conjunction with these questions, this work will examine the day-to-day operations of the Bureau agents in Texas, chronicling those aspects endemic to all agents as well as those unique to certain subdistricts. The demand of being a Bureau agent was immense, requiring long hours in the office fielding questions and long hours in the saddle inspecting subdistricts. In essence, their work advising, protecting, and educating the freedmen was a never ending one. The records of the Freedmen's Bureau, both the records for headquarters and the subassistant commissioners, serve as the main sources, but numerous newspapers, Texas state official correspondences, and military records proved helpful. Immense amounts of information arrived at Bureau headquarters from field personnel. This work relies heavily on reports and letters in the Bureau agents' own words. This dissertation follows a chronological approach, following the various Bureau administrations in Texas. I believe this approach allows the reader to better glimpse events as they happened