This thesis examines the policies and procedures created during and after the First World War that provided the foundation for how the United States commemorated its war dead for the next century. Many of the techniques used in modern times date back to the Great War. However, one hundred years earlier, America possessed very few methods or even ideas about how to locate, identify, repatriate, and honor its military personnel that died during foreign conflicts. These ideas were not conceived in the halls of government buildings. On the contrary, concerned citizens originated many of the concepts later codified by the American government. This paper draws extensively upon archival documents, newspapers, and published primary sources to trace the history of America’s burial and repatriation policies, the Army Graves Registration Services, and how American dead came to permanently rest in military cemeteries on the continent of Europe. The unprecedented dilemma of over 80,000 American soldiers buried in France and surrounding countries at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 propelled the United States to solve many social, political, and military problems that arose over the final disposition of those remains. The solutions to those problems became the foundation for how …

This literary/historical novel details the life of African-American Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves between the years 1838-1862 and 1883-1884. One plotline depicts Reeves’s youth as a slave, including his service as a body servant to a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War. Another plotline depicts him years later, after Emancipation, at the height of his deputy career, when he has become the most feared, most successful lawman in Indian Territory, the largest federal jurisdiction in American history and the most dangerous part of the Old West. A preface explores the uniqueness of this project’s historical relevance and literary positioning as a neo-slave narrative, and addresses a few liberties that I take with the historical record.

This is a work of local history examining the course of Reconstruction in Collin County, Texas. National and state level surveys of Reconstruction often overlook the experiences of communities in favor of simpler, broader narratives. The work proceeds chronologically, beginning with the close of the Civil War, and tells the story of Collin County as national Reconstruction progressed and relies on works of professional and non-academic historians, oral histories, census data, and newspapers to present a coherent picture of local life, work, and politics. The results exemplify the value of local history, as local conditions influenced the course of events in Collin County as much as those in Austin and Washington D.C. The story of Reconstruction in Collin County is one of anomalous political views resulting from geographical exclusion from the cotton culture of Texas followed by a steady convergence. As Reconstruction progressed, Collin County began to show solidarity with more solidly conservative Texas Counties. The arrival of railroads allowed farmers to move from subsistence agriculture to cash crop production. This further altered local attitudes toward government, labor, voting rights, and education for Freedmen. By the end of Reconstruction, Collin County had all but abandoned their contrarian social and political …

The most well-known events and occurrences that caused the American Revolution are well-documented. No scholar debates the importance of matters such as the colonists’ frustration with taxation without representation, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Coercive Acts. However, very few scholars have paid attention to how the 1772 English court case that freed James Somerset from slavery impacted American Independence. This case occurred during a two-year stall in the conflict between the English government and her colonies that began in 1763. Between 1763 and 1770, there was ongoing conflict between the two parties, but the conflict temporarily subsided in 1770. Two years later, in 1772, the Somerset decision reignited tension and frustration between the mother country and her colonies. This paper does not claim that the Somerset decision was the cause of colonial separation from England. Instead it argues that the Somerset decision played a significant yet rarely discussed role in the colonists’ willingness to begin meeting with one another to discuss their common problem of shared grievance with British governance. It prompted the colonists to begin relating to one another and to the British in a way that they never had previously. This case’s impact on …

The Renaissance Florentine Captain of the People began as a court, which defended the common people or popolo from the magnates and tried crimes such as assault, murder and fraud. This study reveals how factionalism, economic stress and the rise of citizen magistrate courts eroded the jurisdiction and ended the Court of the Captain. The creation of the Captain in 1250 occurred during the external fight for dominance between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope and the struggle between the Guelfs and Ghibellines within the city of Florence. The rise of the Ciompi in 1379, worried the Florentine aristocracy who believed the Ciompi was a threat to their power and they created the Otto di Guardia, a citizen magistrate court. This court began as a way to manage gaps in jurisdiction not covered by the Captain and his fellow rectors. However, by 1433 the Otto eroded the power of the Captain and his fellow rectors. Historians have argued that the Roman law jurists in this period became the tool for the aristocracy but in fact, the citizen magistrate courts acted as a source of power for the aristocracy. In the 1430s, the Albizzi and Medici fought for power. The …

Political thinkers of the Renaissance, foremost among them Niccolò Machiavelli and Desiderius Erasmus, authored works commonly referred to as “mirrors of princes.” These writings described how princes should rule, and also often recommended a certain arrangement or relationship between the intellectual class and the political powers. François Rabelais’s five books of Pantagruel also depict and recommend a new relationship between these elements of society. For Rabelais, the tenets of a philosophy that he calls Pantagruelism set the terms between philosophers and rulers. Pantagruelism, defined in Rabelais’s Quart Livre as “gaiety of spirit confected in contempt for fortuitous things,” suggest a measured attitude toward politics. Rabelais’s prince, Pantagruel, accordingly rejects the tendencies of ancient thinkers such as Diogenes the Cynic who viewed politics as futile. Yet Pantagruel also rejects the anti-theoretical disposition of modern thinkers such as Machiavelli who placed too much confidence in politics. I demonstrate how Rabelais warns against the philosophers’ entrance into public service, and how he simultaneously promotes a less selfish philosophy than that of Diogenes. I argue that Pantagruel’s correction of his friend Panurge through the consultations of experts regarding the latter’s marriage problem shows that fortune will always trouble human life and politics. I also …

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.