Degree Department

The Texas Cotton Trade During the Civil War (open access)

The Texas Cotton Trade During the Civil War

"This study deals primarily with the technical aspects of the cotton trade, examining the extent and nature of the trade, the activities of the state and Confederate governments to control cotton, and the specific problems of transportation. The concluding chapter, however, is devoted to the cotton economy in perspective, giving special attention to the financial aspects of buying and selling cotton and to the contribution of the cotton trade to Texas and the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy."--leaves iv-v.
Date: January 1967
Creator: Dickeson, Sherrill L.
System: The UNT Digital Library
African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An Examination of the Contributions of Buffalo Soldiers during the Spanish American War and Its Aftermath, 1898-1902 (open access)

African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An Examination of the Contributions of Buffalo Soldiers during the Spanish American War and Its Aftermath, 1898-1902

During the Philippine War, 1899 – 1902, America attempted to quell an uprising from the Filipino people. Four regular army regiments of black soldiers, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry served in this conflict. Alongside the regular army regiments, two volunteer regiments of black soldiers, the Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth, also served. During and after the war these regiments received little attention from the press, public, or even historians. These black regiments served in a variety of duties in the Philippines, primarily these regiments served on the islands of Luzon and Samar. The main role of these regiments focused on garrisoning sections of the Philippines and helping to end the insurrection. To carry out this mission, the regiments undertook a variety of duties including scouting, fighting insurgents and ladrones (bandits), creating local civil governments, and improving infrastructure. The regiments challenged racist notions in America in three ways. They undertook the same duties as white soldiers. They interacted with local "brown" Filipino populations without fraternizing, particularly with women, as whites assumed they would. And, they served effectively at the company and platoon level under black officers. Despite the important contributions of these soldiers, both socially and militarily, …
Date: August 2017
Creator: Redgraves, Christopher M.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Many Battles of Glorieta Pass: Struggles for the Integrity of a Civil War Battlefield (open access)

The Many Battles of Glorieta Pass: Struggles for the Integrity of a Civil War Battlefield

This study focuses on modern-day attempts to preserve the site where Union volunteers from Colorado defeated a Confederate army from Texas at the 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass to curtail Confederate expansion westward. When construction workers in 1987 accidently uncovered remains of the war dead, a second battle of Glorieta Pass ensued. Texas and New Mexico officials quarreled over jurisdiction of the war casualties. Eventually Congress authorized the National Park Service to expand the Pecos National Park through purchase and donation of land to include the battlesite. Sources include local records, newspapers, federal and state documents, and interviews with preservation participants.
Date: August 1999
Creator: Hull, William Edward, 1945-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Progressivism/Prohibition and War: Texas, 1914-1918 (open access)

Progressivism/Prohibition and War: Texas, 1914-1918

This thesis focuses upon the impact of war upon the progressive movement in Texas during 1914-1918. Chapter I defines progressivism in Texas and presents an overview of the political situation in the state as relating to the period. Chapter II discusses the negative impact that the first two years of World War I had upon the reform movement. Chapter III examines the revival of the Anti-Saloon League and the 1916 Democratic state convention. Chapter IV covers the war between James E. Ferguson and the University of Texas. Chapter V tells how the European war became a catalyst for the reform movement in Texas following America's entry, and its subsequent influence upon the election of 1918. Chapter VI concludes that James E. Ferguson's war with the University of Texas as well as World War I were responsible for the prohibitionist victory in the election of 1918.
Date: August 1992
Creator: Antle, Michael Lee
System: The UNT Digital Library
Silas Wright and the Anti-Rent War, 1844-1846 (open access)

Silas Wright and the Anti-Rent War, 1844-1846

This thesis describes the history surrounding Silas Wright and the anti-rent agitation in New York during the 1840's.
Date: January 1968
Creator: Pendleton, Eldridge H.
System: The UNT Digital Library
William Livingston: Revolutionary War Governor of New Jersey (open access)

William Livingston: Revolutionary War Governor of New Jersey

This investigation is concerned with the importance of the role that William Livingston played in the struggle for American independence. Two methods were used to present this role. First, a narrative account describes his work as governor of the state of New Jersey. Second, subjective opinions of his contemporaries and others evaluate the effectiveness of his work.
Date: December 1970
Creator: Lusher, Jerry Ronald
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Muse of Fire: Liberty and War Songs as a Source of American History (open access)

The Muse of Fire: Liberty and War Songs as a Source of American History

The development of American liberty and war songs from a few themes during the pre-Revolutionary period to a distinct form of American popular music in the Civil War period reflects the growth of many aspects of American culture and thought. This study therefore treats as historical documents the songs published in newspapers, broadsides, and songbooks during the period from 1765 to 1865. Chapter One briefly summarizes the development of American popular music before 1765 and provides other introductory material. Chapter Two examines the origin and development of the first liberty-song themes in the period from 1765 to 1775. Chapters Three and Four cover songs written during the American Revolution. Chapter Three describes battle songs, emphasizing the use of humor, and Chapter Four examines the figures treated in the war song. Chapter Five covers the War of 1812, concentrating on the naval song, and describes the first use of dialect in the American war song. Chapter Six covers the Mexican War (1846-1848) and includes discussion of the aggressive American attitude toward the war as evidenced in song. Chapter Six also examines the first antiwar songs. Chapters Seven and Eight deal with the Civil War. Chapter Seven treats derivative war songs, including …
Date: August 1984
Creator: Bowman, Kent A. (Kent Adam), 1947-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Social and Economic Factors Involved in the Reconstruction of the South Following the Civil War (open access)

Social and Economic Factors Involved in the Reconstruction of the South Following the Civil War

This thesis discusses the Reconstruction period in the southern United States, including the events leading up to Reconstruction, the socioeconomic factors of Reconstruction itself, and the effect it had on both black and white societies.
Date: August 1944
Creator: Rowan, Nell
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Forty-fifth Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment: the Washburne Lead Mine Regiment in the Civil War

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Of the roughly 3,500 volunteer regiments and batteries organized by the Union army during the American Civil War, only a small fraction has been studied in any scholarly depth. Among those not yet examined by historians was one that typified the western armies commanded by the two greatest Federal generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. The Forty-fifth Illinois Volunteer Infantry was at Fort Donelson and Shiloh with Grant in 1862, with Grant and Sherman during the long Vicksburg campaign of 1862 and 1863, and with Sherman in the Meridian, Atlanta, Savannah, and Carolinas campaigns in the second half of the war. These Illinois men fought in several of the most important engagements in the western theater of the war and, in the spring of 1865, were present when the last important Confederate army in the east surrendered. The Forty-fifth was also well connected in western politics. Its unofficial name was the “Washburne Lead Mine Regiment,” in honor of U.S Representative Elihu B. Washburne, who used his contacts and influences to arm the regiment with the best weapons and equipment available early in the war. (The Lead Mine designation referred to the mining industry in northern Illinois.) In addition, …
Date: December 2015
Creator: Mack, Thomas B., 1965-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Causes of the American Civil War: Trends in Historical Interpretation, 1950-1976 (open access)

The Causes of the American Civil War: Trends in Historical Interpretation, 1950-1976

This thesis examines the trends in historical interpretation concerning the coming of the American Civil War. The main body of works examined were written between 1950 and 1976, beginning with Allan Nevins' Ordeal of the Union and concluding with David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. It also includes a brief survey of some works written after 1976. The main source for discovering the materials included were the bibliographies of both monographs and general histories published during and after the period 1950-1976. Also, perusal of the contents and book review sections of scholarly journals, in particular the Journal of Southern History and Civil War History, was helpful in discovering sources and placing works in a time chronology for the thesis narrative.
Date: May 1992
Creator: Tate, Michael Joseph
System: The UNT Digital Library
"The Best Stuff Which the State Affords": a Portrait of the Fourteenth Texas Infantry in the Civil War (open access)

"The Best Stuff Which the State Affords": a Portrait of the Fourteenth Texas Infantry in the Civil War

This study examines the social and economic characteristics of the men who joined the Confederate Fourteenth Texas Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and provides a narrative history of the regiment's wartime service. The men of the Fourteenth Infantry enlisted in 1862 and helped to turn back the Federal Red River Campaign in April 1864. In creating a portrait of these men, the author used traditional historical sources (letters, diaries, medical records, secondary narratives) as well as statistical data from the 1860 United States census, military service records, and state tax rolls. The thesis places the heretofore unknown story of the Fourteenth Texas Infantry within the overall body of Civil War historiography.
Date: December 1998
Creator: Parker, Scott Dennis
System: The UNT Digital Library
Their Faltering Footsteps: Hardships Suffered by the Confederate Civilians on the Homefront in the American Civil War of 1861-1865 (open access)

Their Faltering Footsteps: Hardships Suffered by the Confederate Civilians on the Homefront in the American Civil War of 1861-1865

It is the purpose of this study to reveal that the morale of the southern civilians was an important factor in determining the fall of the Confederacy. At the close of the Civil War, the South was exhausted and weak, with only limited supplies to continue their defense. The Confederacy might have been rallied by the determination of its people, but they lacked such determination, for the hardships and grief they endured had turned their cause into a meaningless struggle. Therefore, the South fell because its strength depended upon the will of its population. This study is based on accounts by contemporaries in diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and journals, and it reflects their reaction to the collapse of homefront morale.
Date: August 1977
Creator: Spencer, Judith Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library
Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901 (open access)

Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901

This manuscript is a study of the Thirty-Third Infantry, United States Volunteers, a regiment that was recruited in Texas, the South, and the Midwest and was trained by officers experienced from the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. This regiment served as a front-line infantry unit and then as a constabulary force during the Philippine War from 1899 until 1901. While famous in the United States as a highly effective infantry regiment during the Philippine War, the unit's fame and the lessons that it offered American war planners faded in time and were overlooked in favor of conventional fighting. In addition, the experiences of the men of the regiment belie the argument that the Philippine War was a brutal and racist imperial conflict akin to later interventions such as the Vietnam War. An examination of the Thirty-Third Infantry thus provides valuable context into a war not often studied in the United States and serves as a successful example of a counterinsurgency.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Andersen, Jack David
System: The UNT Digital Library
Establishing the American Way of Death: World War I and the Foundation of the United States’ Policy Toward the Repatriation and Burial of Its Battlefield Dead (open access)

Establishing the American Way of Death: World War I and the Foundation of the United States’ Policy Toward the Repatriation and Burial of Its Battlefield Dead

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 …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Hatzinger, Kyle J.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Role of Texas in the Confederacy (open access)

The Role of Texas in the Confederacy

From its early days as a slave state, to its secession from the Union, to finally admitting that the south had failed, Texas played a major role in the Confederacy and the Civil War.
Date: January 1951
Creator: Whitworth, Bonnye Ruth
System: The UNT Digital Library
Frontier Defense in Texas: 1861-1865 (open access)

Frontier Defense in Texas: 1861-1865

The Texas Ranger tradition of over twenty-five years of frontier defense influenced the methods by which Texans provided for frontier defense, 1861-1865. The elements that guarded the Texas frontier during the war combined organizational policies that characterized previous Texas military experience and held the frontier together in marked contrast to its rapid collapse at the Confederacy's end. The first attempt to guard the Indian frontier during the Civil War was by the Texas Mounted Rifles, a regiment patterned after the Rangers, who replaced the United States troops forced out of the state by the Confederates. By the spring of 1862 the Frontier Regiment, a unit funded at state expense, replaced the Texas Mounted Rifles and assumed responsibility for frontier defense during 1862 and 1863. By mid-1863 the question of frontier defense for Texas was not so clearly defined as in the war's early days. Then, the Indian threat was the only responsibility, but the magnitude of Civil War widened the scope of frontier protection. From late 1863 until the war's end, frontier defense went hand in hand with protecting frontier Texans from a foe as deadly as Indians—themselves. The massed bands of deserters, Union sympathizers, and criminals that accumulated on …
Date: December 1987
Creator: Smith, David Paul, 1949-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Military Operations in Arkansas, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Military Operations in Arkansas, 1861-1865

Arkansas occupied a key position in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. It offered a gateway for Confederate troops to move north and secure Missouri for the Confederacy, or for Union troops to move south towards Texas and Louisiana. During the war, Union and Confederate armies moved back and forth across the state engaging in numerous encounters. This paper is a year by year study of those encounters and engagements occurring in Arkansas between 1861 and 1865. Emphasis is necessarily placed on the significant campaigns and engagements. Actions which occurred in adjacent states but which militarily affected Arkansas are also discussed. The majority of the material was compiled from the Official Records.
Date: December 1978
Creator: Fortin, Maurice G.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Atlanta Campaign (open access)

The Atlanta Campaign

This thesis describes the events leading up to the capture of Atlanta by the Union army during the Civil War.
Date: January 1961
Creator: Swanson, Donald Lee
System: The UNT Digital Library
Daniel's Battery: A Narrative History and Socio-Economic Study of the Ninth Texas Field Battery (open access)

Daniel's Battery: A Narrative History and Socio-Economic Study of the Ninth Texas Field Battery

This thesis combines a traditional narrative history of a Confederate artillery battery with a socio-economic study of its members. A database was constructed using the Compiled Service Records, 1860 census, and county tax rolls. The information revealed similarities between the unit's members and their home area. Captain James M. Daniel organized the battery in Paris, Texas and it entered Confederate service in January 1862. The battery served in Walker's Texas Division. It was part of a reserve force at the Battle of Milliken's Bend and was involved in the battles of Bayou Bourbeau, Mansfield, and Pleasant Hill. The battery also shelled Union ships on the Mississippi River. Daniel's Battery officially surrendered at Natchitoches, Louisiana, in May 1865.
Date: December 1995
Creator: Perkins, John Drummond
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Military Operations in Texas, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Military Operations in Texas, 1861-1865

This study examines several of the Confederate military operations in Texas from the years 1861 to 1865, including early defensive moves, the Battle of Galveston and the Battle of Sabine Pass.
Date: August 1957
Creator: Crow, James Burchell
System: The UNT Digital Library
Administration of the Atlantic Blockade 1861-1865 (open access)

Administration of the Atlantic Blockade 1861-1865

The purpose of this paper is to show in detail the role of only a portion of the Federal Navy, the Atlantic Blockading Squadrons, during the Civil War.
Date: January 1967
Creator: Delafield ,Charles Henry
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Texas: A Political Study, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Texas: A Political Study, 1861-1865

"No adequate history of the activities of the Texas state government during the Civil War has been written. Instead this phase of state history has been treated only in a limited manner in general state and Civil War histories. A history of the state government's functions and role during this period is essential to understanding Texas' development as a state and its place in the Confederacy. This work is an attempt to provide such a history. A study of the internal political affairs of Texas during the war years, this work begins with the movement toward secession and ends with the collapse of the state government and the establishment of military rule in Texas. Emphasis has been placed on revealing how the state government attempted to cope with the numerous problems which the war engendered and the futility of these attempts." -- p.iii
Date: August 1969
Creator: Ledbetter, Billy D.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Making a Good Soldier: a Historical and Quantitative Study of the 15th Texas Infantry, C. S. A. (open access)

Making a Good Soldier: a Historical and Quantitative Study of the 15th Texas Infantry, C. S. A.

In late 1861, the Confederate Texas government commissioned Joseph W. Speight to raise an infantry battalion. Speight's Battalion became the Fifteenth Texas Infantry in April 1862, and saw almost no action for the next year as it marched throughout Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. In May 1863 the regiment was ordered to Louisiana and for the next seven months took an active role against Federal troops in the bayou country. From March to May 1864 the unit helped turn away the Union Red River Campaign. The regiment remained in the trans-Mississippi region until it disbanded in May 1865. The final chapter quantifies age, family status, wealthholdings, and casualties among the regiment's members.
Date: December 1998
Creator: Hamaker, Blake Richard
System: The UNT Digital Library

Fire Eater in the Borderlands: The Political Life of Guy Morrison Bryan, 1847-1891

From 1847 to 1891, Guy Morrison Bryan was a prominent Texas politician who influenced many of the policies and events that shaped the state. Raised in his Uncle Stephen F. Austin's shadow, he was a Texas nationalist who felt responsible for promoting the interests of his state, its earliest settlers, and his family. During his nineteen years in the Texas Legislature and two years in the United States House of Representatives, he safeguarded land grants, supported internal improvements and education, and challenged northern hostility towards slavery. Convinced that abolitionists would stop at nothing to destroy the institution and Texas, he led his state's walkout of the National Democratic Convention in 1860 and became a leading proponet of secession. During the Civil War, he served as a staff officer, and his ability to mediate conflicts between local and national leaders propped up the isolated Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. Finally as Speaker of the House, he helped oust Governor Edmund J. Davis in 1874 and "redeem" the state from Republican rule before convincing President Rutherford B. Hayes to adopt a conciliatory policy towards Texas and the South. Despite the tremendous influence Bryan wielded, scholars have largely ignored his contributions. This dissertation establishes his …
Date: August 2020
Creator: Kelley, Ariel Leticia
System: The UNT Digital Library