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Behold the Fields: Texas Baptists and the Problem of Slavery
The relationship between Texas Baptists and slavery is studied with an emphasis on the official statements made about the institution in denominational sources combined with a statistical analysis of the extent of slaveholding among Baptists. A data list of over 5,000 names was pared to 1100 names of Baptists in Texas prior to 1865 and then cross-referenced on slaveownership through the use of federal censuses and county tax rolls. Although Texas Baptists participated economically in the slave system, they always maintained that blacks were children of God worthy of religious instruction and salvation. The result of these disparate views was a paradox between treating slaves as chattels while welcoming them into mixed congregations and allowing them some measure of activity within those bodies. Attitudes expressed by white Baptists during the antebellum period were continued into the post-war years as well. Meanwhile, African-American Baptists gradually withdrew from white dominated congregations, forming their own local, regional, and state organizations. In the end, whites had no choice but to accept the new-found status of the Freedmen, cooperating with black institutions on occasion. Major sources for this study include church, associational, and state Baptist minutes; county and denominational histories; and government documents. The four …
Date:
May 1993
Creator:
Elam, Richard L. (Richard Lee)
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Principle or Political Expediency: The Progressive Republicans, 1910-1916
Progressivism, which had invaded the conservative-controlled Republican party, provoked a split that affected local politics as well as the party's national leadership. The rebellion engulfing the party demanded that each Republican clearly define his position.... The available choices, ranging from reaction to insurgency, required that the professional Republican politician be painfully specific. The dilemma faced by these politicians, particularly those of the rank and file who were sympathetic with progressive ideals, is the major concern of this study.
Date:
January 1966
Creator:
Eubanks, Richard K.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Negro in Texas Politics, 1865-1874
"The theme of this work centers around the Negro and his association with the Radical Republican party. For eight years this party controlled the state government of Texas and, the Negro's participation during this period cannot be overlooked. The Negro possessed, at this time, two valuable assets, the right of suffrage and a strength in numbers. It was through the careful coordination of these two assets that the Radicals were able to gain and maintain control of Texas politics."--Leaves iii-iv.
Date:
January 1963
Creator:
Fennell, Romey
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Apologist Tradition: A Transitional Period in Southern Proslavery Thought, 1831-1845
Access:
Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Early antebellum defenders of slavery acknowledged that slavery created problems for southern society. They contended, however, that slave society was better and more natural than other forms of social organization. Thomas R. Dew, William Harper, and James Henry Hammond each expressed a social philosophy in which slavery had a crucial role in preserving social order. They argued from the basis of social organicism, the idea that society should have an elite that controlled the masses. For all three men, slavery represented a system of order that helped balance the dangers of democracy. Significantly, however, all three men recognized that the slave system was not perfect, and despite their defense of slavery, argued that it was a human institution and therefore corruptible.
Date:
December 2000
Creator:
Austin, Clara
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Professor Carl A. Helmecke and Nazism: A Case Study of German-American Assimilation
Carl A. Helmecke, like many German Americans marginalized by the anti-Germanism of the First World War and interwar period, believed that democracy had failed him. A professor with a doctoral degree in social philosophy, he regularly wrote newsletter columns declaring that the emphasis on individualism in the United States had allowed antidemocratic forces to corrupt the government, oppress citizens, and politicize schools and institutions for propaganda purposes. Moreover, widespread hunger and unemployment during the Great Depression added to the long list of failures attributable to democracy. What the United States needed, Helmecke thought, was political change, and he believed that the Nazi regime in his homeland, albeit flawed, had much to offer. In 1937, he went on a teaching sabbatical to Nazi Germany to study the Third Reich's education and social programs. When he returned to the United States, he began promoting Nazi ideals about education and labor camps. Although Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, followed by the United States entry into World War II, brought his fascist illusions for political change in the United States to an abrupt end, his belief in the correctness of an autocratic system of governance for Germany rather than that of the western democracies …
Date:
December 2022
Creator:
Collins, Steven Morris
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Saving Society Through Politics: the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas in the 1920s
This study analyzes the rise of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Dallas, Texas, in the context of the national Klan. It looks at the circumstances and people behind the revival of the Klan in 1915. It chronicles the aggressive marketing program that brought the Klan to Dallas and shows how the Dallas Klavern then changed the course of the national Klan with its emphasis on politics. Specifically, this was done through the person of Hiram Wesley Evans, Dallas dentist and aspiring intellectual, who engineered a coup and took over the national Klan operations in 1922. Evans, as did Dallas's local Klavern number 66, emphasized a strong anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic ideology to recruit, motivate, and justify the existence of the Ku Klux Klan. The study finds that, on the local scene, the Dallas Klavern's leadership was composed of middle and upper-middle class businessmen. Under their leadership, the Klan engaged in a variety of fraternal and vigilante activities. Most remarkable, however, were its successful political efforts. Between 1922 and 1924, the Klan overthrew the old political hierarchy and controlled city and county politics to such a degree that only the Dallas school board escaped the Invisible Empire's domination. Klavern 66 also wielded …
Date:
December 1997
Creator:
Morris, Mark N. (Mark Noland)
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Collective Security and Coalition: British Grand Strategy, 1783-1797
On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nadir in British diplomacy and internal political divisions over the direction of British foreign policy. After becoming prime minister in 1783 in the aftermath of the War of American Independence, Pitt pursued financial and naval reform to recover British strength and cautious interventionism to end Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe. He hoped to create a collective security system based on the principles of the territorial status quo, trade agreements, neutral rights, and resolution of diplomatic disputes through mediation - armed mediation if necessary. While his domestic measures largely met with success, Pitt's foreign policy suffered from a paucity of like-minded allies, contradictions between traditional hostility to France and emergent opposition to Russian expansion, Britain's limited ability to project power …
Date:
May 2017
Creator:
Jarrett, Nathaniel
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Political, Economic, and Military Decline of Venice Leading Up to 1797
This thesis discusses the decline of the Venetian nobility, the collapse of the Venetian economy, and the political results of the surrender of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797. Topics include the formation of Venice, Venetian domination of trade, the class system in Venice prior to 1797, the collapse of the aristocracy, feudalism in Venice, Venice’s presence in the Adriatic and Aegean seas, and the rise of the middle class within the provisional democratic government. Very few historians have attempted to research the provisional democracy of Venice and how the political and class structure of Venice changed as a result of the collapse of the Republic in 1797. Using primary sources, including government documents and contemporary histories, one can see how the once dominant noble class slowly fell victim to economic ruin and finally lost their role in the political leadership of Venice all together. During this same period, the middle class went from only holding secretarial jobs within the government, to leaders of a modern democratic movement. On top of primary research, several secondary sources helped in explaining the exclusivity of the noble class and their journey from economic dominance to economic ruin and the administrative consequences …
Date:
December 2013
Creator:
FitzSimons, Anna Katelin
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Light of Dark-Age Athens: Factors in the Survival of Athens after the Fall of Mycenaean Civilization
When looking at Dark Age Greece, one of the most important sites to consider is Athens. The Dark Age was a transitional period between the fall of Mycenaean Greece of the Bronze Age, and Archaic Greece of the Iron Age. This period is called the Dark Age because the palaces that ruled the Mycenaean age collapsed, and with them fell civilization in mainland Greece. Writing, fine art, massive architecture, trade, and luxury goods disappear from mainland Greece. But Athens survived the fall of the Mycenaeans. In order to understand the reason why Athens survived one must look at what the causes of the fall of the Mycenaeans were. Theories range from raiders and invasion, to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, droughts, and plagues. One must also examine Greece itself. The landscape and climate of Greece have a large impact on the settlement of the Greeks. The land of Greece also affects what Greek communities were able to do economically, whether a city would be rich or poor. It is because Athens is located in Attica that it survived. Attica had the poorest soil in the Mycenaean world, and was the poorest of the major cities, therefore, when looking at the …
Date:
May 2015
Creator:
Golightly, Paul
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Mobil Oil Corporation : Evolution of Its Corporate Identity
The purpose of this thesis is to explain this evolution of Mobil's corporate identity, and to determine the effect of the 1911 dissolution decree on it.
Date:
August 1970
Creator:
Robnett, Fenton Wayne
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Administration of Spain Under Charles V, Spain's New Charlemagne
Charles I, King of Spain, or Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was the most powerful ruler in Europe since Charlemagne. With a Germanic background, and speaking French, Charles became King of Spain in 1516. Yet secondary sources and available sixteenth century Spanish sources such as Spanish Royal Council records, local records of Castro Urdiales in Castile, and Charles's correspondence show that he continued the policies of his predecessors in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. He strove to strengthen his power and unify Spain and his empire using Castilian strength, a Castilian model of government, Roman law, religion, his strong personality, and a loyal and talented bureaucracy. Charles desired to be another Charlemagne, but with his base of power in Spain.
Date:
May 2005
Creator:
Beard, Joseph
System:
The UNT Digital Library
His, Hers, and Theirs: Domestic Relations and Marital Property Law in Texas to 1850
Texas law regarding the legal status of women and their property rights developed from the mingling of Spanish and English laws. Spanish laws regarding the protection of women's rights developed during the centuries-long Reconquest, when the Spanish Christians slowly took back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moorish conquerors. Women were of special importance to the expansion of Spanish civilization. Later, when Spain conquered and colonized the New World, these rights for women came, too. In the New World, women's rights under Spanish law remained the same as in Spain. Again, the Spanish were spreading their civilization across frontiers and women needed protection. When the Spanish moved into Texas, they brought their laws with them yet again. Archival evidence demonstrates that Spanish laws in early Texas remained essentially unchanged with regard to the status of women. Events in the history of England caused its legal system to develop in a different manner from Spain's. In England, the protection of property was the law's most important goal. With the growth of English common law, husbands gained the right to control their wives's lives in that married women lost all legal identity. When the English legal system crossed the Atlantic and took root …
Date:
May 2000
Creator:
Stuntz, Jean A.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Religious Right: A Study in American Religious Fundamentalism
Conservatism in America declined during the 1930's, then in the post-war years began to revive in what has been termed a "wonder"l and the most surprising development of the post-war period. Yet an even more surprising development has been the re-emergence of an important American phenomenon within conservatism: the far right.3 Far right activities gained national attention during the McCarthy era, and again in 1960 as a result of the controversy over the Air Reserve Center Training Manual, the San Francisco student riots against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the possibility of a young liberal Roman Catholic's becoming president of the United States, and the alarm that President Eisenhower would soon retire from public life.
Date:
August 1963
Creator:
Ferris, Thomas John
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The 1948 States' Rights Democratic Movement in Texas
The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a local perspective, the reaction of the southern conservative wing of the Democratic party to the liberal changes which occurred in that organization as a result of the transitional decades of the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, the study focuses on the growing sense of alienation and the eventual withdrawal of a handful of Texas Democrats from affiliation with the national body and their subsequent realignment with other dissident Dixie Democrats in the short-lived States' Rights party of 1948. This work is based essentially on the personal recollections of Texans who participated in the States' Rights movement and on those papers of the party's leaders which have survived until today.
Date:
August 1979
Creator:
Griffin, James P.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Economic Factors and Implications of the Spanish American War
This thesis discusses the United States' economic interest in the island of Cuba and its war with Spain.
Date:
1949
Creator:
Farrell, Harry C., Jr.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Forging Their Legacy: Cooperation and Accommodation in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1848-1870
Forging Their Legacy: Cooperation and Accommodation in the Lower Rio Grande Valley is an examination of the relationships created during the mid-nineteenth century between Anglo and Tejano elites in the five counties that make up the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Conducted through a quantitative lens, the five-chapter study seeks to demonstrate that, although the period between 1848 and 1870 was fraught with conflict and violence, the Anglo and Tejano elite of the Lower Rio Grande Valley came together in cooperation in order not only to survive these troubling times but to prosper. The thesis begins by identifying and analyzing the economic and political elite in the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the 1850s. A new crop of Anglo immigrants arrived with the Mexican-American War, but only a small number willing to assimilate to local Tejano culture were able to leave their mark on the Lower Valley. Chapter 4 relates the effect of the Civil War on the elite of the Lower Valley. It explores the profitable cotton trade during the war and the struggle that both Anglo and Tejano elites faced during Reconstruction. The thesis concludes with a macro-analysis of the twenty-two-year period from 1848-1870. It summarizes overall trends found …
Date:
December 2018
Creator:
Ballesteros, Nicholas A.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Arkansas: a Study in State Politics
Arkansas state politics during the Civil War was influenced by the preceding thirty years and many of the state's problems for which political answers were sought were similar to problems experienced in this period of political development. The war simply magnified and multiplied the problems faced by the state. This thesis is concerned with identifying the political forces in the state and their development, with investigating problems to which political solutions were sought and attempts made to solve these. Finally, an effort is made to determine the effectiveness of the various political moves made during the terms of Governors Rector and Flanagin.
Date:
August 1971
Creator:
Cox, James L.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Economic Development in Texas During Reconstruction, 1865-1875
The study challenges many traditional stereotypes of Texas during Reconstruction. Contrary to what Democrats charged, the Davis government did not levy exorbitant taxes. Radical taxes seemed high in comparison to antebellum taxes, because antebellum governments had financed operations with indemnity bonds, but they were not high in comparison to taxes in other states. Radical taxes constituted only 1.77 percent of the assessed value of property in Texas, which was lower than the average for the United States and about the same for other states undergoing Reconstruction. In Texas most of the tax increases during Reconstruction were made necessary by the Civil War and the increase in population. The tax increases paid for state and local governments, frontier and local protection, public buildings, internal improvements, and public schools. Edmund J. Davis, Radical governor, contributed significantly to Texas government when he attempted to focus attention on reforming the tax system,limiting state expenses to state income, limiting state aid for railroad companies, and protecting the public from railroad company abuses.
Date:
August 1980
Creator:
Adams, Larry Earl
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Manipulating Fear: The Texas State Government and the Second Red Scare, 1947-1954
Between 1947 and 1954, the Texas State Legislature enacted a series of eight highly restrictive anti-communist laws. Designed to protect political, military, and economic structures in the state from communist infiltration, the laws banned communists from participating the political process, required registration of all communists who entered the state and eventually outlawed the Communist Party. Drawn from perceptions about Cold War events, such as the Truman Doctrine and the Korean War, and an expanding economy inside of Texas, members of the state legislature perceived that communism represented a threat to their state. However, when presented with the opportunity to put the laws into action during the 1953 Port Arthur Labor Strike, the state government failed to bring any charges against those who they labeled as communists. Instead of actually curtailing the limited communist presence inside of the state, members of the state government instead used the laws to leverage political control throughout the state by attacking labor, liberals in education and government, and racial minorities with accusations of communism.
Date:
May 2019
Creator:
Bonewell, Shaffer Allen
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The German-American Bund: Fifth Column or Deutschtum?
Although the German-American Bund received extensive press coverage during its existence and monographs of American politics in the 1930's refer to the Bund's activities, there has been no thorough examination of the charge that the Bund was a fifth column organization responsible to German authorities. This six-chapter study traces the Bund's history with an emphasis on determining the motivation of Bundists and the nature of the relationship between the Bund and the Third Reich. The conclusions are twofold. First, the Third Reich repeatedly discouraged the Bundists and attempted to dissociate itself from the Bund. Second, the Bund's commitment to Deutschtum through its endeavors to assist the German nation and the Third Reich contributed to American hatred of National Socialism.
Date:
August 1975
Creator:
Geels, James E.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Let the Dogs Bark: The Psychological War in Vietnam, 1960-1968
Between 1960 and 1968 the United States conducted intensive psychological operations (PSYOP) in Vietnam. To date, no comprehensive study of the psychological war there has been conducted. This dissertation fills that void, describing the development of American PSYOP forces and their employment in Vietnam. By looking at the complex interplay of American, North Vietnamese, National Liberation Front (NLF) and South Vietnamese propaganda programs, a deeper understanding of these activities and the larger war emerges. The time period covered is important because it comprises the initial introduction of American PSYOP advisory forces and the transition to active participation in the war. It also allows enough time to determine the long-term effects of both the North Vietnamese/NLF and American/South Vietnamese programs. Ending with the 1968 Tet Offensive is fitting because it marks both a major change in the war and the establishment of the 4th Psychological Operations Group to manage the American PSYOP effort. This dissertation challenges the argument that the Northern/Viet Cong program was much more effective that the opposing one. Contrary to common perceptions, the North Vietnamese propaganda increasingly fell on deaf ears in the south by 1968. This study also provides support for understanding the Tet Offensive as a …
Date:
May 2016
Creator:
Roberts, Mervyn Edwin, III
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Girolamo Savonarola and the Problem of Humanist Reform in Florence
Girolamo Savonarola lived at the apex of the Renaissance, but most of his biographers regard him as an anachronism or a precursor of the Reformation. Savonarola, however, was influenced by the entire milieu of Renaissance Florence, including its humanism. Savonarola's major work, Triumph of the Cross, is a synthesis of humanism, neo-Thomism and mysticism. His political reforms were routed in both the millennialist dreams of Florence and the goals of civic humanism. Hoping to translate the abstract humanist life of virtue into the concrete, he ultimately failed, not because the Renaissance was rejecting the Middle Ages, but because the former was reacting against itself. Florence, for all its claims of being the center of the Renaissance, was not willing to make humanist reform a reality.
Date:
August 1988
Creator:
Norred, Patricia A.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Origins of the Southern Conservation Revolt, 1932-1940
During the political interlude between Wilson and Roosevelt, the United States was under the leadership of the Republican party which adhered to a conservative philosophy. While this regime continued, conservative southerners were content, but in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt, who had campaigned on the need for a "New Deal" was inaugurated President. Although southerners readily accepted the relief and recovery features of the first phase of the Roosevelt program, they opposed his program of sweeping reform because it constituted an impeding threat to intrenched political and economic interests in the South.
Date:
June 1963
Creator:
Brophy, William J.
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Electrophysiological and Morphological Analyses of Mouse Spinal Cord Mini-Cultures Grown on Multimicroelectrode Plates
The electrophysiological and morphological properties of small networks of mammalian neurons were investigated with mouse spinal cord monolayer cultures of 2 mm diameter grown on multimicroelectrode plates (MMEPs). Such cultures were viewed microscopically and their activity simultaneously recorded from 2 of any 36 fixed recording sites. The specific aims achieved were: development of techniques for production of functional MMEPs and maintenance of mini-cultures, characterization of the spontaneous activity of mini-cultures, application of inhibitory and disinhibitory agents, development of staining methods for cultured neurons and initial light microscopic analysis with correlation of electrophysiological and morphological characteristics.
Date:
December 1988
Creator:
Hightower, Mary H. (Mary Helen)
System:
The UNT Digital Library