Following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the British North American colonies interpreted Parliament's success in removing arbitrary governmental practices and establishing a balanced government as a victory for local representative government. Within these colonies, merchants secured their influence in local government in order to protect their profits and trade networks. The New England merchants that resettled in Nova Scotia in the 1750s successfully established a local government founded upon their rights as British subjects. The attempt by the British government to centralize the imperial administration in 1763 and the perceived threat of reintroducing arbitrary rule by Parliament was a direct threat to the colonial governmental system. Although Nova Scotia chose loyalism in 1775-1776, this decision did not stem from isolation or a differing political philosophy. In fact, it was their cultural and political similarities that led Nova Scotia and New England to separate paths in 1776. Nova Scotia merchants controlling the Assembly were able to confront and defeat attempts that threatened their influence in local politics and on the local economy. With the threat to their authority defeated and new markets opening for the colony, the Nova Scotia merchant class was able to preserve the status quo in local government.

Historians of the prohibition movement in Texas have assumed that the state's main ethnic minorities-Germans, Mexican Americans and African Americans-strongly opposed restrictions on the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. This study focuses on the voting patterns in fifteen counties chosen to represent varying percentages of these ethnic minorities in their populations during three statewide anti-alcohol elections (1997, 1911, and 1919) in an effort to determine exactly the extent of opposition to prohibition on the part of ethnic minorities in Texas. It also examines the actions of the prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists in courting the vote of ethnic minority groups. This analysis and comparison of election results in fifteen counties confirms overwhelming opposition to prohibition on the part of all three of Texas's ethnic minorities.

This thesis is about the self-identity of antebellum New Orleans's free people of color. The emphasis of this work is that French culture, mixed Gallic and African ancestry, and freedom from slavery served as the three keys to the identity of this class of people. Taken together, these three factors separated the free people of color from the other major groups residing in New Orleans - Anglo-Americans, white Creoles and black slaves. The introduction provides an overview of the topic and states the need for this study. Chapter 1 provides a look at New Orleans from the perspective of the free people of color. Chapter 2 investigates the slaveownership of these people. Chapter 3 examines the published literature of the free people of color. The conclusion summarizes the significance found in the preceding three chapters and puts their findings into a broader interpretive framework.

The black church and Prince Hall Freemasonry both played important roles in the black experience in America. Freemasonry and the black church; one secular, the other spiritual, played equally important, interrelated roles in the way the black community addressed social, political, and economic problems in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The matter of formal education for women in the antebellum South raises many questions, especially for the frontier state of Texas. Were there schools for young women in antebellum Texas? If so, did these schools emphasize academic or ornamental subjects? Did only women from wealthy families attend? This study answered these questions by examining educational opportunities in five antebellum Texas counties. Utilizing newspapers, probate records, tax records, and the federal census, it identified schools for girls in all of the counties and found that those schools offered academic as well as ornamental subjects. Almost all of the girls who attended those schools came from privileged families. Schools were available for young women in antebellum Texas, but generally only those from wealthy families were able to attend.

This work examines particular attributes of the purgatorial phenomena from pre-Christian history of the Indo-European world to the Early Modern Period of England. An attempt has been made to identify and concentrate attention upon examples which provide the most significant and penetrating look into this evolution. For example, a portion of this paper attempts to determine just how widespread purgatorial customs were throughout England and the various types of community that supported these beliefs pre and post Reformation. By comparing life before and after the reigns of Henry and Edward a conclusion is reached that reveals the Protestant Reformation in England stripped the laity of a fundamental instrument they needed to support their religiosity and custom. This becomes evident in further years as some of those same customs and rituals that had been considered anathema by Protestants, slowly crept back into the liturgy of the new religion. Strong evidence of this is provided, with a strong emphasis placed upon late seventeenth and early eighteenth century death eulogies, with a section of this paper being devoted to the phenomena of the Sin-Eater.

Abstract Many historians would like to discover a time of relative freedom, security and independence for women of the past. The Germanic era, from 400-1000 AD, was a time of stability, and security due to limitations the law placed upon the mundwald and the legal ability of women to possess property. The system of compensations that the Germans initiated in an effort to stop the blood feuds between Germanic families, served as a deterrent to men that might physically or sexually abuse women. The majority of the sources used in this work were the Germanic Codes generally dated from 498-1024 AD. Ancient Roman and Germanic sources provide background information about the individual tribes. Secondary sources provide a contrast to the ideas of this thesis, and information.