Another note from TISS, this one featuring CHASS's Susanna Lee, assistant professor of history! Please look into attending!
Research Triangle Seminar Series on the History of Military, War and Society
invites you to attend
Friday, 2 December 2011
4:00 - 6:00 pm - Duke University
East Campus - Carr Building 114 Campus Drive - Room 229
Susanna Lee (North Carolina State University)
The Antithesis of Union Men and Confederate Rebels:
After
the American Civil War, former enemies waged new battles over reunion,
most pressingly over citizenship in the reunited nation. In these
postwar discussions of citizenship, loyalty
became a key source of contention. Many Republicans favored
restricting certain rights and privileges of citizenship according to
wartime loyalties. Many Democrats, in contrast, supported restoring
citizenship according to postwar loyalties. This paper
explores competing definitions of loyalty through the Southern Claims
Commission, a postwar agency that awarded compensation to “loyal
citizens” for wartime property losses, and specifically focuses on white
male claimants. In their rulings, the commissioners
adhered to past loyalty, requiring southerners to prove that they had
acted as loyal citizens during the war through specific Union
contributions. Many claimants could not meet these standards, often
arguing that they had been able to do little more than
privately sympathize with the Union cause. The commissioners refused
to accept Union sympathies without Union contributions as evidence of
loyal citizenship. The paper argues that the definition of loyal
citizenship advanced by the commission ultimately
encouraged the celebration of devoted voters and soldiers on both
sides.
Susanna
Lee is an assistant professor of history at North Carolina State
University in the History Department. She is currently working on a book
manuscript on citizenship in the post-Civil
War South under contract with Cambridge University Press.
The seminar starts at 4:15 pm. Refreshments will be served before the seminar.
A pre-circulated paper is available a week in advance at
fbruehoe@email.unc.edu
For more information see the website:
http://www.unc.edu/mhss/.
The ORGANIZERS of the "History of the Military, War and Society Seminar" in the academic year 2011-12 are:
Co-sponsored by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies
Dirk Bonker (Duke University)
Karen Hagemann (UNC at Chapel Hill)
Susanna Michele Lee (NC State University)
in cooperation with
Friederike Bruehoefener (UNC at Chapel Hill)
Andrew Byers (Duke University)
Joseph Glatthaar (UNC at Chapel Hill)
Richard Kohn (UNC at Chapel Hill)
Anna Krylova (Duke University)
Wayne Lee (UNC at Chapel Hill)
Alex Roland (Duke University)
--
Susanna Michele Lee
Susanna Michele Lee
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Withers 260
Campus Box 8108
Raleigh, NC 27695
