Browse Items (76 total)

Eugene Genovese presents the idea that slave owners are less likely to harm a slave if they have owned them from early on in the slave's life. Because of the amount of time invested by a slave owner in a particular slave, the owner may gain a sense…

Economists Robert Fogel and Stanly Engerman take a financial look at the practice of slavery. Their main argument is that it makes economic sense for a slaveholder to keep his slaves healthy. A healthy slave can do more work than a sick or beaten one…

Judge James A. Wynn Jr. is a former Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and has offered insight into Thomas Ruffin's decision in State v. Mann. According to Wynn, North Carolina law had precedent that would allow Ruffin to reach a different…

Many of the men that attended church every Sunday prior to the Civil War were the same men that owned slaves back at home. The practice of slavery seemed to contradict the teachings of the Bible. Loveland provides evidence that many ministers opposed…

This article provides the best account of John Brown and how North Carolina reacted to the news of his raid on Harpers Ferry.

In the East, Confederates enjoyed springtime victories in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, but federal movements elsewhere in the Old Dominion gave cause for alarm. The Union General George McClellan's elaborately planned Peninsula Campaign involved…

Vance’s campaign and election matter because they highlight the role of racial fear in suppressing disaffection, in smoothing the tensions inherent in Confederate patriotism, and in keeping enlisted men committed to the war when the…