The influence of socio-economic background on Union soldiers during the American Civil War
1 "The Influence ofSocio-Economic Background on Union Soldiers during the American Civil War" . 2 Bibliography . 43 Appendix 1: "Port Clinton White Males ofFighting Age and Port Clinton Civil War Enlistees Compared" 48 Appendix 2: "Breakdown in Age ofLinked Soldiers in the 48" 50 Appendix 3: "Foreign Born Soldiers in the 48 Pennsylvania" 51 Appendix 4: "Breakdown in Total Wealth ofLinked Soldiers in the 48 PA". 53 Appendix 5: "Prewar Occupations of Soldiers in the 48 Pennsylvania Compared with all Union Soldiers" . 56 Appendix 6: "Breakdown in Household and Marital Status" 57 Vita 58
St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. By Anthony F. C. Wallace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Pp. xvii, 519. $30.00
Anthony F. C. Wallace, long-time Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, had written several major books, including the still widely-used and discussed The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, before turning his interests to the mid-nineteenth-century social and economic history of eastern Pennsylvania. In 1978 his book on Rockdale, a small cotton-manufacturing town appeared. It was a big, sprawling volume, meticulously researched, and by studying the owners, workers, and other residents of the town, Wallace was able to deal with a wide range of questions relating to the causes and consequences of American industrialization. St. Clair is the study of a small anthracite coal-mining town in Schuykill County in southeastern Pennsylvania in the period from 1835 (when Henry C. Carey and his group purchased coal lands in the area) to 1880 (when the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company went bankrupt and reduced its operations near St. Clair). St. Clair contains the impressive aspects of Rockdale—it is based on extensive research in a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, covers many topics from different points of view, and places the St. Clair experience into the broadest context of American social and economic history. Covering so much intellectual territory and asking so many important questions means, however, that at times some central arguments are not as well developed as one might hope. Wallace begins the study of St. Clair with a detailed description of colliery operations and of the developments in technology from 1830 to 1870, noting the doubling of size of the typical colliery between the 1850s and the 1870s. The depiction of technology is stronger than the examination of the entry and exit patterns and the profits (or lack of same) in the industry. The author also introduces one of the central arguments of St. Clair—the persistence of unsafe working practices underground. "The Development of St. Clair," describes the main owner and operator groups, particularly the role of one of the most important owners, economist Henry Carey. The examination of business operations here points to entrepreneurial failure of a particular type; it was not so much that the owners and operators failed in day-to-day practices, but that, given the geology and existing technology, the location was inappropriate. While the role of Carey and his group in developing St. Clair is described, relatively little is said about this form of community development. The examination of some business issues can be usefully supplemented by a reading of Clifton K. Yearley's Enterprise and Anthracite. The chapter on the workingman includes descriptions of the labor force drawn from the 1850 census manuscripts, a brief (and inconclusive) analysis of wages and income, and an examination of various facets of working-class culture. The town, and mining labor force, tended to be predominantly young and immigrant, with the Irish as laborers and the English and Welsh being miners (as they apparently had been prior to immigration). The absence of enough usable data on the number of weeks worked and the role of family members as income-earners did make it difficult to discuss the relation of worker income to a defined subsistence level.
The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean
This article examines two types of foundation narrative prevalent in the biblical literature in light of as-yet-undiscussed parallels from ancient Greek and Mediterranean texts. The first type, embodied in the Genesis narratives and Greek genealogical traditions, portrays the founders as leaving a distant land to settle peacefully in a new land. The second is exemplified by the central hexateuchal theme of the Israelites’ migration to Canaan by dispossessing the native population as well as the Dorian migration traditions. Several factors indicate that the foundation story genre also became central and foundational in other small kingdoms around the Mediterranean—as indicated, for example, by the Phoenician–Luwian inscriptions referring to bt Mpš/Mopsus and related classical sources. The popularity of the genre in the ancient Mediterranean is striking in light of the fact that, while experiencing tribal migrations and wanderings, the great Mesopotamian and Egyptian kingdoms never represented themselves as “immigrants.” It is suggested that this genre may have emerged with the rise of the new, small-scale kingdoms in the Mediterranean basin toward the end of the second millennium b.c.e. The Phoenician and Greek colonization enterprises of the first third of the first millennium b.c.e. in particular increased awareness of the newly emerging states and focused attention on ethnic identity.