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Title: Prelude to Disaster: Defending Confederate New Orleans.
Creator: Zwilling, Andrew, Jones, Jim, Grant, Jonathan, Hadden, Sally, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the defense of Confederate New Orleans during American Civil War, specifically during the year 1861 and the first four months of 1862. The importance of New Orleans to the South is first analyzed in order to give context for its defense. Then both the Confederate military perspective and the city's perspective are taken into account, resulting in the conclusion that the defense can be seen as an inevitable microcosm of the problems that generally plagued the Confederacy....
Show moreThis thesis examines the defense of Confederate New Orleans during American Civil War, specifically during the year 1861 and the first four months of 1862. The importance of New Orleans to the South is first analyzed in order to give context for its defense. Then both the Confederate military perspective and the city's perspective are taken into account, resulting in the conclusion that the defense can be seen as an inevitable microcosm of the problems that generally plagued the Confederacy. Lack of material resources and manpower, confusion and division between the local population and Confederate authority, disorganized and compartmentalized leadership and overwhelming Federal industrial advantage are all issues that can be seen both in the defense of New Orleans and the Confederacy as a whole.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0471
Format: Thesis

Title: The Force of Nature: The Impact of Weather on Armies during the American War of Independence, 1775-1781.
Creator: Engel, Jonathan T., Hadden, Sally, Harper, Kristine, Jones, James, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the impact that weather had on armies during the American War of Independence. It argues that weather affected the operations of both American and British armies in three areas: strategy, influencing the planning of campaigns; tactics, affecting the course of battles; and administration, adding to the daily work of maintaining armies in the field and keeping them functional. Year after year, in all four seasons, generals and soldiers had to cope with phenomena such as...
Show moreThis thesis examines the impact that weather had on armies during the American War of Independence. It argues that weather affected the operations of both American and British armies in three areas: strategy, influencing the planning of campaigns; tactics, affecting the course of battles; and administration, adding to the daily work of maintaining armies in the field and keeping them functional. Year after year, in all four seasons, generals and soldiers had to cope with phenomena such as rain, snow, heat, and fog. Weather was capricious, sometimes helping one army and harming the other, and sometimes hindering both armies. Generals often tried to use the weather to gain an advantage and to mitigate the damage weather might do to their armies. The first chapter addresses weather's activity in early years of the war, up to the end of 1777. The second chapter focuses on the war in the north from 1778 to the end of major fighting in 1781, and the final chapter covers the impact of weather in that same period in the southern theater, concluding with the Franco-American victory at Yorktown. No previous study has concentrated on weather's role in the war as a whole. While weather was not the sole force that guided the armies' actions or decided the outcomes of battles or the war, this thesis demonstrates how the weather helped shape the Revolutionary War alongside other better-recognized factors such as political, economic, or logistical issues, and warrants recognition as such.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0562
Format: Thesis

Title: Petty Despots and Executive Officials: Civil Military Relations in the Early American Navy.
Creator: Sheppard, Thomas, Hadden, Sally, Creswell, Michael, Jones, James, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: As a new nation, the United States lacked the long naval traditions of the other powers of the time, particularly Great Britain. When Congress created a naval force in 1794, the country had to rely on its first officers to form the traditions of the service and lay the foundations of the American Navy. These first officers bequeathed to their country the naval force that would eventually challenge the mighty Royal Navy in the War of 1812. However, officers alone were not responsible for the...
Show moreAs a new nation, the United States lacked the long naval traditions of the other powers of the time, particularly Great Britain. When Congress created a naval force in 1794, the country had to rely on its first officers to form the traditions of the service and lay the foundations of the American Navy. These first officers bequeathed to their country the naval force that would eventually challenge the mighty Royal Navy in the War of 1812. However, officers alone were not responsible for the maturation of the Navy. Civilian officials, notably the Secretary of the Navy, also played a major role in the development of an American maritime force. These two components did not always interact harmoniously. Captains, used to the total autonomy that command at sea in an era of starkly limited communication created, often had difficulty subordinating themselves to their civilian superiors. During the first three decades of the Navy's existence, successive Secretaries of the Navy would gradually increase their authority over their officers, establishing the traditions of civilian control over the military that had long been a part of land warfare. This thesis explores the process whereby the question of ultimate authority over the Navy was settled, beginning with the creation of the navy and culminating in the creation of the Board of Naval Commissioners following the War of 1812.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0312
Format: Thesis

Title: "According to Their Capacities and Talents": Frontier Attorneys in Tallahassee during the Territorial Period.
Creator: Maynard, Jackson Wilder, Hadden, Sally, Jones, Jim, Strait, Paul, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The thesis identifies and describes the practice of attorneys in frontier Tallahassee during the Territorial Period. The thesis will also address dichotomies posed by past historians regarding the nature of the practice of law during the early- to mid-nineteenth centuries. The first, propounded by historian Roscoe Pound, maintains that this era was a period of decline in the legal profession, but also a "Golden Age." The second, posed by historian Jerold Auerbach, maintains that lawyers...
Show moreThe thesis identifies and describes the practice of attorneys in frontier Tallahassee during the Territorial Period. The thesis will also address dichotomies posed by past historians regarding the nature of the practice of law during the early- to mid-nineteenth centuries. The first, propounded by historian Roscoe Pound, maintains that this era was a period of decline in the legal profession, but also a "Golden Age." The second, posed by historian Jerold Auerbach, maintains that lawyers during this period were "country lawyers" (in the model of Abraham Lincoln or Daniel Webster) or aristocrats. The thesis argues that attorneys practicing in frontier Tallahassee during this period were professional and quite competent; their actions do not give rise to the idea that this was a period of decline for the practice of law. The thesis also maintains that lawyers during this period were more in the model of aristocrats. The thesis also contains an appendix listing all those identified as have practiced in and about Tallahassee from 1824-1845 along with some brief biographical notes.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2639
Format: Thesis

Title: "Pure Religion of the Gospel…Together with Civil Liberty": A Study of the Religion Clauses of the Northwest Ordinance and Church-State in Revolutionary America.
Creator: Wiewora, Nathaniel Hamilton, Hadden, Sally, Koschnik, Albrecht, Childs, Matt, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Ordinance of 1787 provided the method for territories of the Old Northwest to become states. It set out a three-stage process that territories would pass through in order to acquire full rights of statehood. Furthermore, it contained six Articles of Compact between Congress on behalf of the extant states and the states to be created out of the territory. These articles provided guarantees of fundamental rights and liberties for the future states, including religious practice and belief....
Show moreThe Ordinance of 1787 provided the method for territories of the Old Northwest to become states. It set out a three-stage process that territories would pass through in order to acquire full rights of statehood. Furthermore, it contained six Articles of Compact between Congress on behalf of the extant states and the states to be created out of the territory. These articles provided guarantees of fundamental rights and liberties for the future states, including religious practice and belief. The first article provided that "no person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments in the said territory." Article Three stated that, "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." This study uncovers how ideas on government, law, and religion led to the drafting of the religion clauses of the Northwest Ordinance. Scholars have spent little time examining the philosophical underpinnings of the statements on religion contained in the Northwest Ordinance. This study demonstrates that these statements were not mere afterthoughts, but were thick and complex statements on how the state and the church should be related. The legislative history of the Northwest Ordinance indicates that the language for the religion clauses appeared just before the document's passage, but it also seems that the drafters drew upon a deep well of theological and philosophical beliefs and applied them to a specific political and economic context. The theological ideas included Puritan and evangelical ideas like millennarianism, free will, true virtue, and covenant. Philosophical views included both Enlightenment philosophy and civic republicanism. Part of the exploration of this question occurs within the context of the debate of church and state relations in Revolutionary Virginia and Massachusetts. This is necessary for a number of reasons. First, it narrows the scope of the study without sacrificing important historical developments. A study of this sort that does not limit itself geographically can quickly become unmanageable. To include the developments in the negotiation over church and state in all thirteen colonies would be to ask for an unwieldy study that would not necessarily reach significantly different conclusions from a more limited one. The struggle over church and state in the Virginia and Massachusetts contexts represented the most important and illustrative developments. The state governments of Virginia and Massachusetts and their representatives played influential roles in the drafting of the Northwest Ordinance. Thus, considering these developments will provide a helpful understanding of the ideological antecedents of the religion clauses of the Northwest Ordinance. Virginia and Massachusetts served as microcosmic representations for the church-state debate in the Revolutionary period. It is both within this indirect and broader microcosmic connection, as well as more direct connections to the Northwest Ordinance itself that the importance of the Massachusetts and Virginia debates are derived. Virginia reached a liberal principle of religious liberty before most of the other states and thus became an example for the other states of how the fusion of Protestant dissension and Christian voluntarism could lead to antiestablishment thought and a liberal expression of religious toleration. Opponents of establishment in many of the other states cited Virginia's thinkers in their own constitutional moves toward disestablishment. Virginia shared a direct connection with the Northwest Ordinance in two ways. First, the Virginia Legislature had to cede all of her land claims to the Northwest Territory before the Continental Congress could create a territorial policy for the Northwest. Virginia gentry also drafted portions of or served on several of the key committees in the legislative history of the Northwest Ordinance. Virginian Thomas Jefferson composed the Ordinance of 1784, the first national expression of territorial policy for the Northwest. His Ordinance provided a basis for the development of the Northwest Ordinance. Virginian James Monroe proposed changes to Jefferson's Ordinance, helping to draft key sections of the Northwest Ordinance. Monroe's ideas included how many states should be created out of the Northwest Territory and under what conditions these states should enter the Union. Monroe embraced a New England style of territorial development, urging that the Northwest Territory should be settled by townships and in an organized fashion. One of the significant reasons Monroe embraced this style of territorialism was because of the Ohio Company and the large number of New England Revolutionary War veterans who made up the Company's membership rolls and wanted to settle the Northwest Territory under principles consonant with their own particular New England beliefs. The importance of the teaching of natural religion was cited by both opponents and supporters of establishment in revolutionary Massachusetts. Supporters of limited establishment, in the guise of Article Three of the proposed 1780 constitution, argued that the governmental support of religion had social utilitarian importance. Supporters of Article Three argued that the teaching of the doctrine of a future state of rewards or punishment inculcated virtue into the Massachusetts citizenry. Opponents of Article Three, like the anonymous New Light writer Philanthropos, opposed the teaching of fundamental Calvinist principles, like the doctrine of future states, because they saw the teaching of these principles by the government as antithetical to notions of the inviolability of individual conscience. Opponents of Article Three supported the right of individual conscience to such an extent that on at least one occasion, opponents practiced civil disobedience in the closing of the courts in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The leader of the civil disobedient group, the Berkshire Consitutionalists, was Thomas Allen. As noted above, Allen practiced a rigid Calvinist orthodoxy. He was a member of the New Divinity movement that believed in the importance of retaining strict theological principles, while still allowing for a socially active form of Christianity. This social activism stemmed from interpretations of the nature of true virtue that originated in the mind of Jonathan Edwards. Consistent Calvinists embraced these Edwardsean notions and extended them to causes like abolition or disestablishment. The Reverend Thomas Allen embraced New Divinity ideas and helped to influence the church-state debate in Massachusetts. The church-state debate in Massachusetts also had a direct link to the drafting of the religion clauses of the Northwest Ordinance in two other ways. Manasseh Cutler, land agent for the Ohio Company, hailed from Massachusetts. He, more than probably anyone else, influenced the text of the Ordinance and the timing of its passage. As described above, Cutler's biography linked several of the key arguments made for the territorial policy articulated in the Northwest Ordinance. Finally, it seems that the authors of the Northwest Ordinance's Articles of Compact culled the Massachusetts Constitution 1780 for the specific language of the Ordinance's religion clauses. Thus, a greater understanding of the Revolutionary Massachusetts church-state narrative, along with the story of church-state relations as they developed in Virginia, yields some of the intentions of the framers of the Northwest Ordinance's religion clauses. The final portion of this study is shorter and much more speculative. The study contemplates the Ordinance's influence upon the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights vis-à-vis the religion clauses of each document. Many members of the Continental Congress were also members of the Constitutional Convention. Members of the Confederation Congress corresponded heavily with members of the Constitutional Convention and vice versa. Thus, it is hard to imagine that each body did not know what the other was doing. Furthermore, the First Congress readopted the Northwest Ordinance just days before debating what would become the First Amendment. So, it can be assumed that the Northwest Ordinance is constitutional and that it also served as an example and influence in the drafting of the Bill of Rights. This area of study is much more speculative in nature and ultimately the discussion in this thesis is more suggestive of future directions of study. It raises questions about the constitutional effect of the Northwest Ordinance with respect to the issue of church and state and broader issues of religion and politics in the Revolutionary Period.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-1032
Format: Thesis

Title: Sacred Unions: Catharine Sedgwick, Maria Edgeworth, and Domestic-Political Fiction.
Creator: Elmore, Jenifer Lynn, Moore, Dennis, Hadden, Sally, Walker, Eric, Burke, Helen, Haywood, Chanta, Stern, Julia, Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Since the 1980s, literary scholars in the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S. have recovered the contributions of the nineteenth-century American writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick and her older Anglo-Irish contemporary Maria Edgeworth, establishing both as groundbreaking contributors to their respective national literatures. This dissertation casts new light on both authors by examining their private writings to reconstruct their actual historical relationship to one another and by interpreting their...
Show moreSince the 1980s, literary scholars in the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S. have recovered the contributions of the nineteenth-century American writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick and her older Anglo-Irish contemporary Maria Edgeworth, establishing both as groundbreaking contributors to their respective national literatures. This dissertation casts new light on both authors by examining their private writings to reconstruct their actual historical relationship to one another and by interpreting their published works in a transatlantic and post-colonial context. Reading their works side by side reveals that both authors were preoccupied with modeling Union—the harmonious union of qualities within the individual, of husbands and wives, of disparate groups within larger societies, and, most importantly, of member states within larger political nations, such as Edgeworth's United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and Sedgwick's young United States of America. Though Sedgwick and Edgeworth lived an ocean apart and never met in person, their literary celebrity and shared literary project connected them. Throughout her career, Sedgwick's readers and critics compared her style, her subject matter, her literary and social mission, and indeed the totality of her literary persona to that of Edgeworth. The dedication of Sedgwick's first novel, A New-England Tale (1822), is an encomium to Edgeworth that establishes how much the novice American admired this mature writer who had already achieved enormous transatlantic literary stature. Edgeworth's response to that dedication initiated an occasional correspondence between the two women, and Sedgwick continued to inscribe her fiction with intertextual references to Edgeworth. Important points of intersection between Sedgwick's and Edgeworth's oeuvres include their literary treatments of women and their writings about women writers, their pioneering literary regionalism, their fictional representations of socioeconomic and ethnic others, and their use of allegory to infuse domestic fictions with national political significance. Both writers employ various narrative strategies in presenting the many aspects of their social and political philosophies to the public in a fictional and often coded form that this dissertation theorizes as the sub-genre of domestic-political fiction. This sub-genre was the means through which both authors modeled their ideals of perfect Union.
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Date Issued: 2002
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0568
Format: Thesis

Title: Setting the Stage: Dance and Gender in Old-Line New Orleans Carnival Balls, 1870-1920.
Creator: Atkins, Jennifer, Sinke, Suzanne, Perpener, John O., Hadden, Sally, Conner, V.J., Young, Tricia, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Mardi Gras Carnival balls are traditional New Orleans events when krewe organizations present their seasonal mock monarchs. Traditionally, these ballroom spectacles included tableaux vivants performances, the grand march and promenade of the season's royal court, special dances with masked krewemen, and general ballroom dancing. These events reinforced generational ties through the display of social power in a place where women were crystallized into perfect images of Southern beauty. Since...
Show moreMardi Gras Carnival balls are traditional New Orleans events when krewe organizations present their seasonal mock monarchs. Traditionally, these ballroom spectacles included tableaux vivants performances, the grand march and promenade of the season's royal court, special dances with masked krewemen, and general ballroom dancing. These events reinforced generational ties through the display of social power in a place where women were crystallized into perfect images of Southern beauty. Since the mid nineteenth century, old-line krewes (the oldest, most elite Carnival organizations) have cultivated patriarchal traditions in their ball presentations and have acted as historical vehicles of commentary on personal and social identity. The manner in which krewe members used their bodies to proclaim their royalty, to promenade, or to dance, all signified individual social roles and represented the evolving mores of their connected group. Likewise, masked courtiers and fashionable guests used their bodies in ballroom dancing to uphold or refute acceptable standards of male and female behavior. From 1870 to 1920, old-line krewes dominated the private terrain of New Orleans Mardi Gras. Through their steadfast commitment to performing white elitism, traditional krewes set the stage for the gender battles of the twentieth century, when female, black, and gay bodies, within newly formed krewes, used dance in their own carnival balls to define modern and diverse sexual, personal, and communal identities.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0806
Format: Thesis

Title: The Education of a 'Learned Wife': Discovering the Reading Practices of Southern Women during the Rise of the United States.
Creator: Cohen, Kerry M., Hadden, Sally E., Moore, Dennis, Green, Elna, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: "The Education of a 'Learned Wife': Discovering the Reading Practices of Southern Women during the Rise of the United States" will explore the inner thoughts of women living in the South between 1790 and 1860 to better understand how women continued to educate themselves through literature. Many women did not keep diaries and through the ages the personal writings of those who did have been lost to historians forever. Those diaries, however, that survived through publication or archives allow...
Show more"The Education of a 'Learned Wife': Discovering the Reading Practices of Southern Women during the Rise of the United States" will explore the inner thoughts of women living in the South between 1790 and 1860 to better understand how women continued to educate themselves through literature. Many women did not keep diaries and through the ages the personal writings of those who did have been lost to historians forever. Those diaries, however, that survived through publication or archives allow the life and experiences of Southern women as a whole to continue to speak and allow historians to research their reading habits and lives. The words of these women uncovered or rediscovered will direct the course of this project, allowing an exploration and analysis to piece together the lasting influences and enrichment of the mind from their reading practices.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-3571
Format: Thesis

Title: Les Confrères Et Les Pères: French Missionaries and Transnational Catholicism in the United States, 1789-1865.
Creator: Pasquier, Michael, Corrigan, John, Hadden, Sally, Porterfield, Amanda, Koehlinger, Amy, Department of Religion, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This is a study of the practice of the Roman Catholic priesthood and a history of French missionaries in the United States. From 1789 to 1865—from the beginning of the French Revolution to the end of the American Civil War—hundreds of Catholic priests and seminarians migrated from France to the United States and assisted in the establishment of new dioceses and church parishes stretching west from Maryland to Kentucky, and south from Missouri to Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. They thought of...
Show moreThis is a study of the practice of the Roman Catholic priesthood and a history of French missionaries in the United States. From 1789 to 1865—from the beginning of the French Revolution to the end of the American Civil War—hundreds of Catholic priests and seminarians migrated from France to the United States and assisted in the establishment of new dioceses and church parishes stretching west from Maryland to Kentucky, and south from Missouri to Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. They thought of themselves as missionaries in a "New World" composed of "heretical" Protestants and "indifferent" Catholics. In the course of their evangelistic endeavor, however, missionaries realized just how difficult it was to practice the priesthood in accordance with what they learned in French seminaries and what they knew Rome expected of them. They recognized just how uncomfortable it felt to serve as transnational arbiters of Catholic beliefs and practices between French, Roman, and American interests. This collective feeling of operating in-between ideal standards of the priesthood and actual circumstances of foreign missions convinced many missionaries of their vocational inadequacies and pastoral deficiencies. It also precipitated changes in the direction of the Catholic Church in the United States from a strictly Tridentine model of devotion and clerical authority to a transnational process dependent upon the everyday negotiations of priests and laypeople. The decision of French missionaries to justify the institution of slavery and support the Confederate cause of war, in particular, represented the reorientation of missionary Catholicism away from strictly European sources of authority and toward regional and national trends in American culture and politics.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2152
Format: Thesis

Title: Affectionately Yours: Women's Correspondence Networks in Eighteenth-Century British America.
Creator: McLallen, Wendy Weston, Hadden, Sally, Edwards, Leigh, Laughlin, Karen L., Department of English, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines epistolary manuscripts circulated among networks of women in eighteenth-century British America. The women saved and collected correspondence, copied important letters into commonplace books, and composed entire journals in letter format for family member or close friends. These writings, as they circulated from hand to hand, helped to solidify culturally significant social networks. This dissertation delves into the markedly performative nature of these writings...
Show moreThis dissertation examines epistolary manuscripts circulated among networks of women in eighteenth-century British America. The women saved and collected correspondence, copied important letters into commonplace books, and composed entire journals in letter format for family member or close friends. These writings, as they circulated from hand to hand, helped to solidify culturally significant social networks. This dissertation delves into the markedly performative nature of these writings and asks: even though these women writers, ostensibly, did not intend their texts for public consumption, to what extent did those texts provide public stages on which the women could rehearse, control, inscribe, or elide the fluid, yet often conflicting subject positions of the era? This dissertation examines five specific networks of writing women in eighteenth-century British America. Chapter one focuses on the writings of Elizabeth Fergusson, Annis Stockton, Hannah Griffitts, Milcah Moore, and Susannah Wright, the group of writers known as the "Philadelphia coterie," and uses their letters to establish epistolary patterns that inform my readings of the other networks of women writers—the same patterns that will ultimately influence the earliest epistolary fiction. Chapter two examines the diary of Grace Galloway and the letters of Anne Hulton, two avowedly loyalist women in British America. Chapter three focuses on the life and letters of shopkeeper Elizabeth Murray and her network of women merchants while chapter four examines the letters of the two most historically recognizable women in this study: Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. The networks of women I address in these chapters span multiple generations, and this multi-generational dynamic leaves a legacy of friendship that can help us better understand and locate the belles lettres of British America. However, the writings generated by these networks also leave a literary legacy that allows us to reconsider other writings in other genres, and it is to that endeavor I turn in the conclusion. The conclusion looks at Hannah Foster's epistolary novels in the context of early-American networks of writing women and uses the women's manuscripts to reposition the early-American novel.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-2527
Format: Thesis

Title: "A Blaze of Reputation and the Echo of a Name": The Legal Career of Peter Stephen du Ponceau in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia.
Creator: Henderson, Jennifer Denise, Hadden, Sally E., Jumonville, Neil, Koschnik, Albrecht, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Peter Stephen du Ponceau (1760-1844) was a member of the Philadelphia Bar for nearly fifty years, during a period in which America's lawyers played an important part in fashioning the post-Revolutionary legal structure. Though contemporaries considered him to be an exceptional member of the legal profession on account of his command of history, his talent for learning languages, and most importantly, because of his scholarly knowledge of civil and foreign law (two legal areas little known to...
Show morePeter Stephen du Ponceau (1760-1844) was a member of the Philadelphia Bar for nearly fifty years, during a period in which America's lawyers played an important part in fashioning the post-Revolutionary legal structure. Though contemporaries considered him to be an exceptional member of the legal profession on account of his command of history, his talent for learning languages, and most importantly, because of his scholarly knowledge of civil and foreign law (two legal areas little known to America's common law trained lawyers), he is largely ignored by historians of early American law. The best explanation for this oversight is his specialization in civil and foreign law, as most legal historians believe that, outside of early legal education, these areas of law contributed little or not at all to the formation of the American legal system. While the purpose of this thesis is to examine du Ponceau's contributions to the development of American law through his uncommon knowledge of civil and foreign law, this examination also suggests that these legal areas played greater roles in the origins of American law than previously thought. Chapter one explores the first decades of du Ponceau's professional life in America and traces the path by which he gained recognition as a scholar of the aforementioned legal areas. The turbulent international relations with Europe that characterized the post-Revolutionary period generated a constant supply of cases pertaining to international, maritime, and commercial law. Du Ponceau's knowledge of foreign languages gave him access to important foreign legal sources, as well as to clients in need of his specialized legal skills. Though certainly benefitting from his unique position among his fellow lawyers, du Ponceau set aside time amidst his professional responsibilities to help fill what he recognized as a gap in American jurisprudential knowledge. Beginning around 1800, he promoted and contributed to the movement within the legal profession to translate important foreign and civil law works into English. He also made his specialized legal and historical knowledge available to U.S. political leaders. Chapter two illustrates how du Ponceau utilized his legal expertise, as well as his many years of experience practicing law, in his opinions on and his participation in the legal reform movement in the 1820s to codify American law upon a civil law model. Although du Ponceau had worked hard during his early years in the bar to familiarize his fellow lawyers with this alternative legal system, in the end he argued against transforming the United States into a civil law country. In A Dissertation on the Nature and Extent of the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States (1824) he set forth his positions on American law, legal reform, and codification, and concluded that the U.S. possessed its own common law. This American common law not only was distinct from that of England's through its numerous alterations and improvements, but also was capable of resolving America's legal problems. The evolution of du Ponceau's ideas on American law emerged through earlier published writings and private correspondence, most notably through his letters to his eccentric and pro-codification friend, Irish lawyer William Sampson. Though he failed to persuade Sampson of the superiority of the common law method, he succeeded in convincing leading jurists on both sides of the Atlantic, including James Kent and Joseph Story in America and anti-codificationist lawyers in England.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-4130
Format: Thesis

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Florida State University (11)	+ -
Hadden, Sally (9)	+ -
Department of History (8)	+ -
Department of English (2)	+ -
Hadden, Sally E. (2)	+ -

Jones, James (2)	+ -
Jones, Jim (2)	+ -
Koschnik, Albrecht (2)	+ -
Moore, Dennis (2)	+ -
Atkins, Jennifer (1)	+ -
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Childs, Matt (1)	+ -
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Creswell, Michael (1)	+ -
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