- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > History / World
Full Description
Traces the little-known story of the bitter contest for the fate of the University of Alabama after the Civil War
In The Battle for the University of Alabama, William Warren Rogers Jr. gives a fascinating account of the fierce struggle over the nature of the University of Alabama after the Civil War. Union forces reduced the campus to ruins as the war ended, and the university did not reopen until 1869. In the interregnum, powerful forces shifted the trajectory of the school. Alabama Republicans authored an egalitarian state constitution that delivered oversight of the university to the Republican Party. That set the stage for turmoil and confrontation. This book tells the story of that conflict.
In the next few years, Democrats charged Republicans with turning the university into a "radical" institution. They alleged that a handful of unqualified individuals had gained faculty positions because of their political allegiance, which resulted in the university's academic desecration. Professors were bitterly denounced in the state newspaper press and quite personally in Tuscaloosa. Administration of the university became part of the fratricidal political debate in the state. Political violence and questions concerning race, specifically the possible integration of the university, illuminated the controversies of the Reconstruction years. Many of these questions resonate even today.
This authoritative account sets events at the University of Alabama against the backdrop of what occurred at other state universities in the Reconstruction South. The University of North Carolina experienced controversy similar to Alabama's. At the University of Georgia, however, calm prevailed. This story of the incendiary events at Alabama's flagship university charts new ground and provides a revelatory look into the extraordinary partisanship that characterized the South after the Civil War.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. "I Do Not Know that the Un__y of Ala. Will Ever Be Rebuilt"
Chapter 2. "Peace Is the Indispensable Condition of Education": The Reinvigoration of Southern State Universities, 1865‒1868
Chapter 3. Faltering Renaissance
Chapter 4. "A Position Connected with the University Is Not at Present a Very Pleasant One"
Chapter 5. In Search of a President
Chapter 6. "Mrs. Partington and the Sea"
Chapter 7. "The Revered Old Intellectual Mother Will Weather the Storm"
Chapter 8. "We Have a University to Resuscitate"
Chapter 9. Courting the Commodore: The University of Alabama Lures a President
Chapter 10. Aftermath
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
