In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
In August of 1853, the southern states enthusiastically showed off the intellect of their Lieutenant Matthew Maury. Maury was a Southerner born in Fredericksburg, Virginia on January 14, 1806. He became an esteemed officer of the United States Navy as the pioneer researcher of winds, currents, and oceanography. He became popular not only in the Navy, but also in the civilian sector because his...
The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) was created in 1836 when funding was set aside for it in lieu of an arsenal in Lexington. Lexington lies roughly fifty miles to the northeast of Roanoke. It was instantly a source of pride for Virginia. Shortly after VMI was created, South Carolina tried to recreate VMI in their version which they called the Citadel. The cadets at both schools had rivalries...
William and Ellen Craft were both born in 1820s Georgia to, by the standards of that time, fairly sensitive masters. Neither was ever beaten by their masters, yet they still could feel the shackles of slavery. They met each other in 1846 by coincidence, and by 1848 were married. Their decision to escape slavery was heavily influenced by, besides their desire for and right to freedom, their desire...
William Knoth, an inmate of the Insane Asylum located in Augusta County, Virginia, escaped the facility and fled to Canada. He was described as being in a deranged state prior to his flight. Knoth had believed that the people of Augusta were hostile towards him because he was prejudiced against slavery. This is assumed to be the reason why he left for Canada. In addition, the inmate took with him...
Sorghum, a grass that grows in the tropical regions of the world, made its grand entrance to the South via Georgia and South Carolina in 1853. Sorghum competed with sugar in the market for sweet-tasting plants. Sugar could come from a variety of plants from several different countries such as Italy, China, and Brazil whereas sorghum mainly came from Africa. The South might have needed sugar for...
Even the romantic lives of slaves fell under the authority of white masters. Slaves, being the property of their masters, couldn't just freely marry at their heart's desire. There was a standard protocol. In his biographical narrative, Allen Parker recounted how the process would likely unfold on a plantation in Chowan County, North Carolina. If a male slave wanted to marry a woman from...
The main resource utilized by Furman University students and faculty for information pertaining to academics and university policies/guidelines is the University Catalog. Furman’s first catalog was first published in 1852, under the Board of Trustees President W.B. Johnson, with James C. Furman as the chairman of faculty. In its opening pages, the catalog lists every student at Furman and...
In 1853 Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the companion to her famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she titled it A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her purpose in writing the book was to explain why she thought that whites were still unwilling to take pity on slaves. While Stowe claimed that she understood that slaves were more than property, she postulated that other whites still saw slaves as sub-human....
The fate of alcohol was uncertain during mid-nineteenth Century. Alcohol had many opponents. Protestants thought it was a great evil. Many Southern whites were afraid of keeping alcohol legal for fear that it could cause great damage if slaves gained access to it. Tennessee was very involved in the temperance movement although it had not completely banned alcohol like Maine. However, in 1853,...