For this project we will be researching the secession of Western Virginia from Virginia during the early American Civil War. This will include the background and information of secessionists and the immediate aftereffects of the secession. Our goal is to provide accessible resources for people interested in West Virginia’s secession and secession movements in general. To accomplish this goal, we intend to build an easy-to-use website with multiple pages outlining the causes of the secession and the consequences of it. It will also include a citation page to ensure our resources are properly cited. We intend to use WordPress, StoryMap JS, and Timeline JS in building our website.

-Every Wednesday before class we will meet in person to discuss how the project is going-

Monday, February 13: Contract Draft Due

Monday, February 20: Project Contract Due

Monday, February 27: StoryMap and Timeline Due

Monday, March 13-14: Visit to Archive

Monday, March 27: Rough Draft of Website Due

Monday, April 24: Final Project Due
Each of us will be responsible for either the StoryMap or the Timeline. Each of us are responsible for constructing half of the pages for our website. We plan to travel to the archives together, so that the research will be split 50/50. Each of us is responsible for contacting and negotiating with one archivist for our archival visits.

Steven Ozment’s, “Turning the World Upside Down” (from Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution), asks the question, “was the Protestant Reformation a Revolution?” In order to properly answer that question, the author states that we must first ask, “why so many Germans had become so mad at the Church of Rome in the early 16^th century?” The German people experienced years of unanswered requests for limitations on the clergy that had taken advantage of papal authority, prior to the reformation began in the 1520’s. Many clergy openly broke the doctrine of celibacy with minimal punishment, while simultaneously making German Christians stand trial in Church Courts under the threat of excommunication. The Church perpetuated the cycle of corruption at the expense of the German tax payers by appointing generous “livings” for clergy unfit for Priestly duty.  Commonly, the rich could “afford” to pay for absolution, but “not the poor Germans,” due to corruption within the clerical hierarchy. From the view of the average German lay person, the Catholic Church had begun to lose its way when it began taking money from German Christians to fund the visible corruption throughout its ranks. That corruption involved abuse of Church power with bribery and extortion that extended from granting absolution to avoiding excommunication. Also, using funds to fund lavish and easy lives for Priests in towns where 10 percent of the population was clergy. Besides for social, political, and economic suffering, the German laypeople suffered spiritually as well. With unfit spiritual institutions, they suffered a short of spiritual crisis prior to the reformation. An example of disconnection between the German people and the Church was the unwillingness of the Catholic Church to move masses from Latin to the indigenous language.

Ozment make a good point that when historians look at the Protestant Reformation, they largely overlook the spiritual side of the reformation in an effort to try and separate religion from the political and social realm. The author warns that this is a mistake because then the reformation becomes portrayed as the least successful social movement in the early sixteenth century instead of the most successful spiritual movement. In part, the Protestant reformation was driven by social and political factors, such as the want for less Papal involvement in secular aspects of society including government and education. For example, the Protestants wanted more states’ rights and local control and less hierarchical authority of the Church. So even though money and power were important factors that does not mean that faith and piety did not play an important role in one of the biggest reformations in religious history. The the root of the issue was that many people viewed the practices and doctrine of the Catholic Church as incorrect and not how they wanted to worship their God. That extends far beyond the physical realm and goes into the spiritual idea of, “what is the correct way to worship our God?” We have to look at the reformation from a social and political perspective because of how the Catholic Church was intertwined with society in this time period, but the heart of the reformation was a theological revolution.

We have therefore established why so many Germans were mad at the Catholic Church, but we must now decide if the Protestant Reformation was a Revolution? If we are defining Revolution purely by politics and economics then, no, it was not a revolution because the Catholic Church did not have direct control over countries, just influence. If we define revolution in terms of spirituality, then yes, it was a revolution. It stopped direct influence of the Catholic Church in German governmental affairs and reduced hierarchical control of people’s daily worship to local control. The power then shifted to more secular entities in the form of Protestant councils, trading one hierarchical spiritual organization as the main authority for localized spiritual councils made up of Pastors and laymen.

Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon may have been fictitious, but the religious sect that the narrator of the chapter is a member of, a branch of the Exclusive Brethren, is real. The defining feature of the Brethren is that they’re both very sectarian but also highly decentralized. Congregations of Brethren have no defined leader, and anyone may leave if they have a problem with the doctrine. Both the real and fictitious Brethren have had many splits, in the novel some of them are often regarding trivial matters such as being able to listen to the radio or if male children should wear onsies.
Although the sects themselves can be quite restrictive of people’s inner lives, the way the communities are set up make it very easy for members to secede and form new communities. All one needs do is get up and walk out, and indeed they are obligated to do so because of the so-called “Bedford Question” wherein association with those who associate with believers in false doctrine is forbidden. So much do the Brethren take to the idea of decentralization that they do not even seen themselves as one united denomination.
Although the Brethren do not completely segregate from the wider community of Lake Wobegon, Brother Louie for example working as a cashier at the bank, there are important ways in which they live apart from them. For example, marrying outside the faith is frowned upon and thought to lead to temptation to join churches outside Brethren. Non-members are also forbidden to participate in The Lord’s Supper as that is seen as a taint on the sacrament.
This story brings up an important fact about religious separatism, that it is very often an act of amputation by pure of what they see as the impure part of the community. The case of the Brethren is illustrative because of how much power their religious organization gives to this impulse, but the question of salvation versus damnation is a reason many choose to leave religious denominations and join or form others.

In Klaw’s analysis of the communist utopian society at Oneida, New York beginning in 1848 looks at what we, at this point, would consider to be the typical religious cult, based in free love, communal lifestyles, and a personality cult around the leader, John Humphrey Noyes. One of the biggest aspects of the community was an equality both sexually and in roles between all the members, and an abolishment of marriage to have a sense of ownership of one person be thrown away, instead holding onto the idea of each member of the community belonging to one another.

This kind of community is something that we are very familiar with, the most notable being that of Jonestown in the 1970’s. This basis is something that can be tied back through many different communities, and we can look at as one of the repetitive parts of history that every century, or few decades, will rear its head to show us this hope for a more equal setting between individuals and a base in the communal behavior of human beings.

Unfortunately, as seen in both the Jonestown massacre, and in the situation with Noyes’ community in Oneida, there is a much darker undercurrent than the premise of the community would lead us to believe. The unfortunate factor in all of these events is the characteristics required of a leader to be able to found it in the first place. There is a narcissism in the actions and there is a paranoia in both the cases of Jim Jones and John Noyes. At one point there is a situation where Noyes flees to Canada in order to escape the persecution that he felt coming toward him due to his sexual liberation of women in the community by engaging in sexual acts with girls just as they reached puberty, as there introduction to the sexual freedom of the rest of the community.

During the time in which Noyes fled, there was a type of dissent within the community, in which people split off, getting married to one another, despite that this was outside the ordinary type of relationship expressed in this community. This complication led to troubles, even after Noyes came back from hiding. This kind of difficulty with the relationship structure is what began to bring up more real issues within the community as a whole.

Keillor’s account is an immensely entertaining read, not surprising considering he’s the mind behind the genius A Prairie Home Companion. Lake Wobegon Days is his novelization of several parts of the radio show, written more like a series of short stories with re-occurring characters than as a cohesive narrative. The piece satirizes secessionist movements in religious groups, starting with the secession of twenty-one gentlemen who left the Anglican Church in 1865 and founded the Sanctified Brethren, which then began to immediately break up into more and more, smaller and smaller denominations. The church members do not believe in any sort of hierarchy, so any individual has the chance to proclaim revealed truth. Such a structure gives way to trouble when different individuals have different ideas of how the Church should be run and its constituents behave.

The reasons for the severances in the Church are ludicrously minor – can women wear pants, should you take hot or cold baths, when can you listen to the radio, etc. Even after the reasons vanished – the speaker’s family started taking hot baths after all – the different groups would refuse to come to terms with each other. There was even chance of a division within their own family, as his two uncles disagreed intensely on whether or not speaking in tongues was still a blessing from the Holy Spirit present in the world today.

Even though it’s written to be humorous, the situation illustrates a few points about some of the reasons behind religious. The fact that the faith doesn’t have a set hierarchy of officials who have special access to divine knowledge definitely makes it more likely that there will be inter-faith turmoil, as any individual could claim to have greater or more true divine revelation and acquire followers. This individual and his followers would see themselves as the only true adherents to the original church – they are staying true to the path while the others diverge.  It is secession seen as preservation instead of divergence.

The fact that individuals are willing to split with their brethren over things that seem so intensely minor, such as the proper temperature of one’s bath, makes more sense when considering that for these individuals, even the smallest detail of your life can affect the status of your eternal existence. Running a bath risks the soul.

Thus, a lack of organized hierarchy and the eternity-affecting importance given to even the smallest interpretations of Scripture creates a perfect situation for religious division. Each individual believes he has access to the truth that will save everyone he knows, but they must follow it exactly. Obviously, religious divisions happen in groups with hierarchies (often as a response to them), and not every religious group divides over minutiae, but it’s a funny and astute look at how such splits take place.

In this excerpt from the novel Lake Wobegone Days by Garrison Keillor, the narrator describes parts of his childhood growing up in Minnesota as a member of a very small Protestant group known as the Sanctified Brethren. The Brethren were originally formed when they broke away from the Anglican Church in 1865 because they wanted to “worship on the basis of correct principles” (130). They were also against the ostentatiousness and corruption of the Anglican Church. This split and the way it is described in the novel suggest a few aspects of religion that are most important to the Brethren, including worshipping correctly in the eyes of God, having a full and accurate understanding of scripture, and determining and following the right doctrine. The narrator describes the Brethren as intensely scholarly, which clearly connects to these aspects of religion that are held dear by the Brethren. This intense scholarship is also the reason given by the narrator for the many subsequent splits within the original group of Brethren, which eventually broke into three main branches with many other tiny subgroups.

The Brethren seem to see themselves as a return to the true Christian tradition. Unlike the Lutherans and Catholics in town, who the Brethren view as showy and potentially immoral, the Brethren emphasize modesty, humility, and simplicity and focus on individual connection with God. According to the Brethren, “Christians do not go in for show” (128). Furthermore, prayer is viewed as a personal conversation with God, not something to be recited or read. As the narrator’s grandfather says, “If a man can’t remember what he wants to say to God, let him sit down and think a little harder” (126). The focus on a small, committed group and simple, individual worship illustrates the Brethren’s opinion of what religion should be. This is further illustrated in a passage from the Bible cited by the narrator: “Where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them” (126).

Given the Brethren’s insistence on simplicity, absolute clarity of doctrine, and an individual relationship with God, it makes sense that they formed out of a separatist movement and then separated into more and more groups. Their scholarliness coupled with their devotion to finding and following the correct way to worship and behave likely played a part in their many separations, as they would thus be unwilling to compromise on doctrine or allow for disagreements within the group. The focus on an individual relationship also seems to lend itself to much smaller religious groups. Reading this excerpt, I was interested how this separatist movement could fit into Sorens’ qualifications for secessionist groups. Obviously there is a clear group identity present for the Brethren, but their interests in breaking away seem more spiritual than political or economic and are thus less tangible than what Sorens describes.

Ozment heavily discusses the political side of Protestantism. He argues that the Protestants had just as many political and financial issues with the Church as they did spiritual conflicts. For one, the Pope would assign people positions of power within the Church, regardless of their capability to handle such a position, to the highest financial pledge. The way to be forgiven for sins was to travel to Rome and pay off the sins in an amount of gold. This was something the lower classes could not afford to do. Therefore, this movement started with the lower classes and later grew when the upper classes converted to Protestantism. The nobility of the time recognized the support they would gain from such a conversion since many Protestants were from more rural areas and were of lower income. Such an act would gain popularity amongst the masses, resulting in more political and social power.

This reading was an interesting contrast between the memoir (at least that is what it seemed like to me) written by Keillor. Here, Protestantism is described more in a moral light than in a political one. However, the dynamic between the Catholics, The Brethren, and The Cox Brethren in St. Cloud is really interesting. Keillor describes a moral hierarchy between the three aforementioned groups. The small group at Aunt Flo’s house (The Brethren) had no television whereas the St. Cloud Brethren had televisions in the places that they worshiped. This made The Brethren morally better than the St. Cloud group. However, the two Protestant groups were still considered to be better than the Catholics and the Lutherans because they were simpler.

The memoir reinforces Ozment’s claim that the separation of the Protestants from the Catholic church had just as much of a socio-economic motive as it had a morality conflict. In fact, it shows the intertwined result of the two by combining the expression of wealth with a more negative image while living and worshiping humbly is seen as more morally upright. This  stigma is hundreds of years old and is still held to be true today as Keillor points out.

Rugeley’s article on the Yucatecan Republic outlines the history of the movement itself and compares it with the American Confederacy. He explains that the conflict began in the 1830s after proponents of centralism revoked the constitution of 1823 and replaced it with the Siete Leyes system in which a chief executive made decisions supported by the military, the clergy, and wealthy landowners. At the same time, these men conscripted men from regional battalions to fight Anglo settlers who had recently formed Texas from Mexican territory.

This conscription led to an unsuccessful rebellion proposed by the merchant Santiago Iman y Villafana. His second attempt included removing church taxes from Maya peasants, and this revolt was successful. Opportunistic gentry pushed for independence and proclaimed it on May 16, 1841. Mexico’s apparent advantages in terms of wealth, manpower, and the Mayan desire for liberation were less effective than they believed, and they were forced to concede to Yucatecan demands for independence.

After independence the major splits in the Yucatan became apparent. They faced a downward spiral due to lack of resources and ethnic conflict. It is unclear exactly how their Caste War began due to the destruction of documents during the conflict, but the author believes that it stemmed from conflicts between Maya and Hispanic smugglers. The Maya resented increases in Hispanic violence and political power, and this lead to ethnic conflict which spread from elites to the most impoverished.

At the end of the five year war, the Yucatan peninsula reunified with Mexico. This time there were no terms, as the region was virtually destroyed. At the same time, Mexico was unable to establish punitive measures, as other regions of the country were still in open rebellion. The Yucatan’s political power was subsequently diminished by the division of Campeche in 1857 and Quintana Roo between 1898 and 1901.

In comparing the Confederacy to the Yucatan secession, Rugeley notes three major differences: Yucatan’s literacy rate was much lower and therefore lacked literary pieces to unite public opinion for secession, it had more division in terms of class and ideology, and their armies depended much more on the fighting power of the ethnic underclass. Clearly, however, both ended in defeat.

Rugeley’s analysis brings to mind Anderson’s piece on secession. Would he consider the Yucatecans an ethnic group, considering the fact that their movement was brought down largely by ethnic violence within their borders? Ideology and opportunism seem to be larger factors than ethnicity in the initial division from Mexico.

At one point, Rugeley calls the Yucatecan Republic “the longest-lived (one hesitates to use the word “successful”) secessionist movement in the history of Mexico.” (224) Yet in the same piece he discusses the separation of Texas from Mexico and the government’s attempts to put it down. I question why he does not consider Texas a secessionist movement in these terms. His discussion of the Yucatan Republic is fascinating, but I find myself wanting to know more about Texans as a separatist group.

Violence, Statecraft, and Statehood in the Early Republic : The State of Franklin, 1784–1788 by Kevin Barksdale

I found this section of the book fascinating.  I am currently taking a course titled “The History of Sports in America” and I never thought that it would be so contingent with this article by Kevin Barksdale.  In this course, we have discussed the Antebellum disgust towards such barbarous games like boxing or “rough and tumbling”.  The goal of boxing was to gouge out eyes and sometimes even castrate their opponents.  Much of those that participated in these violent sports were immigrants, mostly Irish.  However, immigrants and Americans alike dueled out for their honor in these boxing matches.

Barksdale includes this information in this article as he discusses the disgust and terror towards the Appalachians.  It’s interesting to read the analyzation of 2 separate governments that were fully functional inside the same state at the same time.  Those that identified themselves as citizens of The State of Franklin likewise did not identify themselves as citizens of North Carolina; and vice versa.  Citizens of the State of Franklin paid taxes, tribute, and followed those laws rather than the state of North Carolina and I believe that this is important to pay attention to for this class.  People inside this region chose where to commit their patronage to and this was a fully functional system for a couple of years.

I believe that it is important to note that Barksdale does not attribute the violent nature of The State of Franklin in the Appalachians to ethnic groups or large amounts of immigrants.  Violence was not engrained in Irish culture.  Barksdale attributes the violence of The State of Franklin to political instability, economic and political competition, and Native American resistance to western encroachment.

The separation of The State of Franklin was geographical, as a result of the Appalachians, and economical.  The western section of North Carolina declared its independence as The State of Franklin and created a leadership that they felt could defend and protect them from the ongoing Cherokee attacks.  This four year separatist movement inside of North Carolina was full of immense violence, as Barksdale explains.  There are many people that have attempted to attribute this violence to ethnic explanations, however, Barksdale goes into depth to explain that the violence stemmed from tensions of political and economic competition and Native American resistance.  However, once support ran out, Franklin-ites were forced to return to the State of Carolina.

I was immediately impressed with Barksdale’s way of discussing the history of violence in western North Carolina. All too often I hear or read historians and social scientist’s attributing characteristics and personality types to entire social groups without seriously thinking about what they are claiming or the implications that their words can have. It brings me physical pain every time I see an academic using this unfortunate part of “social psychology” to claim that “citizens of the American South was more prone to acts of violence because of their herder heritage,” a claim that falls apart to the slightest investigation and thought. So, thank you Barksdale for addressing this claim, efficiently refuting it, and offering a very interesting insight into the causes of Appalachian violence in the post-Revolutionary period.

I am always interested in learning about early American secessionist movements. The early Confederacy/Republic was nowhere near as cohesive and functional as many people think it was and it is fun to learn why. In the case of the State of Franklin and North Carolina, it was the same tensions that plagued Virginia for centuries (and itself contributed to the outbreak of the Revolution): the interests and needs of the coastal communities weren’t the same as the western communities. Barksdale does an especially good job explaining how Native American policies played into the tensions. It was a really messy time on the American frontiers, especially when settlers, state governments, and the federal government were all making treaties and deals with the Cherokee; a native group that was trying very hard to work with Colonial/American entities in a way that they understood.

Barksdale also did a very good job explaining how two separate governments were able to function in the same region of western North Carolina for four years. I think that this is a very important aspect of this article that everyone in the class needs to remember. Because so many of our topics are dealing with state secessionist movements in a relatively stable nation, it is important to remember that people have the ability to choose which arbitrary government they want to pay taxes to and vote for, as long as the system does not start to fail. Also, the secessionists are also part of the larger or older government until they are recognized, meaning that secessionists are often members of two states for a while. We see this happen during the existence of the State of Franklin. Both the State of Franklin and North Carolina were functioning administratively in the same counties for four years. And although the leaders of the State of Franklin did not recognize themselves as North Carolinians during this time, they were still benefiting from state infrastructure, trade, and diplomacy until they ran out of local support and had to return to the status quo or were arrested for violating the laws of the larger state.