Ginsberg Moses of South Carolina

A Jewish Scalawag during Radical Reconstruction
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8018-9916-4
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm

Franklin Moses Jr. is one of the great forgotten figures in American history. Scion of a distinguished Jewish family in South Carolina, he was a firebrand supporter of secession and an officer in the Confederate army. Moses then reversed course. As Reconstruction governor of South Carolina, he shocked and outraged his white constituents by championing racial equality and socializing freely with former slaves. Friends denounced him, his family disowned him, and enemies ultimately drove him from his home state.

In Moses of South Carolina, Benjamin Ginsberg rescues this protean figure and his fascinating story from obscurity. Though Moses was far from a saint—he was known as the “robber governor” for his corrupt ways—Ginsberg suggests that Moses nonetheless deserves better treatment in the historical record. Despite his moral lapses, Moses launched social programs, integrated state institutions, and made it possible for blacks to attend the state university.

As a Jew, Moses grew up on the fringe of southern plantation society. After the Civil War, Moses envisioned a culture different from the one in which he had been raised, one that included the newly freed slaves. From the margins of southern society, Franklin Moses built America’s first black-Jewish alliance, a model, argues Ginsberg, for the coalitions that would help reshape American politics in the decades to come.

Revisiting the story of the South's “most perfect scalawag,” Ginsberg contributes to a broader understanding of the essential role southern Jews played during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ginsberg, Benjamin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte des Judentums (Diaspora)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
1. A Southern Moses
2. The Making of a Scalawag
3. Reinventing South Carolina's Government
4. Speaker Moses
5. Governor Moses
6. Exiled from the Promised Land
Coda
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ginsberg, Benjamin
Benjamin Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University, coauthor of Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public, and coeditor of Making Government Manageable: Executive Organization and Management in the Twenty-First Century, both also published by Johns Hopkins.