Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Americans before the Civil War (regardless of race, creed, class, or gender) were not strangers to the complexities involved with charitable giving, and the obligations they entailed. They, like other societies over time and space, sought charitable actions that enhanced corporate identity in public or private life, or as Benjamin Franklin later identified those gifts that enhanced the “public good.” Pursuit of the public good, however, resulted in a myriad of negative outcomes that constrained personal liberty through institutional confinement, degrading labor, and physical punishment. By the eve of the Civil War many Americans were just as divided about the meaning of charitable action as they were over slavery. This dissertation retells the story of American charity as a story of shifting charitable obligations between benefactors whose priorities included new theories about poverty, wealth, and state, and minors who because of their age often became beneficiaries against their will.
Date
10-24-2019
Recommended Citation
Barber, Thomas Ewing, "The Value of Benevolence: Wealth, Philanthropy, and Police Power Before the Civil War" (2019). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5070.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5070
Committee Chair
Isenberg, Nancy
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.5070