Background
Foster, Gaines Milligan was born on November 19, 1949 in Alexandria, Louisiana, United States. Son of William Garnett and Sara Milligan Foster.
(Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate o...)
Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate obscenity, sexuality, divorce, gambling, and prizefighting. It forced Mormons to abandon polygamy, attacked interstate prostitution, made narcotics contraband, and stopped the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Gaines Foster explores the force behind this unprecedented federal regulation of personal morality--a combined Christian lobby. Foster analyzes the fears of appetite and avarice that led organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the National Reform Association to call for moral legislation and examines the efforts and interconnections of the men and women who lobbied for it. His account underscores the crucial role white southerners played in the rise of moral reform after 1890. With emancipation, white southerners no longer needed to protect slavery from federal intervention, and they seized on moral legislation as a tool for controlling African Americans. Enriching our understanding of the aftermath of the Civil War and the expansion of national power, Moral Reconstruction also offers valuable insight into the link between historical and contemporary efforts to legislate morality.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807853666/?tag=2022091-20
(After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 ...)
After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195054202/?tag=2022091-20
Foster, Gaines Milligan was born on November 19, 1949 in Alexandria, Louisiana, United States. Son of William Garnett and Sara Milligan Foster.
Bachelor in History, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1971. Master of Arts in History, University North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1973. Doctor of Philosophy in History, University North Carolina, 1982.
Assistant professor history Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1982—1987, associate professor history, 1987—2002, professor history, since 2002, T. Harry Williams Professor, since 2004. 1st lieutenant United States Army, 1973-1975, Fort Detrick, Maryland.
(After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 ...)
(Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate o...)
Member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Mary Vernon Mikell, April 11, 1987.