Report: West Point Undergraduate Historical Review, Volume 008 (Spring 2018)
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Item Report: West Point Undergraduate Historical Review Volume 8 (Spring 2018)(West Point Press, 2018) Editing TeamReport is a non-profit publication produced by undergraduate cadets at the United States Military Academy. It accepts and encourages submissions from undergraduates in the fall and spring. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.Item Front Matter(West Point Press, 2018) Editing TeamThe Editorial Board would like to thank the faculty of the History Department for their submission recommendations, all the students who submitted papers, and Captain David Krueger for his advice and guidance on historical scholarship. Without their help, Report would not have been possible.Item "Politics Drives Men Crazy”: How the Nationally Unifying Assassinations Of Abraham Lincoln And James Garfield Facilitated The Public Support Of Grover Cleveland’s Increased Presidential Security(West Point Press, 2018) Arata, Nicholas"Salem, Oregon’s Capital Journal asked a hard and daunting question in its evening edition on the first day of 1894: “Lincoln and Garfield were assassinated by men crazed with political excitement, and filled with the insane idea of redressing the wrongs of suffering masses. Will Cleveland meet that fate?”1 Within thirty years, politically motivated gunmen had assassinated two sitting U.S. presidents, and nobody wanted President-elect Grover Cleveland to become the third. Even though no Americans wanted such a disaster to occur again, the government made no changes to the personal protection of the president. Until Cleveland’s second presidency, few security protocols existed to protect the president from would-be threats and assassins, but then-President Grover Cleveland set about correcting that potentially dangerous mistake in order to protect himself and his family..."Item The Virginia Slave Code Of 1705(West Point Press, 2018) Reed, Patrick"The English colony of Virginia was founded upon the shoulders of those in bondage. Most whites came to Virginia as indentured servants by way of the headright system, and nearly all blacks came as slaves. However, Virginia in the early to mid-1600s lacked clear racial standards as people of all races enjoyed some degree of upward social mobility. Today colonial Virginia is usually remembered for its heavy reliance on institutionalized racial slavery, but its social dynamic did not always reflect this viewpoint. While blacks were subject to a few discriminatory practices as early as the 1640s, they were not victims of the systematic racism that came to define the colony as early as 1705.1 Interracial marriage was common and interracial couples who had offspring, though officially viewed as illegitimate children, were not subject to legal punishment.2 It makes sense, then, to question how Virginia came to be one of the most efficiently racist slave societies in the Americas...."Item The Forces Behind Killing(West Point Press, 2018) Weisbrook, Joseph"As long as there has been mankind, there has been violence. Sometimes between individuals, sometimes between large groups or nations. There is no question that humanity has a high capacity for violence towards its fellow man. However, in some cases, that violence is almost completely one sided against a group who lacks the ability to defend themselves, and the Holocaust is often viewed as the epitome of that type of violence. Why do many people passively sit back while terrible events occur, while others decide to participate as cogs in the murder machine? Using primarily the Holocaust as a case study, it is apparent that the “otherness” of the victims, propaganda, and social pressures were the main drivers for the Nazis to commit genocide...."Item Conducator: Nicolae Ceausescu and The Appropriation Of Romanian National Identity Under Socialism(West Point Press, 2018) Berardino, Daniel"In 1968, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia to counter the liberal reforms of Alexander Dubcek. (1) Of the Warsaw Pact Leaders, only Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania publicly condemned the invasion, winning praise from the West and China. Even though he was, in this one instance, willing to oppose Soviet domination of the Eastern bloc, he was no reformer. Ceausescu truly believed in the Stalinist cause. His harsh domestic policies reflected the simple, ideological thinking of his revolutionary peasant heritage. Born impoverished, Ceausescu joined the communists upon moving to Bucharest and because of this political activity, spent much of his youth in Romanian prison. After WWII Soviet troops elevated the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) to power in the country. As a result, Romanians widely viewed the RCP as illegitimate and foreign dominated due to its external imposition. The RCP struggled to change this view. Starting in 1964, after Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s death, Ceausescu energetically pursued Stalinist policies at home while attempting to appeal to Romanian nationalism abroad. Rejecting internal reform, the RCP under Ceausescu attempted to assert its political legitimacy by acting independently in foreign policy for the Romanian national interest...."