ARCHIVE – Volume 20

ARCHIVE An Undergraduate Journal of History of Journal Undergraduate An ARCHIVE ARCHIVEAN UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY Volume 20, 2017 Volume Volume 20, May 2017 University of Wisconsin-Madison VOLUME 20, MAY 2017 AN UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY ARCHIVE An interdisciplinary journal featuring undergraduate work in history and related fields, founded in 1998. Editor-In-Chief Maren Harris Editorial Board David Clerkin Isaac Mehlhaff Hilary Miller Rachel Pope Lucas Sczygelski Madeline Sweitzer Connor Touhey Emma Wathen Faculty Advisor Professor Sarah Thal Published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Printing services provided by DoIt Digital Publishing COVER IMAGE This photo shows a side view of Bascom Hall from the southeast, taken after the portico was remodeled in 1895 but before the dome burned on October 10, 1916. Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Madison Digital Collections. CONTENTS HINDENBERG V. S CHURZ How Wisconsin’s German Americans Helped Defeat American Nazism 7 Kyle Watter BABY OR THE BOTTLE Effects of Social Movements on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in the United States 21 Hannah Teller THEOLOGY AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CHANGE Religious Revival and Abolitionist Sentiment in 18th-Century Connecticut 41 Alexandra Aaron SINCE YOU WENT AWay The Gendered Experience in World War II Letters 55 Emma Sayner ALCOHOL AND SOCIALIZation IN SLAVE SOCIETIES OF THE NEW WORLD 73 Luke Voegeli HOW STEREOTYPES SHAPED AN EPIDEMIC The Co-Occurence of HIV and Mental Illness 97 Marissa Korte FEEDING ON EMPIRES Piracy in the South China Sea at the Turn of the 19th Century 121 Lezhi Wang BASEBALL BEHIND A MASK Jews, African Americans, and Identity On and Off the Baseball Field 141 Ben Pickman NEW YORK’S MUNICIPAL Health CRISIS The Creation of the Health and Hospitals Corporation 169 Hanan Lane A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS The 2017 Editorial Board is proud to present the 20th edition of ARCHIVE. Created through student initiative, ARCHIVE is an annual collaboration of student editors using the skills they have learned as history majors to highlight their peers' works. Since 1998, the editors of ARCHIVE have showcased undergraduate historical research in a student-run journal. This edition continues that tradition. Our board members come from diverse academic backgrounds and value the opportunity to create a publication as part of a team. We have chosen the articles for this 20th-anniversary edition from a large pool of submissions from inside and outside the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We would like to thank our faculty advisor, Sarah Thal, for her guidance throughout this process, as well the Department of History. Within this issue of ARCHIVE, you will find a variety of historical scholarship. Hannah Teller and Marissa Korte analyze the intersection of social history and medical perceptions through Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and HIV/AIDS. Likewise within the field of public health, Hanan Lane explores cumbersome bureaucratic com- promise and health care in “New York’s Municipal Health Crisis.” Other articles track the wide-ranging impacts of imperialism and slavery. Lezhi Wang’s piece traces the rise and fall of piracy in the South China Sea at the turn of the 19th century, comparing the motivations of three different groups and the shifting imperial policies that led to their demise. Luke Voegeli’s analysis of alcohol and slave culture seeks to understand the societal perceptions, ram- ifications, and traditions that allowed both slavery and drinking to prosper in South Carolina and beyond. Alexandra Aaron demon- strates how Christian theological arguments of freedom motivated abolitionists in 18th-century Connecticut. Three of our pieces focus on the turbulent time period around World War II in the United States. Kyle Watter traces conflict within the German-American community coming to a head in com- peting Wisconsin summer camps just before the outbreak of war. Highlighting the power of baseball as a quintessentially American way of coexistence and assimilation, Ben Pickman tracks the mul- tilayered interaction between blacks and Jews on and off the field throughout the early 20th century. Emma Sayner’s essay analyzes how gender roles and expectations were conveyed in the letters couples sent to and from the home and war fronts. We are excited to bring you this 20th edition of ARCHIVE. For more information about the evolution of our journal, visit our website at uwarchive.wordpress.com. 6 ARCHIVE 7 HINDENBERG V. SCHURZ How Wisconsin’s German Americans Helped Defeat American Nazism Kyle Watter is a junior at UW-Madison studying History, Conservation Biology, and Cartography GIS. He is from Cedarburg, Wisconsin, which is near the town where Camp Hindenburg and Camp Carl Schurz were formerly located. Watter's interests include classical, medieval, and Islamic history, and he hopes to someday work for the federal government as a wildlife biologist. In 1936, Fritz Julius Kuhn, dressed in the uniform of the Third Reich, stood before a crowd of 1,500. German Americans in New York City to christen the newly organized Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, also known as the German American Bund, or simply the Bund. Kuhn, standing amidst swastika banners, told the fervent crowd that the Bund would unify German Americans into a single cohesive political and cultural organization to fight “Jewish Marx- ism and Communism.”1 In Milwaukee, however, German Ameri- cans united to oppose the National Socialist program of the Bund. The saga of rivalry and reaction in Grafton, Wisconsin, between two summer youth camps, the Bund’s Camp Hindenburg and the Federation of German-American Societies’ Camp Carl Schurz, ex- emplified this cultural civil war. The Federation’s programs at Camp Carl Schurz, combined with its efforts in the “German Athens” of Milwaukee successfully projected a German-American culture and Photo: The German-American Bund parade in New York City on East 86th St. on Oct. 30, 1939 attempted to gain support from German Americans./ World-Telegram photo. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, New York World-Telegram, and the Sun staff photographer. 8 ARCHIVE heritage alternative to the Bund’s Nazi Germanocentrism, accelerat- ing the failure of the German American Bund in 1941. Fritz Kuhn, a charismatic, naturalized American citizen, launched the Bund formally in 1936 in New York. The Bund rose out of the ashes of an earlier pro-Nazi organization, the Friends of New Germany.2 However, despite the name change, the German American Bund did little to disassociate itself from its predecessor’s National Socialist ideology. Kuhn’s inaugural speech outlined the philosophy and goals of his new organization: [The Bund] shall educate the American people to become friends of the New Germany…. the Germa- ny of today… the Third Reich! [The Bund declares] to oppose all racial intermixture between Aryans and Asiatics, Africans or other non-Aryans; to fight communism; [and] to break up the dictatorship of the Jewish-international minority...” 3 The German American Bund took up the mantle of National So- cialism in the United States. It was a homegrown Nazi movement, dedicated to the Third Reich, but independent of it. Many scholars of pre-war Nazism in the United States argue that the Bund was untenable as an organization and posed little real threat to the institutions of the nation. As Stephen L.R. Petrie of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire states in his thesis: “Ultimately, the German American Bund in Milwaukee was an organization inherently doomed to failure...”4 Another scholar, Leland Bell, professor emeritus of history at Central State University in Wilber- force, Ohio, writes that, “throughout its brief and stormy history, the German American Bund faced a succession of difficulties and problems...”5 The first opposition to the Bund came from labor lead- ers, who picketed their rallies and spoke out against their anti-labor ideology.6 The federal government, local and state politicians, and the American Legion all accused the Bund of un-American and subversive activities. Legislators introduced bills to suppress the Bund.7 The FBI conducted investigations of Bund properties, HINDENBERG V. SCHURZ 9 and the Dies Committee in Congress held hearings concerning the organization’s activities. However, modern scholars’ skepticism that the Bund could ever succeed denies the organization’s appeal to Americans, German or otherwise. These scholars also deny the critical role anti-Nazi German Americans played in counteracting the Bund’s attempts to equate German-American culture with their brand of National Socialism. As the threat of war loomed in Europe, the Bund grew increas- ingly fearful of how the German-American community would be treated by the U.S. government should Congress declare war on Germany. Their concerns were anchored in history: German Amer- icans and German-American culture suffered severe persecution and repression during World War I.8 The Bund twisted the fears of German Americans to fill its ranks. Trying to legitimize its self-declared role as the defender of German Americans, it organized events celebrating German culture. However, as Kuhn declared in 1936, the German culture advanced by the Bund was the culture of the New Germany, the Third Reich. They sang “Horst Wessel,” held Nuremburg-style rallies, dressed in Nazi uniforms complete with swastikas and the lightning-bolt “S” symbols of Hitler’s infamous Schutzstaffel, organized a Jugendschaft youth movement mimick- ing the Hitler Youth, and bragged about their audience with Hitler when the Bund visited Germany during the 1936 Olympics. In sum, the Bund portrayed itself as the ally of both German Americans and the Third Reich against hostile conspirators and reactionaries entrenched in the upper echelons of American society. At the same time, the Bund’s publications and rallies exploited Americans’ deep reluctance to enter into another war in Europe. Before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, isolationism gripped the United States.

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