Page 184 →Page 185 →Acknowledgments

There are many people who and institutions that I wish to thank for the completion of this manuscript who have supported my research, thinking, and writing over the years. A scholar incurs many debts along the way and is supported by many. I would first like to thank my mother Martha Westbrook Pickett and my father Otis Moncure Pickett III for instilling in me a love of history. Both parents studied, loved, taught me about, and talked about history often so the study of it came very naturally. I was not pressured to study in a “more employable” major, and my parents allowed me to pursue my passion. This is a gift that a lot of folks do not have. Thank you and I love you both, Mom and Dad, for this gift. They nurtured my interest at the dinner table and in political discussions and made sure historical site visits were common in our travels. Most of all both taught me to love my fellow humans and to care about my community, state, and nation. They also taught me to respect others and to empathize and as much as possible advocate for them and treat them with respect and dignity in the process. Thank you for your investment in me and all that you sacrificed so that I could be a professional historian. I am a product of you both. Thank you for always telling me you love me, that I am smart, and that you were proud of me. I have learned that not a lot of children are told this, and I am privileged to call you Mom and Dad.

I also was the product of some wonderful teachers. I had some truly great social studies teachers in elementary, middle, and high school. Mrs. Fetner taught me to love reading and writing; she “published” my first book, which was a helicopter version of Top Gun, in fourth grade. The Reverend Callie Walpole at Bishop England High School in Charleston, South Carolina, taught me Spanish and how to be a good human being who cares for his or her community. Mrs. Renee McCrae at Trinity Collegiate School in Florence, South Carolina, was an amazing US history teacher and presented me with the 1995 History Award. As an aside . . . awards matter. When I was contemplating whether I had what it took to get a PhD in history I came across that award one day and thought “you know what, I can do this. I have been doing it my whole life.” William and Mary Durst were a constant source of encouragement at Bishop England High School and pushed me to read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Page 186 →Tolkien, and Christian history. The Reverend Herman Robinson at Trinity International Ministries in Charleston, South Carolina, taught me about African American history and the importance of an oral tradition. Mrs. Herron taught me English and allowed me to write about Les Miserables and religion, Donna Logan introduced me to dystopian novels and stirred my imagination, Bill Runey is the only person on this earth who has ever made me love math (geometry), and he extended his instruction onto the coaching field. For the first ten years of my career I trained social studies teachers, and I will say that this group plays one of the biggest roles in our society for the next generation learning to engage history.

History was in the very water I drank in Charleston, South Carolina. My summers were spent on Sullivan’s Island long before Hurricane Hugo and before it became a posh haven for America’s wealthiest citizens to have second or third homes. Back then very few homes had air conditioning, most people lived on the island year-round, and I spent many of my days at the Fort Moultrie Museum watching the documentary and reading the exhibit notes all because it was one of the few air-conditioned spaces on the island. My friend Vernon Burton always says, “two things changed the US south: the voting rights act and air conditioning.” Both are true.

My aunt Lark was an intellectual force. She was the first in our family to earn a PhD, and she and my uncle Dan took me on trips to Italy, Spain, and France during their summer vacations. They were teachers and used their summers to travel, often taking young cousins in our family along. Their son, my cousin Ian, worked in South Africa just after apartheid and wrote me letters about the work he was doing to teach people to vote and help bring that country together. He is one of my heroes and has always helped me see the connection between historical study and its important link to work we must do in the present to be active agents in history. I am indeed the beneficiary of many special people acting intentionally in my life. My aunts and uncles on both sides of my family were always supportive, kind, engaging, and nurturing of my interests. Both sets of grandparents are heroic for different reasons. One served in WWII and Korea, was a medical doctor (Otis M. Pickett, Jr.) and another (Robert Alexander Westbrook) served in Korea and was an agricultural education teacher, educator, farmer, and business owner. Mostly, I thought they hung the moon because of how they loved others and how others were drawn to them. My grandmothers, Ruth and Martha, saw and lived through most of the twentieth century and both were sources of love, support, and teaching me how things were. One of the great honors of my life was coming home to work at Clemson Page 187 →and saying the prayer at my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday in Monticello, South Carolina. Home, land, history, culture, food, language, and laughter in the South have always been important to me and my family has played a central role in shaping me and this book.

Clemson University played a very important role in my scholarly development, and that continues to this day. Drs. Paul Anderson, Rod Andrew, Bruce Ransom, William Steirer, Laura Olson, Keith Morris, Edwin Moise, James Burns, Alan Grubb, Don McKale, Richard Saunders, Steven Grosby, and Nancy Hardesty at Clemson were amazing professors who challenged my thinking and writing at the undergraduate level. They are incredible and innovative professors and scholars. These individuals supported me, instilled in me a passion and desire for the study of history and religion, and played tremendous roles in becoming the kind of historian, teacher and writer that I am today. Further, Dr. Jerry Reel modeled a love of institutional history and Clemson history, and I would not be where I am today without his commitment to Clemson’s history and to teaching it so passionately and eloquently to Clemson students over the years.

At Clemson, I met my amazing partner, spouse, and wife, Julie Thome. Julie was in the honors college, had served as the student founder of the ring ceremony at Clemson, and was serving as the cochief of staff to the first female student body president in Clemson’s history, Rita Bolt. The book is dedicated to her as I have always called her “Jules.” Through Julie I met Peggy and Tom Thome (my in-laws). They have cared for us in ways too many to mention and they have supported Julie and me in times of financial hardship and in times of plenty. They have always encouraged me to pursue my dream of being a professional historian and have supported us every step along the way. They both love history. Peggy offers the best history tour one can get of Aiken, South Carolina, and Tom has become very involved and passionate about history and racial justice in Aiken. They are wonderful examples of service, of a loving fifty-plus year marriage, and are the best in-laws a son-in-law could ask for. I love you both and thank you for your support of almost twenty-five years. I am also deeply thankful as an only child to have a brother and a sister in Eric and Eloise Thome. I love you both and thank you for how you have always supported me, coming to my presentations and encouraging me every step of the way. The Thome family members are some of the finest people I know.

I thank Covenant Theological Seminary for supporting me in pursuing an MA in theological studies and letting me take church history independent studies with Drs. Sean Lucas and David Calhoun. I am indebted to Sean and Page 188 →David for introducing me to nineteenth-century Presbyterian history and to helping guide me throughout seminary and into graduate school in history. Sean, this book started because of you and research papers I wrote for you at Covenant Seminary in 2004–2005. Thank you for nurturing and guiding me down this road. I am also thankful to Wayne Sparkman, director of the PCA Historical Center and Archives, who allowed me to work as a graduate assistant in the archives. I gained much valuable knowledge and experience from Wayne and am thankful for him and the important work he is doing to preserve the history of Presbyterianism. Drs. Greg Perry, Jack Collins, Anthony Bradley, Michael Williams, Jerram Barrs, and David Chapman also played a tremendous role in my education at Covenant. They taught classes that challenged me deeply while encouraging and nurturing my love of history, theology, Greek, civil religion, and apologetics. I would not be the kind of scholar of religious history I am today without my educational experiences in seminary. These experiences helped me better understand the people I write about because they too had a seminary experience. To go through that experience myself helps me as I reflect upon what shaped their own worldviews and experiences.

The College of Charleston and The Citadel, my hometown institutions at which I attended basketball camp and summer camps as a child, were the places I continued my graduate studies in history through their joint MA in history program. I would like to thank Dr. Bernard Powers and the College of Charleston for offering me a graduate assistantship at the Avery Center for African American History and Culture. Bernie, this would not be a publication if you had not brought me to CofC and given me a great opportunity. Thank you for your feedback on my thesis and for being a friend and mentor throughout my entire career. I am thankful for Dr. W. Scott Poole, who served as my thesis adviser and was a terrific mentor and friend. As an adviser Scott Poole was incredible. He helped prepare a section of my thesis for a journal publication and was always available to discuss ideas and help with revisions. His careful attention as an MA adviser was second to none. Drs. David Gleeson, Jeffrey Diamond, Christophe Boucher, Blain Roberts, and Marvin Dulaney worked with me and supported me throughout this time as professors, mentors, and friends. I would like to thank my colleagues Mary Jo Fairchild, Kolo Rathburn, Miles Smith, Timothy Fritz, David Dangerfield, Kate Jenkins, Ramon Jackson, Charles Wexler, and Jason Farr for their encouragement, support, and important work over the years. I am so proud that many of us have gone on to earn PhDs, MLIS degrees, and other terminal degrees and succeeded in our respective fields. Many of us have earned tenure-track positions at great institutions Page 189 →or wonderful jobs in museums and archives across the state and country. We all continue to write and research, and I am so proud to know you all. It was a special group. I would also like to thank the Colonial Dames Powder Magazine Scholarship, the Charleston Scientific Cultural and Educational Fund, Mr. Charlton DeSaussure, Joe Riley, and the Avery Center for their financial support in helping me obtain my MA in History.

I thank the University of Mississippi Department of History for offering me assistantships, graduate instructorships, and travel support to pursue a PhD in history. I would also like to thank the UM Graduate School for a dissertation-writing fellowship. Drs. Charles Reagan Wilson, Ted Ownby, Robbie Ethridge, and Nancy Bercaw were wonderful to work with as a dissertation committee, and I appreciate all their work in guiding me through the process and offering edits and feedback on the dissertation. Thanks to Ted for connecting me with the St. George Tucker Society and for all you did to support my work over the years. Dr. Ethridge played a huge role in some of this research being published in the journal Native South. She is one of the most amazing people I have worked with, and her feedback on Native American experiences makes this book more robust and interdisciplinary in bringing an ethnohistoric and anthropological lens to the work. I am also indebted to the work of Dr. Susan Glisson and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. Susan is one of my heroes, and she supported me to present this research at the John Hope Franklin Conference on Racial Reconciliation as well as the Duke Divinity Summer Institute on Racial Reconciliation. I am so honored to have an article in The Southern Quarterly about her work alongside Governor William Winter in Mississippi, and her expertise in applying history to racial healing is second to none. Thank you to Dr. Darren Grem and Jimmy Thomas for their friendship and work on my chapter on Girardeau and the Lost Cause in Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Regan Wilson. Thank you to Drs. Sheila Skemp, John Neff, Douglas Sullivan-Gonzalez, Deirdre Cooper Owens, Marc Lerner, Jarod Roll, Charles Ross, Charles Eagles, Elizabeth Payne, and Chiarella Esposito for their support, wonderful classes, and encouragement. Thank you to Dr. Patrick Alexander for encouraging me and being my friend. I love teaching in prison with you, my brother. Helping cofound the Mississippi Prison to College Pipeline with you was one of the greatest programs of which I have ever been a part in my career.

I would like to thank Dr. Charles Reagan Wilson who was my adviser, friend, and scholarly model. I was one of Charles’ final PhD students at UM before he retired. He is everything a person could want in an adviser. Someone Page 190 →once told me not to just look for the best scholar in an adviser but the best scholar you can find who is also a kind person. I got the best of both worlds. Charles’s friendship, support, guidance on my dissertation, and subsequent manuscript was a source of constant encouragement. I am not sure there is a better history PhD adviser in the country, a better historian, a better mentor, or a finer gentleman. Thanks for leading the way, Charles! I am a big fan and always will be.

I thank my graduate student colleagues at UM: Evan Nooe, Miller Bill Boyd III, Amy Fluker, Tony Klein, Greg Richard, Rob Krause, Ryan Fletcher, Amanda Nagel, and Ben Guest. Many thanks also go to Drs. Kim Hartman, Susan McClelland, Rosemary Oliphant-Ingham, Ann Monroe, Amy Wells Dolan, and the Department of Teacher Education in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi who supported me financially and allowed me to teach courses in their department all throughout graduate school as a graduate instructor. Dr. Ellen Foster, a true friend and mentor, was incredibly supportive along the way in helping me navigate a different academic terrain while nurturing my interest in history, geography, and social studies. I will never forget her kindness and support. It was amazing to be a faculty member in the department and to work with wonderful colleagues like David Rock, Joel Amidon, Lane Gauthier, Mark Ortwein, Andy Mullins, Jim Payne, and William Sumrall. You all made me feel so welcome and were wonderful colleagues.

I also thank many scholars who had a tremendous impact and input on this manuscript. Thank you to Luke Harlow and his colleagues at the University of Tennessee for reading sections of the manuscript and pushing me to think in new ways. Thank you to Charles Irons for his kind feedback and thoughts. Many thanks to Don Mathews for always helping me process and think about C. C. Jones. At the St. George Tucker Society meeting in 2010, Bertram Wyatt-Brown was sitting in the audience and breathing through an oxygen mask. He was taking copious notes as I was presenting, and afterward he walked up and handed me a paper that said “Otis: I think your work will make its mark in Southern scholarship. Grand research, eloquent prose, excellent structure. What more could one ask? I would be honored if asked to write a comment for the dust jacket when it appears in print. Best wishes, Bert.” I thought I would melt right then and there. I am saddened by Don’s and Bert’s passing and wish they were still here to help me. Perhaps we will meet again one day on some blissful shore. Thank you to Regina Sullivan for reading and offering thoughts. Thank you to my Tucker friends Trae Welborn, Pete Page 191 →Slade, David Dangerfield, David Moltke-Hansen, Charles Joyner, Beth Barton Schweiger, Doug Thompson, Jay Richardson, Tammy and Matthew Byron, Jim Farmer, Jay Langdale, Robert Greene, Sarah Gardner, Ken Startup, Carolyn Renee Dupont, Trudier Harris, Ted Delaney, Larry MacDonnell, and Matthew C. Hulbert for always being there to support, work on drafts, discuss the book, and help me think through everything related to this history.

Thank you to the archives and teams of archivists for helping me conduct research over the years. I am especially thankful to the PCA Archives and Historical Center in St. Louis, Missouri; the Avery Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, South Carolina; the South Caroliniana Library at USC; the South Carolina Historical Society; and the good folks in Archives and Special Collections at Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston. Thank you to Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, Mississippi. Thank you to the University of Oklahoma Western History Archives in Norman, Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma Department of Archives and History in Oklahoma City. Many thanks to Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and to the wonderful folks at RTS Jackson for giving me access to their special collections reading room and the Blackburn papers for the years I lived in Clinton, Mississippi. I am most indebted to Wayne Sparkman at the PCA Archives for introducing me to Alexander McCleod. Special thanks to Graham Duncan at the South Caroliniana for his patient support for many years and Georgette Mayo at the Avery Center for her insights. Mary Jo Fairchild at CofC is second to none, and Jennifer Ford was amazing to work with at UM. Thank you all for your help in researching what would become this book.

Thank you to my fellow scholars in the Conference on Faith and History and at CCCU schools across the country. Thank you to Beth Allison Barr (and the Anxious Bench for letting me write for you), Kristin Kobes Du Mez, John Fea, Mark Noll, George Marsden, John D. Wilsey, Darin Tuck, Paul Thompson, Chris Gehrz, Blake Ball, Jay Green, Trisha Posey, and Karen Johnson. Your work as faithful scholars and truth tellers is inspiring to me daily. Thank you for sharing your work over the years, for coming to hear me present at the CFH, and for being “flying buttresses and pillars” (thank you, Lisa Clark Diller) all these years.

Thank you to friends at Mississippi College who encouraged me to keep at it, especially Steven Patterson, Martha Hutson, Jonathan Randle, Patrick Connelly, Glenn Antizzo, Harry Porter, Evan Lenow, Chris Weeks, Kirk Ford, Page 192 →and Ivan Parke. Thank you to Dr. Blake Thompson for your friendship, encouragement, and support. I would also like to thank Dr. Stuart Rockoff at the Mississippi Humanities Council for its financial support of teaching in prisons and to Randy Akers at the South Carolina Humanities Council. It is so great to advocate for the humanities with you over the years as partners and board members.

Thank you to my editor Ehren Foley and the University of South Carolina Press for their long interest in this work and their ongoing support and commitment despite many years of heavy teaching loads, losses, moves, and sparse times to write. Thank you for believing in this book and for helping “shepherd” it to completion.

Thank you to my Presbyterian History Posse: Jemar Tisby, Bobby Griffith, Ansley Quiros, Brian Franklin, Malcolm Foley, Alicia Jackson, Bo Morgan, David Irving, Nick Pruitt, and Bob Elder. Y’all were always there for me to help process this history and pushed me to continue. It has been an honor to present with you and alongside you at the CFH and the PCA General Assembly. Thank you for your friendship and willingness to speak truth even when it was difficult.

Thank you to Vernon Burton for being a wonderful friend, colleague, and encourager to get this published. Vernon was in the audience at the South Carolina Historical Association the first time I presented a paper on this topic back in 2008 and has pushed and encouraged me ever since. I am honored to call him a friend, mentor, and now colleague at Clemson University who has been my constant advocate and chief encourager. The SCHA ended up publishing a section of this work, and I most thankful to the editorial committee and peer reviewers with The Proceedings who named that chapter the “South Carolina Historical Association’s Best Article from a Graduate Student in The Proceedings, 2010–2012” Award.

To all my friends and supporters at Clemson University: Thank you. Thank you to Provost Bob Jones and Dean Chris Cox for giving me the freedom to research and write. Thank you to Allen Wood, Paul Lewis, and Thomas Austin for holding me accountable to write every week and for praying for me. Thanks to the Department of History for binging me on board as an affiliated scholar. Thanks to George Petersen, Dave Fleming, Brooke Whitworth, and the Department of Teaching and Learning at Clemson for bringing me on the faculty and giving me a teaching home. Thank you to my fellow colleagues in the libraries at Clemson University for making room for a university historian and for offering me a tenure-track role as an assistant professor of libraries. Thanks Page 193 →especially to Renna Redd and my colleagues the associate deans (Shamella Cromartie, Ariel Turner, and Elias Tzoc). Thank you to my awesome team in the Department of Historic Properties including Naomi Gerakios Mucci, James Bostic, Mairead Downes, Kristen Fink, Dominick Bucca, Charleigh Sprawls, Helena Harte, Eli Kernaghan; y’all rock. It is so awesome to be on your team. Thank you to Dr. Rhondda Thomas for your amazing work. To everyone on the Archives and Special Collections team at Clemson University, especially Drs. Nick Richbell, Tara Wood, Sean Baker, Carl Redd, Jim Cross, Olivia Brittain, Emily Shelton, and Laurie Varenhorst for putting up with me while I was writing this and enduring the “southern word of the day.” Y’all are an amazing group of folks to come in every day and with whom to work. You are more than that. You are like family.

James Bostic, this book couldn’t have gotten done without you. You carved out the time, created space, encouraged, and supported me through it. Thank you. You changed my life by coming to Clemson. I will never forget your advocacy, accountability, and pushing me every day. You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me in my career and the best operations manager, chief of staff, and colleague a person could ask for. I am forever grateful to you and appreciate you so much. I am excited to see where your journey as a historian will take you.

DeSean Dyson, thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to write and get this out there. You and I have spoken together and put this book into practice in Charleston, South Carolina; Charlottesville, Virginia; Jackson, Mississippi; and all over the South. Thanks for doing this work with me. I love you, brother. I love that we have been able to be and do this work together as brothers. Thank you for being my family. Excited to see what we will do together in the future.

Thank you to all my students at the University of Mississippi, Mississippi College, Gordon Conwell, and Clemson University over the years who have listened to me talk about religion and the discussions we have shared because of this research in and out of class. I would like to thank Mark Rushing, Cade Barlow, Jerry Ainsworth, Bryan Hendricks, Camryn Bruce, Mason Fahy, Solomon E. Zinn, Anthony P. Causley-Jackson, Austin King, Sarah Grantham, Emilee Robbins, Tiki Broome, Stephen Griffin, Sophie Abuzeid, Kaleb Jefcoat, Cami Phillips, Nathan Morris, Zach Ashcraft, Shay Gregorie, Patrick Schlabs, James Ritchey, Austin LaBrot, Aaron Boersma, Jonathan Kettler, and Drake Terry. There are so many others. There are thousands. Please forgive me if I left you out.

Page 194 →To my faith communities and church families at Fort Hill Presbyterian Church, Clemson Presbyterian in Clemson, South Carolina; Two Rivers in Charleston, South Carolina; Christ Presbyterian Church in Oxford, Mississippi; and Redeemer Church in Jackson, Mississippi; the Alliance for Mission and Renewal, The Old Stone Presbyterian Church Board; and the Girardeau Society. Thank you for being the hands and feet of Jesus to me and my family. Thank you especially to Reverends Jimmy Agan, Phil Stogner, Curt Presley, Les Newsom, Mike Campbell, Elbert McGowan, Rob Porter, Bryan Counts, and Laura Conrad. You shepherded me and my family well as I was thinking through this history and writing it. Redeemer Church, thank you for working so hard to model a multiethnic community. I will never forget my time among you from 2013–22. You cared for us so well in the loss of our sweet daughter Sadie Margaret, you were an honor to be a member of, and it was a great honor you called me as an undershepherd and ruling elder. Thank you for your willingness to hear me talk about issues of race in the church and difficult history in the denomination. Thank you to many of these churches and others in the PCA for hosting me for conferences on race and history, Sunday schools, and lectures on these topics. Thanks to the PCA for letting me present on these topics at Pre-GA history conferences and seminars and for inviting me to serve on the Race and Ethnic Reconciliation Ad-Interim Committee for the denomination. It is my hope that this research makes us all better and allows us to see the past more clearly so we can make a better future.

I want to thank Rick Hove, Barry Bouchillion, and my Faculty Commons friends in CRU for supporting our first and second Charleston Pilgrimage during which we got to walk through this history and use it to help bring unity, peace, and understanding on issues of race and the church to bear in a difficult time in American history (2016–20). I cannot thank you enough for doing that, Rick. CRU was investing in this work when it was not popular to do so. For that CRU should be commended as should Rick Hove.

Thank you also to Mitch Landrieu, Scott Hutcheson, and the team at E Pluribus Unum for supporting me with the first Eminent Scholar Award from EPU in 2022–23 and for supporting my podcast Purpose that Prevails, which examines many of the questions contained in this book. All the guests on that podcast have left a tremendous impact on me, my life, and my career. Thank you to Jenniger “Bingo” Gunter, Sam Perry, Howard and Kellie Brown, Dr. Robert P. Jones, Dr. Russell Moore, and all the incredible folks who helped produce like J. T. Tittle and his incredible team at Next Chapter Podcasts. I am thankful for Page 195 →my good friend and cohost Thomas Austin for your long support and encouragement. Excited to see where this podcast takes us.

To my scholarly communities at the St. George Tucker Society, the Conference on Faith and History, the Southern American Studies Association, the Southern History of Education Society, the South Carolina Historical Association, the Mississippi Council on the Social Studies, the Southern Historical Association, and my friends at the OAH and AHA: Thank you for giving me spaces to present my work over the years; share it with other scholars; and for offering me encouragement, thoughts, edits, criticism, and feedback to continue honing my work. The field of history is truly blessed with some wonderful people, and I have known many of them in my short career through attending and presenting at these conferences.

To my amazing dog Marcel Ledbetter Pickett who always loved me and put her head in my lap when she could tell I had a bad day. Dogs are the best, and every historian/author/writer needs one.

I want to thank my family. Thank you to my incredible children Martha Jane Caroline Pickett, Otis Westbrook Pickett Jr., and Thomas William Pickett. One of the great joys of my life has been being your father. Being a father has meant sometimes focusing less on my academic research and writing, but this was necessary and important to be with you, love you, shepherd you, and be your dad. That is the great honor of my life. The book is also better for having waited and not rushed to publication. The maturing process and time to think and work through the argument has made the manuscript better. Thank you for putting up with all my talks, teaching, travel, and for enduring all the informal “history lectures” you received over the years. I hope one day you will understand how your own history has shaped you and how broader forces in history have shaped who we are as a people. Also your local history and your family shape you. Don’t be ashamed of who you are. Learn about who you are and try to make the world a better place. I know that you will. You are each special, unique, and wonderful people, and I see pieces of me and your mother in each of you. At different times in your life I was working on what would become this book. Martha Jane, the first months of your life I was putting the finishing touches on my thesis; Otis, when you were born, I was just starting my dissertation; and Thomas, you came right after I finished my dissertation. I was honored to help raise y’all in Oxford, Mississippi; later in Clinton, Mississippi; and now here in Clemson, South Carolina. Your smiling faces, laughs, warmth, and voices bring me great joy. I know you will do incredible things, Page 196 →and I cannot wait to sit back and watch. I love you. May God bless you and always be with you wherever you go. May you also find work that is as satisfying to you as being a historian has been for me.

Julie, my everything, this book is dedicated to you and the ways you shepherd my heart, soul, and mind and is written in your honor. I would not have become a history major if it were not for you. I would not have made it through two master’s degrees and a PhD if it were not for you. I would not have made it through being a graduate instructor, clinical assistant professor, assistant professor, tenured associate professor, university historian, clinical assistant professor again, affiliated scholar, tenure-track assistant professor again, and living this life if it were not for you. We have been through a lot: broken backs, sickness, the death of a child, broken teeth, every medical issue one can imagine, and not only have you gotten more beautiful, I fall in love with you more every day. You have walked so faithfully with me through it all. You daily make me a better person, and you are the absolute love of my life. There is no one else, only Jules. I love you my sweet, wonderful, amazing, beautiful wife.