Office of Undergraduate Research

Jurisdictional Conflict, Legal Localism, and Military Vice Regulation in Civil War Era Occupied Nashville Margo Katherine Wilke Undergraduate Research Internship Program Spring 2025 Accepted U.S. History, Law On February 26, 1862, the United States Union Army marched into downtown Nashville, Tennessee, making it the first Confederate state capital to surrender during the American Civil War. From the state’s February 1861 secession crisis through the Union Army’s invasion and occupation of Nashville a year later, Middle Tennesseans experienced bewildering changes in public policing. The Union’s military occupation, an ongoing martial, political, and legal process (rather than single event), triggered conflict over the priorities and aims of city policing. During Middle Tennessee and Nashville’s occupation, individuals drew from preexisting, pluralist legal practices in response to evolving wartime spatial, social, and legal dislocations. Tennessee’s wartime authorities (civil and military) and local individuals improvised, challenging policing and judiciaries on principles central to law: citizenship, legal personhood, enslavement, loyalty, and criminality. This study excavates the process through which contingent, wartime jurisdictional venues emerged amidst spheres of martial law, federal executive authority, local policing and changing public perceptions of civil peace. Yvonne M Pitts Yvonne M Pitts Digitally locating and summarizing 19th century legal and military documents. May also include coding those sources into a database. HeinOnline Legal Research - https://heinonline.org/HOL/Welcome
Lib. of Congress Historical Newspapers - https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/
HathiTrust - https://www.hathitrust.org


Other relevant archival and historical databases 1. Familiarity with Purdue Libraries' search engine and digital databases, esp. those covering U.S. history. 2. Basic skills in using Hein Online case law database and/or reading legal sources. 3. Ability to read historically and independently identify digital archival sources that have significance to this project. 3 5 (estimated)