Scott Nelson

The University of Georgia, History, Faculty Member

College of William and Mary, Lyon G. Tyler Department of History, Faculty Member

Followers

328

Following

334

Co-author

Public Views

Trained in US labor, African-American, and financial history in the 1980s I have broadened into history of science, cultural history, and the broader history of the 19th century world.
Address: Dept of History
University of Georgia
LeConte Hall, 250 Baldwin St
Athens, GA 30602

less

InterestsView All (24)

Uploads

Books by Scott Nelson

Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend

The ballad "John Henry" is the most recorded folk song in American history and John Henry--the mi... more The ballad "John Henry" is the most recorded folk song in American history and John Henry--the mighty railroad man who could blast through rock faster than a steam drill--is a towering figure in our culture.
In Steel Drivin' Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts the true story of the man behind the iconic American hero, telling the poignant tale of a young Virginia convict who died working on one of the most dangerous enterprises of the time, the first rail route through the Appalachian Mountains.

A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters

From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary War debt, to an ill-... more From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary War debt, to an ill-conceived 1815 plan to sell English coats to Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that precipitated the Panic of 1857, A Nation of Deadbeats (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), by Scott Reynolds Nelson, offers a crash course in the history of financial panics in the U.S. — and a concise explanation of the first principles that caused them all.

Download

A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War

by Scott Nelson and C. Sheriff

Claiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless nu... more

Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the sout... more During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson.

Papers by Scott Nelson

Nelson, 'Django' Untangled the Legend of the Bad Black Man - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Chronicle of Higher Education, 2013

Quentin Tarantino's Django relies on tropes that have long been a part of the working-class Afric... more

Download

The Confederacy Serves the Southern: The Construction of the Southern Railway Network, 1861-65

Civil War History, 1995

The South" or "the southland" or the "southern states" were understandable abstractions before th... more The South" or "the southland" or the "southern states" were understandable abstractions before the Civil War, often used by railway promoters in construction projects that were "nearly complete." Promoters saw the "South" as a region that could be bound together by railroads and given access to the West...Taken together, this network of routes cultivated by the Confederacy may have been the rebellion's most lasting geographical and physical legacy.

Download

Gilded Age History, syllabus

syllabus for History 351: The Gilded Age

Download

"The Soul of Invention" (on Adam Smith, technological redundancy and MOOCs)

Chronicle of Higher Education, Mar 25, 2013

Download

Red Strings and Half-Brothers: Civil Wars in Alamance County, North Carolina, 1861-1871

Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South, 2001

Download

A Storm of Cheap Goods: New American Commodities and the Panic of 1873

Journal of the GIlded Age and Progressive Era, Sep 28, 2011

compares panic of 1873 to 2008 downturn: both began with mortgage bubbles and ended in depression

Download

Attribution Lacking, or the day a Dutch newspaper stole my grandmother

Chronicle of Higher Education

The Real Great Depression

Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct 1, 2008

Compares panic of 1873 and the financial crisis of 2008. Went viral on October 1, 2008 and transl... more

Download

After Slavery: Forced Drafts of Irish and Chinese Labor in the American Civil War, or The Search for Liquid Labor

Many Middle Passages Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, Sep 1, 2007

Compares forced drafting of Irish and Chinese laborers during the American Civil War

Download

An American War of Incarceration: Guerilla Warfare, Occupation, and Imprisonment in the American South, 1863-1865

Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern, Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire, Nov 17, 2009

explores the constellation of law, authority and state power that authorized the use of force aga... more

Download

Livestock, Boundaries, and Public Space in Spartanburg: African American Men, Elite White Women, and the Spectacle of Conjugal Relations

Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, 1999

A survey of the sexual landscape of the Spartanburg region in the post-war period must start with... more A survey of the sexual landscape of the Spartanburg region in the post-war period must start with the history of livestock: cows, sheep, pigs, and horses. 1 Before the Civil War, large farm animals outnumbered people in this South Carolina county by almost four to one. Their history of the coming of war, the human pilgrimages across the state, and the emergence of the most violent Klan in the South would likely be very different from the history we have received from scholars who rely on human records. But I cannot provide that story. I jack facility with archaeological records, and would find working through the remains of nineteenth-century livestock a daunting and smelly task. Nevertheless I will risk anthropomorphism in an effort to describe the way in which these mute animals may give us another way into post-war Spartanburg-if not their perspective, then perhaps their place, in the reshaping of race, class, and gender boundaries in bloody Spartanburg.

Download

Drafts by Scott Nelson

The Ordeal of Eugene Debs: The Panic of 1893, the Pullman Strike, and the Origins of the Progressive Movement

Workers in Hard Times: A Long View of Economic Crises, 2014

The American panic of 1893 had origins that were almost purely fiscal. No grand conflict between ... more The American panic of 1893 had origins that were almost purely fiscal. No grand conflict between workers or owners started it; no fear of a growing socialist movement extended it. Yet within a year the 1893 panic ushered in one of the most famous labor conflicts in American history. The American Railway Union’s support for workers locked out of the Pullman Palace Car Company became a titanic general strike centered in Chicago. “The Pullman strike,” recalled reformer Jane Addams, “afforded much illumination to many Chicago people. Before it, there had been nothing in my experience to reveal that distinct cleavage of society, which a general strike at least momentarily affords.” What began as international doubt about the dollar’s convertibility into gold became by 1894 a test of Eugene Debs’s new union, then an abortive strike, then the largest-ever shift in Congressional representation, and finally the beginnings of the political movement we now call Progressivism.

Download

Scott Nelson

Uploads

Books by Scott Nelson

Papers by Scott Nelson

Drafts by Scott Nelson

Log In