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Books > Humanities > History > American history > 1800 to 1900
The Civil War thrust Americans onto unfamiliar terrain, as two
competing societies mobilized for four years of bloody conflict.
Concerned Northerners turned to the print media for guidance on how
to be good citizens in a war that hit close to home but was fought
hundreds of miles away. They read novels, short stories, poems,
songs, editorials, and newspaper stories. They laughed at cartoons
and satirical essays. Their spirits were stirred in response to
recruiting broadsides and patriotic envelopes. This massive
cultural outpouring offered a path for ordinary Americans casting
around for direction. Examining the breadth of Northern popular
culture, J. Matthew Gallman offers a dramatic reconsideration of
how the Union's civilians understood the meaning of duty and
citizenship in wartime. Although a huge percentage of military-aged
men served in the Union army, a larger group chose to stay home,
even while they supported the war. This pathbreaking study
investigates how men and women, both white and black, understood
their roles in the People's Conflict. Wartime culture created
humorous and angry stereotypes ridiculing the nation's cowards,
crooks, and fools, while wrestling with the challenges faced by
ordinary Americans. Gallman shows how thousands of authors,
artists, and readers together created a new set of rules for
navigating life in a nation at war.
James M. McPherson is acclaimed as one of the finest historians writing today and a preeminent commentator on the Civil War. Battle Cry of Freedom, his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of that conflict, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called `history writing of the highest order.' Now, McPherson has brilliantly recreated the war and battle experience of that war from the point of view of the soldiers themselves, drawing on at least 25,000 letters written by over 1000 soldiers, both Union and Confederate. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, these men remained highly motivated and idealistic about the cause for which they fought, regardless of the obstacles and deprivation that they faced.
Fourteen-year-old George Maguire was eager to serve the Union when
his home state, Maryland, began raising regiments for the coming
conflict. Too young to join, he became a 'mascot' for the Fifth
Maryland Infantry Regiment, organized in September 1861. Although
he never formally enlisted or carried a weapon, Maguire recounts
several pivotal events in the war, including the sea battle of the
Monitor vs. Merrimac, Peninsula Campaign action, and the Battle of
Antietam. During middle age, Maguire recorded his memoir-one of the
few from a Maryland unit-providing a distinctive blend of the
adventures of a teenage boy with the mature reflection of a man.
His account of the Peninsula Campaign captures the success of the
mobilization of forces and confirms the existing historical record,
as well as illuminating the social structure of camp life.
Maguire's duties evolved over time, as he worked alongside army
surgeons and assisted his brother-in-law (a 'rabid abolitionist'
and provost marshal of the regiment). This experience qualified him
to work at the newly constructed Thomas Hicks United States General
Hospital once he left the regiment in 1863; his memoir describes
the staffing hierarchy and the operating procedures implemented by
the Army Medical Corps at the end of the war, illuminated with the
author's own sketches of the facility. From the Pratt Street riot
in Baltimore to a chance encounter with Red Cross founder Clara
Barton to a firsthand view of Hicks Hospital, this sweeping yet
brief memoir provides a unique opportunity to examine the
experiences of a child during the war and to explore the nuances of
memory. Beyond simply retelling the events as they happened,
Maguire's memoir is woven with a sense of remorse and resolve, loss
and fear, and the pure wonderment of a teenage boy accompanying one
of the largest assembled armies of its day.
An innovative study of underage soldiers and their previously
unrecognized impact on Civil War era America. The smooth faces of
boy soldiers stand out in Civil War photography, their spindly
physiques contrasting with the uniformed adults they stood
alongside. Yet until now, scholars have largely overlooked the
masses of underaged youths who served as musicians, carried wounded
from the field, ran messages, took up arms, and died in both the
Union and Confederate armies. Of Age is the first comprehensive
study of how Americans responded to the unauthorized enlistment of
minors in this conflict and the implications that followed. Frances
M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant offer military, legal, medical,
social, political, and cultural perspectives as well as demographic
analysis of this important aspect of the war. They find that
underage enlistees comprised roughly ten percent of the Union army
and likely a similar proportion of Confederate forces-but these
enlistees' importance extended beyond sheer numbers. Clarke and
Plant introduce common but largely unknown wartime scenarios. Boys
who absconded without consent set off protracted struggles between
households and the military, as parents used various arguments to
recover their sons. State judges and the US federal government
battled over whether to discharge boys discovered to be under age.
African American youths discovered that both Union and Confederate
officers ignored their evident age when using them as conscripts or
military laborers. Meanwhile, nineteenth-century Americans
expressed little concern over what exposure to violence might do to
young minds, readily accepting their presence in battle. In fact,
underage soldiers became prevalent symbols of the US war effort,
shaping popular memory for decades to come. An original and
sweeping work, Of Age convincingly demonstrates why underage
enlistment is such an important lens for understanding the history
of children and youth and the transformative effects of the US
Civil War.
Tens of thousands of Irish-Americans fought in the Civil War, with
"Sons of Erin" playing a vital role in both Union and Confederate
armies. Award-winning author Scott L. Mingus, Sr., has teamed with
living historian Gerard E. Mayers to present more than 150 of their
most memorable personal stories. In this unique collection, readers
will find tales of courage, boldness, and humor. Many have rarely
been seen in print since their original publication more than a
century ago. Stories have been adapted for the modern reader, with
original sources cited. The anthology also includes brief
biographies of leading Irish soldiers and personalities such as
Patrick Cleburne, Father William Corby, James Shields, Michael
Corcoran, and the incomparable Thomas Francis Meagher of the famed
Irish Brigade and its battle cry, "Ireland Forever."
In Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern
Identity, Patricia Davis identifies the Civil War as the central
narrative around which official depictions of southern culture have
been defined. Because that narrative largely excluded African
American points of view, the resulting southern identity was
monolithically white. Davis traces how the increasing participation
of black public voices in the realms of Civil War
memory-battlefields, museums, online communities-has dispelled the
mirage of 'southernness' as a stolid cairn of white culture and has
begun to create a more fluid sense of southernness that welcomes
contributions by all of the region's peoples. Laying Claim offers
insightful and penetrating examinations of African American
participation in Civil War reenactments; the role of black history
museums in enriching representations of the Civil War era with more
varied interpretations; and the internet as a forum within which
participants exchange and create historical narratives that offer
alternatives to unquestioned and dominant public memories. From
this evolving cultural landscape, Davis demonstrates how simplistic
caricatures of African American experiences are giving way to more
authentic, expansive, and inclusive interpretations of
southernness. As a case-study and example of change, Davis cites
the evolution of depictions of life at Thomas Jefferson's
Monticello. Where visitors to the site once encountered narratives
that repeated the stylized myth of Monticello as a genteel idyll,
modern accounts of Jefferson's day offer a holistic, inclusive, and
increasingly honest view of Monticello as the residents on every
rung of the social ladder experienced it. Contemporary violence and
attacks about or inspired by the causes, outcomes, and symbols of
the Civil War, even one hundred and fifty years after its end, add
urgency to Davis's argument that the control and creation of public
memories of that war is an issue of concern not only to scholars
but all Americans. Her hopeful examination of African American
participation in public memory illuminates paths by which this
enduring ideological impasse may find resolutions.
Why does the Civil War still speak to us so powerfully? If we
listen to the most thoughtful, forceful, and passionate voices of
that day we find that many of the questions at the heart of that
conflict are also central to the very idea of America-and that many
of them remain unresolved in our own time. The Political Thought of
the Civil War offers us the opportunity to pursue these questions
from a new, critical perspective as leading scholars of American
political science, history, and literature engage in some of the
crucial debates of the Civil War era-and in the process illuminate
more clearly the foundation and fault lines of the American regime.
The essays in this volume use practical dilemmas of the Civil War
to reveal and probe fundamental questions about the status of
slavery and race in the American founding, the tension between
moralism and constitutionalism, and the problem of creating and
sustaining a multiracial society on the basis of the original
principles of the American regime. Adopting a deliberative
approach, the authors revisit the words and deeds of the most
important political actors of era, from William Lloyd Garrison,
John C. Calhoun, and Abraham Lincoln to Alexander Stephens and
Frederick Douglass, with reference to the American Founders and the
architects of Reconstruction. The essays in this volume consider
the difficult choices each of these figures made, the specific
problems they were responding to, and the consequences of those
choices. As this book exposes and explores the theoretical
principles at play within their historical context, it also offers
vivid reminders of how the great controversies surrounding the
Civil War continue to shape American political life to this day.
The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before
Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates
had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands
of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word
spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked
their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even
as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others
broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a
guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to
every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned
out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men
who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination
led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every
rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport,
even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to
keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered
adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union
troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom.
In this dramatic new history of the weeks and months after
Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was
less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military
and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and
continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the
deliberations of government and military authorities to the
ground-level experiences of common soldiers. Ultimately, what
unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the
groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years
that followed.
Although the Civil War and the Great War were fought only fifty
years apart, the perceived time between these two cataclysmic
events seems far longer in popular American memory: the Civil War
was the centerpiece of the nineteenth century and lies deep in
America’s past whereas World War I was a modern prelude to World
War II, a conflict still in living memory. Wars Civil and Great
breaks down these barriers of time and memory and shows how close
and how similar these two conflicts really were in the American
experience. Setting both wars in the long nineteenth century, the
authors of this volume reveal how the Civil War casts its long
shadow over the events of World War I. President Wilson looked to
Lincoln during the Great War for guidance on national leadership at
wartime; General John J. Pershing remembered the Civil War of his
childhood and sought to learn lessons from Grant and McClellan; and
the doughboys on European battlefields held firm to the culture of
honor and duty that had inspired their forefathers to take up arms.
In this volume, every author as an expert in their own field
addresses four overarching questions: What legacy did the Civil War
leave? Did the World War I generation interpret the lessons of the
Civil War, and if so, how? How did the Great War change the lessons
from the Civil War era? And finally, how did both wars contribute
to the modernization of the United States? Wars Civil and Great
highlights the striking similarities between the two wars by
analyzing how the Civil War affected the American reaction to and
experience in the Great War while attending to enlisted men,
military officers, and political leaders. Other chapters address
the environmental effects of both wars, the wars’ impacts on
medicine and mental trauma, and the experiences of black American
soldiers during both wars in fighting for a country that treated
them so terribly. This volume, while at first appearing as a
disparate pairing of conflicts, deftly opens a new window into the
past and establishes an illuminating paradigm in the two wars of
the long nineteenth century.
This Civil War enthusiast's sourcebook organizes the crucial
details of the war in an inventive format designed to enhance the
reader's knowledge base and big-picture understanding of key events
and outcomes. The war's causes, political and economic issues,
important personalities, campaigns and battles are examined. Nearly
200 reader challenges stimulate review of critical moments, with
suggested reading for further exploration. Photographs and maps
have been carefully selected to supplement the topic being
explored.
Gettysburg is a paradox: Today it is beautiful, still, and filled
with visitors, yet this national military park serves as a powerful
reminder of the clash of armies and the great loss of life that
took place here nearly 150 years ago. Gettysburg: This Hallowed
Ground explores this Civil War battleground through contemporary
photographs by National Merit Award-winning photographer Chris
Heisey and poems by noted Civil War author Kent Gramm. A brief
synopsis of the Battle of Gettysburg and a map of the battlefield
introduce the book. Gettysburg is a tribute to the soldiers who
gave their lives here and to the military park that is a lasting
reminder of our country's most devastating battle.
Though few people have heard of A.D. Smith (1811-65), this
nineteenth-century knight-errant left his mark on some of the key
events of his times in several states, personifying the
nineteenth-century impulse to move across the American landscape.
Smith's Quixotic trail began in upstate New York, wound westward to
the Ohio and Wisconsin frontier, southward to the federally
occupied Sea Islands of South Carolina, and finally ended aboard a
northbound steamer. In Ohio, Smith became involved with a
paramilitary group, the Hunters' Lodge, which elected him the
"President of the Republic of Canada." In Wisconsin he achieved
notoriety as the judge who dared to declare the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850 unconstitutional, lighting one of many fuses that sparked
the Civil War. In South Carolina he fought passionately for the
property rights of freedmen. Smith believed in civic movements
based on Jeffersonian democracy and republican ideals. Civic
participation, he believed, was a fundamental part of being a good
American. This civic impulse resulted in his enthusiastic embrace
of the reform movements of the day and his absolute dedication to
radicalism. A detective story set against the backdrop of the
volatile antebellum era, this gripping biography lays bare, in
funny, accessible prose, just what it is that historians really do
all day and how obsessive they can be-assembling a jigsaw puzzle of
secret documents, probate records, court testimony, speeches,
correspondence, newspaper coverage, and genealogical research to
tell the story of a man like Smith, of his vision for the United
States, and, more generally, of the value of remembering secondary
historical characters.
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the
Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit
photographer," William Mumler, took portrait photographs that
featured the ghostly presence of lost loved ones alongside his
living subjects. At a time when artists like Mathew Brady were
remaking American culture with their cameras, Mumler was a
sensation: the affluent and influential came calling, including
Mary Todd Lincoln. It took a circuslike trial of Mumler on fraud
charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a
fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge's
stunning verdict suggested no one would ever solve the mystery of
how Mumler did it. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of
America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new
technology while grasping desperately for something to believe in.
The admission of Missouri to the Union quickly became a
constitutional crisis of the first order, inciting an intensive
reexamination of the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Congress. The
heart of the question in need of resolution was whether that body
possessed the authority to place conditions on a territory-in this
instance Missouri-regarding restrictions on slavery-before its
admittance to the Union. The larger question with which the
legislators grappled were the limits of the Constitution's
provisions granting Congress the authority to affect the
institution of slavery-both where it already existed and where it
could expand. The issue-what would come to be known as the Missouri
Crisis-severely tested the still young republic and, some four
decades later, would all but rend it asunder. This timely
collection of original essays thoughtfully engages the
intersections of history and constitutional law, and is certain to
find eager readers among historians, legal scholars, political
scientists, as well as many who call Missouri home.
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