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Books > Humanities > History > American history > 1800 to 1900
When Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina savagely caned
Senator Charles Sumner Massachusetts on the floor of the U.S.
Senate on May 21, 1856, southerners viewed the attack as a
triumphant affirmation of southern chivalry, northerners as a
confirmation of southern barbarity. Public opinion was similarly
divided nearly three-and-a-half years later after abolitionist John
Brown's raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia,
with northerners crowning John Brown as a martyr to the cause of
freedom as southerners excoriated him as a consciousness fanatic.
These events opened American minds to the possibility that North
and South might be incompatible societies, but some of Dixie's
defenders were willing to go one step further-to propose that
northerners and southerners represented not just a "divided people"
but two scientifically distinct races. In Normans and Saxons,
Ritchie Watson, Jr., explores the complex racial mythology created
by the upper classes of the antebellum South in the wake of these
divisive events to justify secession and, eventually, the Civil
War. This mythology cast southerners as descendants of the Normans
of eleventh-century England and thus also of the Cavaliers of the
seventeenth century, some of whom had come to the New World and
populated the southern colonies. These Normans were opposed, in
mythic terms, by Saxons-Englishmen of German descent-some of whose
descendants made up the Puritans who settled New England and later
fanned out to populate the rest of the North. The myth drew on
nineteenth-century science and other sources to portray these as
two separate, warring "races," the aristocratic and dashing Normans
versus the common and venal Saxons. According to Watson, southern
polemical writers employed this racial mythology as a justification
of slavery, countering the northern argument that the South's
peculiar institution had combined with its Norman racial
composition to produce an arrogant and brutal land of oligarchs
with a second-rate culture. Watson finds evidence for this argument
in both prose and poetry, from the literary influence of Sir Walter
Scott, De Bow's Review, and other antebellum southern magazines, to
fiction by George Tucker, John Pendleton Kennedy, and William
Alexander Caruthers and northern and southern poetry during the
Civil War, especially in the works of Walt Whitman. Watson also
traces the continuing impact of the Norman versus Saxon myth in
"Lost Cause" thought and how the myth has affected ideas about
southern sectionalism of today. Normans and Saxons provides a
thorough analysis of the ways in which myth ultimately helped to
convince Americans that regional differences over the issue of
slavery were manifestations of deeper and more profound differences
in racial temperament-differences that made civil war inevitable.
Black Union soldiers and refugees fleeing enslavement during the
Civil War faced dire circumstances when they fell ill or were
injured. During the war, white Northerners routinely promoted ideas
about Black inferiority using the language of science and medicine,
and as medical care became institutionalized under agencies like
the U.S. Sanitary Commission, white scientists and health workers
used their authority and expertise to reinforce racial hierarchy.
When Black soldiers and refugees came under that authority, they
were routinely subjected to inferior health care and treated as
objects of study. This mistreatment continued after death. The
human remains of Black soldiers and civilians were dissected,
dismembered, exhumed, and displayed by white medical professionals,
and too often they were later buried in mass graves or waste pits.
Drawing on archives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, the
recollections of Civil War soldiers and medical workers, and
testimonies from Black Americans who endured the wartime medical
system, Leslie A. Schwalm exposes the racist ideas and practices
that shaped the Union's Civil War health care. Painstakingly
researched and accessibly written, this book helps readers
understand the persistence of anti-Black racism and health
disparities in both civilian and military settings during and after
the war.
Union soldiers left home in 1861 with expectations that the
conflict would be short, the purpose of the war was clear, and
public support back home was universal. As the war continued,
however, Union soldiers began to perceive a great difference
between what they expected and what was actually occurring. Their
family relationships were evolving, the purpose of the war was
changing, and civilians were questioning the leadership of the
government and Army to the point of debating whether the war should
continue at all. Separated from Northern civilians by a series of
literal and figurative divides, Union soldiers viewed the growing
disparities between their own expectations and those of their
families at home with growing concern and alarm. Instead of support
for the war, an extensive and oft-violent anti-war movement
emerged. Often at odds with those at home and with limited means of
communication to their homes at their disposal, soldiers used
letters, newspaper editorials, and political statements to
influence the actions and beliefs of their home communities. When
communication failed, soldiers sometimes took extremist positions
on the war, its conduct, and how civilian attitudes about the
conflict should be shaped. In this first study of the chasm between
Union soldiers and northern civilians, Steven J. Ramold reveals the
wide array of factors that prevented the Union Army and the
civilians on whose behalf they were fighting from becoming a united
front during the Civil War. In Across the Divide, Ramold
illustrates how the divided spheres of Civil War experience created
social and political conflict far removed from the better-known
battlefields of the war.
One hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired on
Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination,
and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's
social and political landscape. Louis P. Masur's The Civil War: A
Concise History offers a masterful and eminently readable overview
of the war's multiple causes and catastrophic effects. Masur begins
by examining the complex origins of the war, focusing on the
pulsating tensions over states rights and slavery. The book then
proceeds to cover, year by year, the major political, social, and
military events, highlighting two important themes: how the war
shifted from a limited conflict to restore the Union to an all-out
war that would fundamentally transform Southern society, and the
process by which the war ultimately became a battle to abolish
slavery. Masur explains how the war turned what had been a loose
collection of fiercely independent states into a nation, remaking
its political, cultural, and social institutions. But he also
focuses on the soldiers themselves, both Union and Confederate,
whose stories constitute nothing less than America's Iliad. In the
final chapter Masur considers the aftermath of the South's
surrender at Appomattox and the clash over the policies of
reconstruction that continued to divide President and Congress,
conservatives and radicals, Southerners and Northerners for years
to come. In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley wrote that the war
had "wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that
the influence cannot be measured short of two or three
generations." From the vantage of the war's sesquicentennial, this
concise history of the entire Civil War era offers an invaluable
introduction to the dramatic events whose effects are still felt
today.
"The American Nation: Primary Sources "resumes the narrative begun
in its companion volume, "The American Republic" which covered the
first eight decades of U.S. history, ending at the onset of the
Civil War. "The American Nation" continues the story through
America's entrance into World War II.
"The American Nation" makes available, in one volume, many of the
most crucial documents necessary for understanding the variety of
policies and viewpoints driving American public life during an
important, substantive part of American history. The primary
sources in "The American Nation" are relevant to the Civil War,
Reconstruction, the rise of a national capitalist system and
culture, the waves of reform-minded thought and policy that moved
the nation toward formation of the national administrative and
welfare states, and America's emergence as a major power on the
world stage. This period was a watershed in the history of the
nation--the time of establishing and consolidating national power
and laying the foundations of a national government committed to
promoting the material well-being of Americans. It was an era that
witnessed the development of the nation-state and the establishment
of the New Deal regime, which set the stage for the radical social
movements of the 1960s and beyond.
For decades debates have raged concerning the nature and impact of
post-Civil War Reconstruction, as well as the major popular legal
and ideological movements shaping the United States during the
period up to World War II. This critical era encompassed the rise
of mass-market corporatism and America's entry into world politics.
Recent social history has uncovered a great deal of information
regarding the daily lives of Americans during this era. Of equal
importance is an in-depth study of the public documents critical
for an understanding of the effects of public acts and
pronouncements on Americans. This volume will allow students and
readers to readily engage, without interpretation, the original
historical documents that have shaped the history of American
public life.
Some of the primary documents include the Emancipation
Proclamation, the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, the Sherman Antitrust
Act, and the Monroe Doctrine. Some of the authors featured include
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jefferson Davis, Robert LaFollette,
Eugene Debs, Jane Addams, William Graham Sumner, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Booker T. Washington, among many others.
Bruce P. Frohnen is Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern
University College of Law. He holds a J.D. from the Emory
University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell
University.
For all the literature about Civil War military operations and
leadership, precious little has been written about strategy,
particularly in the eastern theater. The Civil War in the East
takes a fresh look at military operations in this sector and the
assumptions that shaped them. With opposing capitals barely a
hundred miles apart and with the Chesapeake Bay-Tidewater area
offering Union generals the same sorts of opportunities that
Confederate leaders sought in the Shenandoah Valley, geography
shaped military operations in fundamental ways. Presidents,
politicians, and the press peeked over the shoulders of military
commanders, some of whom were not reluctant to engage in their own
intrigues as they promoted their fortunes. The location of the
respective capitals raised the stakes of victory and defeat. At a
time when people viewed war in terms of decisive battles, the
anticipation of victory followed by disappointment and persistent
strategic stalemate characterized the course of events in the East.
About the Author BROOKS D. SIMPSON is ASU Foundation Professor of
History at Arizona State University. He is the author of several
books, including America's Civil War (Harlan Davidson, 1996) and
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865 (Houghton
Mifflin, 2000). He has written numerous articles and appeared on
C-SPAN, NPR, and PBS's The American Experience. He lives in
Gilbert, Arizona.
CONTENTS: Introduction, Jean H. Baker and Charles W. Mitchell
"Border State, Border War: Fighting for Freedom and Slavery in
Antebellum Maryland," Richard Bell "Charity Folks and the Ghosts of
Slavery in Pre-Civil War Maryland," Jessica Millward "Confronting
Dred Scott: Seeing Citizenship from Baltimore," Martha S. Jones
"'Maryland Is This Day . . . True to the American Union' The
Election of 1860 and a Winter of Discontent," Charles W. Mitchell
"Baltimore's Secessionist Moment: Conservatism and Political
Networks in the Pratt Street Riot and Its Aftermath," Frank Towers
"Abraham Lincoln, Civil Liberties, and Maryland," Frank J. Williams
"The Fighting Sons of 'My Maryland' The Recruitment of Union
Regiments in Baltimore, 1861-1865," Timothy J. Orr "'What I
Witnessed Would Only Make You Sick' Union Soldiers Confront the
Dead at Antietam," Brian Matthew Jordan "Confederate Invasions of
Maryland," Thomas G. Clemens "Achieving Emancipation in Maryland,"
Jonathan W. White "Maryland's Women at War," Robert W. Schoeberlein
"The Failed Promise of Reconstruction," Sharita Jacobs Thompson
"'F--k the Confederacy' The Strange Career of Civil War Memory in
Maryland after 1865," Robert J. Cook
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War provides the most
comprehensive analysis to date of the American Civil War. With
contributions from over seventy-five leading historians of the
Civil War, the three-volume reference work investigates the full
range of human experiences and outcomes in this most transformative
moment in American and global history. Volume 1 is organized around
military affairs, assessing major battles and campaigns of the
conflict. Volume 2 explores political and social affairs, conveying
the experiences of millions of Americans who lived outside the
major campaign zones in both the North and South. Volume 3 examines
cultural and intellectual affairs, considering how the War's
duration, scale, and intensity drove Americans to question how they
understood themselves as people. The volumes conclude with an
assessment of the legacies of the Civil War, demonstrating that its
impact on American life shaped the country in the decades long
after the end of the War.
The John Lovejoy Murray collection of letters contains insights
into the experiences of an African American soldier and his
regiment during the Civil War. John Lovejoy Murray, a private in
Company E, 102nd USCT, died of disease in a Charleston hospital on
April 12, 1865. Through John Murray's letters, readers can
experience the war through the eyes of a literate northern Black
soldier. His is the story of the soldiers who did not receive
accolades for their heroic actions in battle, the ones who spent
more time on picket and fatigue duty than on the front lines, the
ones who died from disease more than they did of battle-related
wounds. Murray's letters are significant because they are ordinary
in some respects yet extraordinary in others. Some of the
activities and sentiments portrayed in the letters are hardly
distinguishable from those described in letters written by White
soldiers. In other ways, the letters represent a perspective
distinctly from a Black soldier in the Union army. Although many of
his experiences may have been typical, John Lovejoy Murray himself,
a literate, freeborn, northern Black man, was atypical among Union
Black soldiers.
The John Lovejoy Murray collection of letters contains insights
into the experiences of an African American soldier and his
regiment during the Civil War. John Lovejoy Murray, a private in
Company E, 102nd USCT, died of disease in a Charleston hospital on
April 12, 1865. Through John Murray's letters, readers can
experience the war through the eyes of a literate northern Black
soldier. His is the story of the soldiers who did not receive
accolades for their heroic actions in battle, the ones who spent
more time on picket and fatigue duty than on the front lines, the
ones who died from disease more than they did of battle-related
wounds. Murray's letters are significant because they are ordinary
in some respects yet extraordinary in others. Some of the
activities and sentiments portrayed in the letters are hardly
distinguishable from those described in letters written by White
soldiers. In other ways, the letters represent a perspective
distinctly from a Black soldier in the Union army. Although many of
his experiences may have been typical, John Lovejoy Murray himself,
a literate, freeborn, northern Black man, was atypical among Union
Black soldiers.
When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory
in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved
Black people-the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s.
By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation
consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate
States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites
living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and
deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by
death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to
fight alongside Confederate forces. In Choctaw Confederates, Fay
Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states' rights
mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery was what
determined the Nation's support of the Confederacy. Mining service
records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and
Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of
Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as
the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace
traditional masculine roles-including that of slaveholder-that were
disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By
drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate
states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union
and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between
Native populations and slavery.
Ulysses S. Grant did more than any other single Union general to
secure the North’s victory in the Civil War, but he did not
achieve that victory alone. Grant’s ability to inspire and
cultivate the talents of the officers serving under him was a key
factor in his remarkable military success. Steven Woodworth and his
fellow authors provide ample evidence for that in this first of a
two-volume reassessment of Grant’s officer corps from Cairo to
Appomattox.Covering the war’s western theater through July 1863,
Woodworth et al. highlight the character and accomplishments of
these men and show how their individual relationships with Grant
helped pave the way to Union victory. They demonstrate how each
officer’s service contributed to Grant’s success and
development as a general, how interaction with Grant affected each
officer’s career, and how the relationship ultimately contributed
to the course of battle and the war’s final outcome. These
portraits include the most important of Grant’s lieutenants as
well as some who are representative of various officer types. Here
are William T. Sherman and Grant’s other trusted commanders from
the Army of the Tennessee, revered mentor Charles F. Smith, and
difficult subordinate William S. Rosecrans. Here too are such
citizen soldiers as Lew “Ben Hur” Wallace and Peter Osterhaus,
de facto intelligence chief Grenville Dodge, and naval officers
Andrew Foote and David Dixon Porter, whose relationships with Grant
proved crucial to the war effort. Full of revealing insights
regarding military leadership and the special problems of Civil War
command, Grant’s Lieutenants adds a new dimension to our
understanding of the Union road to victory and gives us the true
measure of these dedicated men.
"The ghosts of the Civil War never leave us, as David Blight knows
perhaps better than anyone, and in this superb book he masterfully
unites two distant but inextricably bound events." Ken Burns
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a
century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin
Luther King, Jr., declared, "One hundred years later, the Negro
still is not free." He delivered this speech just three years after
the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming
that "the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame
or fighting the issues all over again." David Blight takes his
readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how
Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation
that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war
politics and civil rights protest, four of America's most incisive
writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert
Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his
support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy
officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson,
the century's preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the
searing African-American essayist and activist-each exposed
America's triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way,
demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.
Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America's sense
of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War
memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an
invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the
country's political debates, national identity, and sense of
purpose.
Organizing Freedom is a riveting and significant social history of
black emancipation activism in Indiana and Illinois during the
Civil War era. By enlarging the definition of emancipation to
include black activism, author Jennifer R. Harbour details the
aggressive, tenacious defiance through which Midwestern African
Americans-particularly black women-made freedom tangible for
themselves. Despite banning slavery, Illinois and Indiana share an
antebellum history of severely restricting rights for free black
people while protecting the rights of slaveholders. Nevertheless,
as Harbour shows, black Americans settled there, and in a liminal
space between legal slavery and true freedom, they focused on their
main goals: creating institutions like churches, schools, and
police watches; establishing citizenship rights; arguing against
oppressive laws in public and in print; and, later, supporting
their communities throughout the Civil War. Harbour's sophisticated
gendered analysis features black women as being central to the
seeking of emancipated freedom. Her distinct focus on what military
service meant for the families of black Civil War soldiers
elucidates how black women navigated life at home without a male
breadwinner at the same time they began a new, public practice of
emancipation activism. During the tumult of war, Midwestern black
women negotiated relationships with local, state, and federal
entities through the practices of philanthropy, mutual aid,
religiosity, and refugee and soldier relief. This story of free
black people shows how the ideal of equality often competed against
reality in an imperfect nation. As they worked through the
sluggish, incremental process to achieve abolition and
emancipation, Midwestern black activists created a unique regional
identity.
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