In Belles and Poets, Julia Nitz analyzes the Civil War diary writing of eight white women from the U.S. South, focusing specifically on how they made sense of the world around them through references to literary texts. Nitz finds that many diarists incorporated allusions to poems, plays, and novels, especially works by Shakespeare and the British Romantic poets, in moments of uncertainty and crisis. While previous studies have overlooked or neglected such literary allusions in personal writings, regarding them as mere embellishments or signs of elite social status, Nitz reveals that these references functioned as codes through which women diarists contemplated their roles in society and addressed topics related to slavery, Confederate politics, gender, and personal identity. Nitz's innovative study of identity construction and literary intertextuality focuses on diaries written by the following women: Eliza Frances (Fanny) Andrews of Georgia (1840-1931), Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut of South Carolina (1823-1886), Malvina Sara Black Gist of South Carolina (1842-1930), Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan of Louisiana (1842-1909), Cornelia Peake McDonald of Virginia (1822-1909), Judith White Brockenbrough McGuire of Virginia (1813-1897), Sarah Katherine (Kate) Stone of Louisiana (1841-1907), and Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas of Georgia (1843-1907). These women's diaries circulated in postwar commemoration associations, and several saw publication. The public acclaim they received helped shape the collective memory of the war and, according to Nitz, further legitimized notions of racial supremacy and segregation. Comparing and contrasting their own lives to literary precedents and fictional role models allowed the diarists to process the privations of war, the loss of family members, and the looming defeat of the Confederacy. Belles and Poets establishes the extent to which literature offered a means of exploring ideas and convictions about class, gender, and racial hierarchies in the Civil War-era South. Nitz's work shows that literary allusions in wartime diaries expose the ways in which some white southern women coped with the war and its potential threats to their way of life.

This essential reference work helps promote a thorough understanding of the conflict that divided the nation and proved more costly in terms of human suffering than any in American history. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, American Civil War: The Essential Reference Guide offers an accessible, single-volume source on the conflict that helped define the American nation. Enhanced by historical illustrations and documents, this guide promotes a nuanced understanding of the events, personalities, and issues related to the war and its aftermath. In addition to an A-Z encyclopedia of major leaders, events, and issues, this work includes a comprehensive overview essay on the war, plus separate essays by a prominent Civil War historian on its causes and consequences. Perspective essays tackle such widely debated issues as the primary cause of the Confederate defeat and will inspire readers to exercise critical thinking skills. Biographies of military and political leaders provide insights about those individuals who played major roles in the conflict, while entries on key battles showcase the strategies of both sides as they struggled to emerge victorious. 100 entries on leaders, battles, and more Approximately 20 primary source documents with introductions that provide context to the text Numerous images and maps A detailed chronology that will help students place important events related to the Civil War that occurred before, during, and after the conflict A comprehensive bibliography of print resources

Lieutenant-General James Longstreet, commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, was a brilliant tactician and strategist. Prior to the Civil War there were many technological developments, of which the rifled musket and cannon, rail transport and the telegraph were a few. In addition, the North enjoyed a great advantage in manpower and resources. Longstreet adapted to these technological changes and the disparity between the belligerents making recommendations on how the war should be fought. Longstreet made a leap of thinking to adjust to this new type of warfare. Many others did not make this leap, including Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, Bragg, Hood and Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, his advice was not heeded and given the weight it deserved. In contrast to many other southern generals, Longstreet advocated for defensive warfare, using entrenchments and trying to maneuver the enemy to assault his position, conserving manpower, resources and supplies. With the advent of the highly accurate and long-range rifled musket, offensive tactics became questionable and risky. This caused Longstreet to come into conflict with General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. Longstreet opposed the Gettysburg campaign and Lee's battle plans at Gettysburg against General Meade and the Army of the Potomac. At Chickamauga, Longstreet was at odds with General Bragg on how to proceed after the stunning victory by the Army of Tennessee over Rosecrans and his forces. Longstreet was never given full authority over an army in the field. He was a pragmatic and methodical general and had his suggestions been utilized there would have been a better outcome for the South. Many historians and biographers have misunderstood Longstreet and his motives, not focusing on the total picture. This work offers a fresh and unique perspective on Lieutenant-General James Longstreet and the Civil War. This narrative takes a new viewpoint of the Civil War and the generals who tailored their designs to pursue the war, analyses Longstreet's views of the generals and the tactics and strategy they employed and examines why Longstreet proposed and urged a new type of warfare.

American Mobbing, 1828-1861 is a comprehensive history of mob violence in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions. In the South anti-slavery rioting was widely tolerated and effectively encouraged Southern support for slavery. In the North, both pro-slavery and anti-slavery riots were put down, often violently, by the authorities, resulting usually in a public reaction against slavery. Grimsted thus demonstrates that mob violence was a major cause of the social split that led to the Civil War.

An Immigrant Bishop is a revised examination of the Irish intellectual roots of Bishop John England's American pastoral works in the diocese of Charleston, South Carolina (1820-1842). The text focuses on his political philosophy and his theology of the Church, both of which were influenced by the Enlightenment and a theological, not a political, Gallicanism. As the study demonstrates, we now know more about England's intellectual life prior to his immigration than we do about any other Catholic immigrant from Ireland. Neither Peter Guilday's monumental two-volume biography (1927) of England nor any subsequent scholarly study of England has uncovered and analyzed, as this book does, England's many unpublished and published writings in Ireland-his explicitly authored texts, his published speeches before the Cork Aggregate meetings, and his pseudonymous articles in the Cork Mercantile Chronicle between 1808, when he was ordained, and 1820, when he emigrated to the United States. John England (1786-1842), the first Catholic bishop of Charleston, was the foremost national spokesman for Catholicism in the United States during the years of his episcopacy and the primary apologist for the compatibility of Catholicism and American republicanism. He was also the first Catholic bishop to speak before the United States Congress and the first American to receive a papal appointment as an Apostolic Delegate to a foreign country (in this case to negotiate a concordat with President Jean Pierre Boyer of Haiti). He is considered the father of the Baltimore Provincial Councils and the nineteenth-century American Catholic conciliar tradition. He was also the only bishop in American history to develop a constitutional form of diocesan government and administration. Among other things he was the first cleric to establish a diocesan newspaper that had something of a national distribution. England's contribution to the early formation of an American Catholicism has been told many times before, but he has the kind of creative mind and episcopal leadership that demands repeated re-considerations.

Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty during America's greatest rift. The extent of southern loyalty to the Confederate States of America has remained a subject of historical contention that has resulted in two conflicting conclusions: one, southern patriotism was either strong enough to carry the Confederacy to the brink of victory, or two, it was so weak that the Confederacy was doomed to crumble from internal discord. Mississippi, the home state of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, should have been a hotbed of Confederate patriotism. The reality was much more complicated. Ruminski breaks the weak/strong loyalty impasse by looking at how people from different backgrounds - women and men, white and black, enslaved and free, rich and poor - negotiated the shifting contours of loyalty in a state where Union occupation turned everyday activities into potential tests of patriotism. While the Confederate government demanded total national loyalty from its citizenry, this study focuses on wartime activities such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. Ruminski also probes the relationship between race and loyalty to indicate how an internal war between slaves and slaveholders defined Mississippi's social development well into the twentieth century.

Originally published in 1975, this assessment of the American Civil War is a broad treatment of the war as a major historical event, set in the context of a detailed picture of two governments, economies and societies at war. It discusses many controversial topics - the uncertainty and hesitation that surrounded the origins of the war, for example, its economic impact, the Radicals and their relationship with Lincoln and reconstruction as a wartime issue. It offers acute analysis of Lincoln's political skills, and an evaluation of emancipation and Lincoln's approach to it; the problems and performance of the opposition during the war; international reactions; an assessment of some of the leading generals like McClellan and Lee and the impact of the war on both Southern and Northern society.

Banks failed, credit contracted, inequality grew, and people everywhere were out of work while political paralysis and slavery threatened to rend the nation in two. As financial crises always have, the Panic of 1837 drew forth a plethora of reformers who promised to restore America to greatness. Animated by an ethic of individualism and self-reliance, they became prophets of a new moral order: if only their fellow countrymen would call on each individual's God-given better instincts, the most intractable problems could be resolved. Inspired by this reformist fervor, Americans took to strict dieting, water cures, phrenology readings, mesmerism, utopian communities, free love, mutual banking, and a host of other elaborate self-improvement schemes. Vocal activists were certain that solutions to the country's ills started with the reformation of individuals, and through them communities, and through communities the nation. This set of assumptions ignored the hard political and economic realities at the core of the country's malaise, however, and did nothing to prevent another financial panic twenty years later, followed by secession and civil war. Focusing on seven individuals-George Ripley, Horace Greeley, William B. Greene, Orson Squire Fowler, Mary Gove Nichols, Henry David Thoreau, and John Brown-Philip Gura explores their efforts, from the comical to the homicidal, to beat a new path to prosperity. A narrative of people and ideas, Man's Better Angels captures an intellectual moment in American history that has been overshadowed by the Civil War and the pragmatism that arose in its wake.

Once symbols of the past, ruins have become ubiquitous signs of our future. Americans today encounter ruins in the media on a daily basis-images of abandoned factories and malls, toxic landscapes, devastating fires, hurricanes, and floods. In this sweeping study, Miles Orvell offers a new understanding of the spectacle of ruins in US culture, exploring how photographers, writers, painters, and filmmakers have responded to ruin and destruction, both real and imaginary, in an effort to make sense of the past and envision the future. Empire of Ruins explains why Americans in the nineteenth century yearned for the ruins of Rome and Egypt and how they portrayed a past as ancient and mysterious in the remains of Native American cultures. As the romance of ruins gave way to twentieth-century capitalism, older structures were demolished to make way for grander ones, a process interpreted by artists as a symptom of America's "creative destruction." In the late twentieth century, Americans began to inhabit a perpetual state of ruins, made visible by photographs of decaying inner cities, derelict factories and malls, and the waste lands of the mining industry. This interdisciplinary work focuses on how visual media have transformed disaster and decay into spectacles that compel our moral attention even as they balance horror and beauty. Looking to the future, Orvell considers the visual portrayal of climate ruins as we face the political and ethical responsibilities of our changing world. A wide-ranging work by an acclaimed urban, cultural, and photography scholar, Empire of Ruins offers a provocative and lavishly illustrated look at the American past, present, and future.

"Leaps straight onto the roster of essential reading for anyone even vaguely interested in Grant and the Civil War." -Ron Chernow, author of Grant "Provides leadership lessons that can be obtained nowhere else... Ulysses Grant in his Memoirs gives us a unique glimpse of someone who found that the habit of reflection could serve as a force multiplier for leadership." -Thomas E. Ricks, Foreign Policy Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Union soldiers, were once as ubiquitous in American households as the Bible. Mark Twain and Henry James hailed them as great literature, and countless presidents credit Grant with influencing their own writing. This is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant's memoirs, clarifying the great military leader's thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and offering his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. With annotations compiled by the editors of the Ulysses S. Grant Association's Presidential Library, this definitive edition enriches our understanding of the pre-war years, the war with Mexico, and the Civil War. Grant provides essential insight into how rigorously these events tested America's democratic institutions and the cohesion of its social order. "What gives this peculiarly reticent book its power? Above all, authenticity... Grant's style is strikingly modern in its economy." -T. J. Stiles, New York Times "It's been said that if you're going to pick up one memoir of the Civil War, Grant's is the one to read. Similarly, if you're going to purchase one of the several annotated editions of his memoirs, this is the collection to own, read, and reread." -Library Journal

An elite volunteer unit in blue
An independent observer from within another regiment of the Union Army-upon seeing the Delaware Volunteers in action-declared them unreservedly to be the finest volunteer regiment in the army. Although amateurs, this unit attained levels of proficiency in all aspects of the business of soldiering normally the domain of elite regular units. This history charts its progress through the war between the states including the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Rappahannock, Bristoe Station, Mine Run, The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Petersburg, Deep Bottom and the Fall of Richmond. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket, this book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of those interested in the American Civil War and the men of Delaware who did so much to preserve the union and help form the modern republic.

Originally published in 1967, this book is a concise and ideal study of one of the most important periods of American history and is ideal for A Level students and as an introduction for undergraduates. It discusses the social, economic and political context for Lincoln's meteoric rise and the legacy of his many achievements including the abolition of slavery.

In the heartland of 19th century America, amid a roaring sea of racism and hatred, a mixed-race community existed where blacks lived as equal citizens with whites. Schools and churches were completely integrated, blacks and whites married and power and wealth were shared between the races. Starting in the 1860s, the people of Covert, Michigan, broke both the laws and barriers to attempt what then seemed impossible: to love ones neighbour as oneself! Far from serving as a beacon, amidst America's turmoil the story of Covert was forgotten, swept aside by those who found its very existence threatening, the memory of it wiped out by the passage of time. Now, in A Stronger Kinship, Anna-Lisa Cox gives us an astonishing account of the residents of Covert, told through six leading families who lived out this grand experiment in peaceable justice. It presents an America that miraculously once was and a vision of what it could become. This amazing history is a revelation.

Michael Gorra asks provocative questions in this historic portrait of William Faulkner and his world. He explores whether William Faulkner should still be read in this new century and asks what his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the American Civil War, the central quarrel in America's history. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such iconic novels as Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha County the richest gallery of characters in American fiction, his achievements culminating in the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. But given his works' echo of "Lost Cause" romanticism, his depiction of black characters and black speech, and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South, Faulkner demands a sobering reevaluation. Interweaving biography, absorbing literary criticism and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words recontextualises Faulkner, revealing a civil war within him, while examining the most plangent cultural issues facing American literature today.

This work describes the building of the first Capitol building in Washington, DC. It follows its progress from the story of the iconography behind the design, the role of Washington and Jefferson in the planning of the design, and the account of the competition for the design - to the development of the exterior, House and Senate wings, and transformation into that building which exists today.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT, AND HIS lilomaunt abroad hiring tlje tDar. CHAPTER I. MY IMPRESSMENT. " Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr. Townsend," said Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other day, ? " Ben. Franklin wrote for the paper, and set type upoit. The press was imported from England in 1730, or thereabouts." He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then laid it away in its drawer very sacredly. " I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said, ? "there would be no necessity in such a case of getting off six columns for to-night's mail." " Well " said Mr. Pratt, philosophically, " I have a theory that a man grows up to machinery. As your day so shall your strength be. I believe you have telegraphed up to a House instrument, haven't you ? " "Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse dispatch, and work far into the midnight " So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport Mercury, with anostentation of affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me over to Dumpling Rocks. On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the rocks covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right hand lost in its own vastncss, and Newport out of mind save when the town bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett, I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken. To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, th...

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT, AND HIS lilomaunt abroad hiring tlje tDar. CHAPTER I. MY IMPRESSMENT. " Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr. Townsend," said Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other day, ? " Ben. Franklin wrote for the paper, and set type upoit. The press was imported from England in 1730, or thereabouts." He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then laid it away in its drawer very sacredly. " I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said, ? "there would be no necessity in such a case of getting off six columns for to-night's mail." " Well " said Mr. Pratt, philosophically, " I have a theory that a man grows up to machinery. As your day so shall your strength be. I believe you have telegraphed up to a House instrument, haven't you ? " "Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse dispatch, and work far into the midnight " So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport Mercury, with anostentation of affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me over to Dumpling Rocks. On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the rocks covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right hand lost in its own vastncss, and Newport out of mind save when the town bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett, I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken. To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, th...

* Provides a concise overview of the Civil War, including a look at the Reconstruction period * Includes primary documents, chronology, glossary and Who's Who guide to key figures * Highlights dramatic social and political changes occurring in the period