During the Civil War, cities, houses, forests, and soldiers' bodies were transformed into ""dead heaps of ruins,"" novel sights in the southern landscape. How did this happen, and why? And what did Americans-northern and southern, black and white, male and female-make of this proliferation of ruins? Ruin Nation is the first book to bring together environmental and cultural histories to consider the evocative power of ruination as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change. Megan Kate Nelson examines the narratives and images that Americans produced as they confronted the war's destructiveness. Architectural ruins-cities and houses-dominated the stories that soldiers and civilians told about the ""savage"" behaviour of men and the invasions of domestic privacy. The ruins of living things-trees and bodies-also provoked discussion and debate. People who witnessed forests and men being blown apart were plagued by anxieties about the impact of wartime technologies on nature and on individual identities. The obliteration of cities, houses, trees, and men was a shared experience. Nelson shows that this is one of the ironies of the war's ruination-in a time of the most extreme national divisiveness people found common ground as they considered the war's costs. And yet, very few of these ruins still exist, suggesting that the destructive practices that dominated the experiences of Americans during the Civil War have been erased from our national consciousness.

The Civil War that so devastated the United States began a century and a half ago; even so, people continue to disagree on why the North and South went to war.

By examining President Abraham Lincoln's speeches, along with those of other politicians during the time period, it is possible to identify historical misrepresentations and distortions that have made their way into textbooks.

Author Jack Pennington, a historian and retired school teacher, seeks to answer three main questions: Were the lives of the blacks in the South better off following the war and Reconstruction? Are blacks still suffering from the remnants of Jim Crow laws? Would the natural time eradication of slavery, as predicted by Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and other leading figures, have been more effective in bringing about equality and racial tolerance?

Discover the true nature of Lincoln's actions and his primary motivations, and explore the politics and attitudes that led the North and South to split. Pennington seeks to explore the truth behind common misconceptions and illuminate The Real Cause of the Civil War.

C. Vann Woodward is one of the most significant historians of the post-Reconstruction South. Over his career of nearly seven decades, he wrote nine books; won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes; penned hundreds of book reviews, opinion pieces, and scholarly essays; and gained national and international recognition as a public intellectual. Even today historians must contend with Woodward's sweeping interpretations about southern history. What is less known about Woodward is his scholarly interest in the history of white antebellum southern dissenters, the immediate consequences of emancipation, and the history of Reconstruction in the years prior to the Compromise of 1877. Woodward addressed these topics in three mid-century lecture series that have never before been published. The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward presents for the first time lectures that showcase his life-long interest in exploring the contours and limits of nineteenth-century liberalism during key moments of social upheaval in the South. Historians Natalie J. Ring and Sarah E. Gardner analyze these works, drawing on correspondence, published and unpublished material, and Woodward's personal notes. They also chronicle his failed attempts to finish a much-awaited comprehensive history of Reconstruction and reflect on the challenges of writing about the failures of post-Civil War American society during the civil rights era, dubbed the Second Reconstruction. With an insightful foreword by eminent Southern historian Edward L. Ayers, The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward offers new perspectives on this towering authority on nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern history and his attempts to make sense of the past amidst the tumultuous times in which he lived.

"First at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg and Chickamauga and last at Appomattox" is a phrase that is often used to encapsulate the role of North Carolina's Confederate soldiers. But the state's involvement stretched far beyond these few battles. The state was one of the last to leave the Union but contributed more men and sustained more dead than any other Southern state. Tar Heels witnessed the pitched battles of New Bern, Averysboro and Bentonville, as well as incursions like Sherman's March and Stoneman's Raid. Join Civil War scholar Michael Hardy as he delves into the story of North Carolina in the Civil War, from civilians to soldiers, as these valorous Tar Heels proved they were a force to be reckoned with.

Stephen B. Oates discerns the historical truth from the mythical legend that surrounds Lincoln in this original and fascinating portrait of America's 16th president.

Jesse Olsavsky's The Most Absolute Abolition tells the dramatic story of how vigilance committees organized the Underground Railroad and revolutionized the abolitionist movement. These groups, based primarily in northeastern cities, defended Black neighborhoods from police and slave catchers. As the urban wing of the Underground Railroad, they helped as many as ten thousand refugees, building an elaborate network of like-minded sympathizers across boundaries of nation, gender, race, and class. Olsavsky reveals how the committees cultivated a movement of ideas animated by a motley assortment of agitators and intellectuals, including famous figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Henry David Thoreau, who shared critical information with one another. Formerly enslaved runaways-who grasped the economy of slavery, developed their own political imaginations, and communicated strategies of resistance to abolitionists-serve as the book's central focus. The dialogues between fugitives and abolitionists further radicalized the latter's tactics and inspired novel forms of feminism, prison reform, and utopian constructs. These notions transformed abolitionism into a revolutionary movement, one at the heart of the crises that culminated in the Civil War.

War was no stranger to the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts. A small farming community at the outbreak of the Civil War, Sudbury stood ready to support the cause of the Union. Uriah and Mary Moore, a local farmer and his wife, parents of ten children, sent four sons off to fight for the Union. George Frederick Moore was twenty years old when he joined the Thirty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment in 1862, along with brother, Albert. Their brother, John, had enlisted in the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment and had been serving since 1861. In 1864, a fourth brother, Alfred, joined the Fifty-ninth Massachusetts Regiment. The eighty-four letters in this collection span the years from August 1862 to the end of the War and include correspondence to and from Pvt. George Moore and five family members. George's personal diaries from 1863 and 1864 are also included, as well as the 1867 diary of Sarah Jones, the girl he married. Through research the family is traced long after the war, revealing their travels and accomplishments. Explanatory passages that accompany these letters highlight the campaigns of the Thirty-fifth Massachusetts through the war years. George Moore took part in battles from South Mountain and Antietam to Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Campbell's Station, and the Siege of Knoxville. He participated in the Battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the assault on Petersburg. The letters to and from George Moore and his loved ones provide an intimate glimpse of the trials, not only of the soldiers, but of the family who sent their boys off to war.

Because of its clandestine nature, much of the history of the Underground Railroad remains shrouded in secrecy--so much so that some historians have even doubted its importance. After decades of research, Tom Calarco recounts his experiences compiling evidence to give credence to the legend's oral history in upstate New York. As the Civil War loomed and politicians from the North and South debated the fate of slavery, brave New Yorkers risked their lives to help fugitive slaves escape bondage. Whites and blacks alike worked together on the Underground Railroad, using ingenious methods of communication and tactics to stay ahead of the slave master and bounty hunter. Especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, conscientious residents doubled their efforts to help runaways reach Canada. Join Calarco on this journey of discovery of one of the noblest endeavors in American history.

Of the many books written about the Battle of Gettysburg, none has included selections from the collected memoirs of the 238 chaplains, North and South, who were present at the battle-until now. Because chaplains were considered noncombatants, most, with the exception of Father William Corby of the Irish Brigade, were largely ignored. This unique study has brought to light many of the observations of clergymen, protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, who accompanied their regiments wherever they marched, camped, or fought. Some of the memoirs have never been published, others unnoticed for a century. Because this is the first book to approach the Battle of Gettysburg from this perspective, rosters of Union and Confederate chaplains reportedly present at the battle are also included. To establish reference points for the chaplains' memoirs, they have been placed in the context of the three-day battle itself, a bloody conflict Father James Sheeran of the 14th Louisiana Infantry characterized as a time when he could not have been more frightened "Had Hell itself broken its boundaries." Chaplain randolph McKim of the 2nd virginia Cavalry thought that on the firing line he had nothing to do but sit on his horse and be shot at. After the battle was over, however, chaplains became very busy. They helped bury the dead and comfort 21,000 wounded soldiers. The chaplains themselves did not escape injury. Four chaplains had been killed, wounded, or injured and eighteen captured to be detained in prisons. This is their story in their own words.