Civil War scholars have long used soldiers' diaries and
correspondence to flesh out their studies of the conflict's great
officers, regiments, and battles. However, historians have only
recently begun to treat the common Civil War soldier's daily life
as a worthwhile topic of discussion in its own right. The View from
the Ground reveals the beliefs of ordinary men and women on topics
ranging from slavery and racism to faith and identity and
represents a significant development in historical scholarship --
the use of Civil War soldiers' personal accounts to address larger
questions about America's past. Aaron Sheehan-Dean opens The View
from the Ground by surveying the landscape of research on Union and
Confederate soldiers, examining not only the wealth of scholarly
inquiry in the 1980s and 1990s but also the numerous questions that
remain unexplored. Chandra Manning analyzes the views of white
Union soldiers on slavery and their enthusiastic support for
emancipation. Jason Phillips uncovers the deep antipathy of
Confederate soldiers toward their Union adversaries, and Lisa
Laskin explores tensions between soldiers and civilians in the
Confederacy that represented a serious threat to the fledgling
nation's survival. Essays by David Rolfs and Kent Dollar examine
the nature of religious faith among Civil War combatants. The grim
and gruesome realities of warfare -- and the horror of killing
one's enemy at close range -- profoundly tested the spiritual
convictions of the fighting men. Timothy J. Orr, Charles E. Brooks,
and Kevin Levin demonstrate that Union and Confederate soldiers
maintained their political beliefs both on the battlefield and in
the war's aftermath. Orr details the conflict between Union
soldiers and Northern antiwar activists in Pennsylvania, and Brooks
examines a struggle between officers and the Fourth Texas Regiment.
Levin contextualizes political struggles among Southerners in the
1880s and 1890s as a continuing battle kept alive by memories of,
and identities associated with, their wartime experiences. The View
from the Ground goes beyond standard histories that discuss
soldiers primarily in terms of campaigns and casualties. These
essays show that soldiers on both sides were authentic historical
actors who willfully steered the course of the Civil War and shaped
subsequent public memory of the event.
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