Material objects lie at the crux of understanding individual and social relationships in history, and the Civil War era is no exception. Before, during, and after the war, Americans from all walks of life created, used, revered, exploited, discarded, mocked, and destroyed objects for countless reasons. These objects had symbolic significance for millions of people. The essays in this volume consider a wide range of material objects, including weapons, Revolutionary artifacts, landscapes, books, vaccine matter, human bodies, houses, clothing, and documents. Together, the contributors argue that an examination of the meaning of material objects can shed new light on the social, economic, and cultural history of the conflict. This book will fundamentally reshape our understanding of the war. In addition to the editor, contributors include Lisa M. Brady, Peter S. Carmichael, Earl J. Hess, Robert Hicks, Victoria Ott, Jason Phillips, Timothy Silver, Yael Sternhell, Sarah Jones Weicksel, Mary Saracino Zboray, and Ronald J. Zboray.

Originally published in 1853, Clotel is the first novel by an African American. William Wells Brown, a contemporary of Frederick Douglass, was well known for his abolitionist activities. In Clotel, the author focuses on the experiences of a slave woman: Brown treats the themes of gender, race, and slavery in distinctive ways, highlighting the mutability of identity as well as the absurdities and cruelties of slavery. The plot includes several mulatto characters, such as Clotel, who live on the margins of the black and white worlds, as well as a woman who dresses as a man to escape bondage; a white woman who is enslaved; and a famous white man who is mistaken for a mulatto. In her Introduction, scholar Joan E. Cashin highlights the most interesting features of this novel and its bold approach to gender and race relations. This volume, the latest in the American History Through Literature series, is suitable for a variety of undergraduate courses in American history, cultural history, women's studies, and slavery.

Originally published in 1853, Clotel is the first novel by an African American. William Wells Brown, a contemporary of Frederick Douglass, was well known for his abolitionist activities. In Clotel, the author focuses on the experiences of a slave woman: Brown treats the themes of gender, race, and slavery in distinctive ways, highlighting the mutability of identity as well as the absurdities and cruelties of slavery. The plot includes several mulatto characters, such as Clotel, who live on the margins of the black and white worlds, as well as a woman who dresses as a man to escape bondage; a white woman who is enslaved; and a famous white man who is mistaken for a mulatto. In her Introduction, scholar Joan E. Cashin highlights the most interesting features of this novel and its bold approach to gender and race relations. This volume, the latest in the American History Through Literature series, is suitable for a variety of undergraduate courses in American history, cultural history, women's studies, and slavery.

In this path-breaking work on the American Civil War, Joan E. Cashin explores the struggle between armies and civilians over the human and material resources necessary to wage war. This war 'stuff' included the skills of white Southern civilians, as well as such material resources as food, timber, and housing. At first, civilians were willing to help Confederate or Union forces, but the war took such a toll that all civilians, regardless of politics, began focusing on their own survival. Both armies took whatever they needed from human beings and the material world, which eventually destroyed the region's ability to wage war. In this fierce contest between civilians and armies, the civilian population lost. Cashin draws on a wide range of documents, as well as the perspectives of environmental history and material culture studies. This book provides an entirely new perspective on the war era.

"This excellent collection offers a host of new insights into the impact of the Civil War on civilian life. The essays on subjects ranging from race relations to family life, changes in the role of women, and the war in popular memory, make clear that some of the war's most profound consequences for American history took place away from the battlefield."--Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University

"[This is] an outstanding and very original collection of fifteen essays about the Civil War, including the latest and best scholarship on the North, South, and border states, soldiers and civilians, men and women. Readable and thought provoking, this is a book all students of the Civil War should have in their libraries."--Jean H. Baker, author of "The Stevensons of Illinois"

"Joan Cashin has assembled a stellar cast of historians to probe different aspects of civilian life during and after the Civil War. The happy result is a collection of essays that brims with innovative questions, new information, and fresh insights."--Michael F. Holt, Corcoran Department of History, Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia

"This collection's great strength is that it addresses a subject that has been inexplicably understudied: the impact of war on civilians. The contributors are among the leading younger figures in the field, and the essays are grounded in extensive archival research. They show that the Civil War was just as disruptive on the homefront as it was on the battlefield. "--Steven Mintz, University of Houston

"The collection offers an excellent introduction to an enormously complex story, shedding light on how women andmen, black and white, North and South were shaped by--and helped shape--the great sectional bloodletting."--Gary W. Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor of History, University of Virginia, author of "The Confederate War and Lee and His Army in Confederate History"

This book is about the different ways that men and women experienced migration from the Southern seaboard to the antebellum Southern frontier. Based upon extensive research in planter family papers, Cashin studies how the sexes went to the frontier with diverging agendas: men tried to escape the family, while women tried to preserve it. On the frontier, men usually settled far from relatives, leaving women lonely and disoriented in a strange environment. As kinship networks broke down, sex roles changed, and relations between men and women became more inequitable. Migration also changed race relations, because many men abandoned paternalistic race relations and abused their slaves. However, many women continued to practice paternalism, and a few even sympathized with slaves as they never had before. Drawing on rich archival sources, Cashin examines the decision of families to migrate, the effects of migration on planter family life, and the way old ties were maintained and new ones formed.

In this path-breaking work on the American Civil War, Joan E. Cashin explores the struggle between armies and civilians over the human and material resources necessary to wage war. This war 'stuff' included the skills of white Southern civilians, as well as such material resources as food, timber, and housing. At first, civilians were willing to help Confederate or Union forces, but the war took such a toll that all civilians, regardless of politics, began focusing on their own survival. Both armies took whatever they needed from human beings and the material world, which eventually destroyed the region's ability to wage war. In this fierce contest between civilians and armies, the civilian population lost. Cashin draws on a wide range of documents, as well as the perspectives of environmental history and material culture studies. This book provides an entirely new perspective on the war era.

In this text, Joan Cashin explores the profoundly different ways that planter men and women experienced migration from the Southern seaboard to the antebellum Southern frontier. Migration was a family venture in the sense that both men and women took part. But they went to the frontier with competing agendas: many men tried to escape the intricate kinship networks of the seaboard, while women worked to preserve them if they could. Drawing on archival sources and using the perspectives of several disciplines, Cashin explores the effects of the migration experience on sex roles, the nature of slavery, race relations and a variety of other issues.

When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. For this highly intelligent, acutely observant woman, loyalty did not come easily: she spent long years struggling to reconcile her societal duties to her personal beliefs. Raised in Mississippi but educated in Philadelphia, and a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., Mrs. Davis never felt at ease in Richmond. During the war she nursed Union prisoners and secretly corresponded with friends in the North. Though she publicly supported the South, her term as First Lady was plagued by rumors of her disaffection.

After the war, Varina Davis endured financial woes and the loss of several children, but following her husband's death in 1889, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. Here she advocated reconciliation between the North and South and became friends with Julia Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant. She shocked many by declaring in a newspaper that it was God's will that the North won the war.

A century after Varina Davis's death in 1906, Joan E. Cashin has written a masterly work, the first definitive biography of this truly modern, but deeply conflicted, woman. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions. In this pathbreaking book, Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.

Material objects lie at the crux of understanding individual and social relationships in history, and the Civil War era is no exception. Before, during, and after the war, Americans from all walks of life created, used, revered, exploited, discarded, mocked, and destroyed objects for countless reasons. These objects had symbolic significance for millions of people. The essays in this volume consider a wide range of material objects, including weapons, Revolutionary artifacts, landscapes, books, vaccine matter, human bodies, houses, clothing, and documents. Together, the contributors argue that an examination of the meaning of material objects can shed new light on the social, economic, and cultural history of the conflict. This book will fundamentally reshape our understanding of the war. In addition to the editor, contributors include Lisa M. Brady, Peter S. Carmichael, Earl J. Hess, Robert Hicks, Victoria Ott, Jason Phillips, Timothy Silver, Yael Sternhell, Sarah Jones Weicksel, Mary Saracino Zboray, and Ronald J. Zboray.