The American Civil War caused upheaval and massive private bereavement, but the years 1861-1865 also defined a great nation. This book provides a concise introduction to events from the secession to the end of the war. It focuses on the military progress of the war Union and Confederate politics social change - particularly the emancipation of North American slaves The social history associated with the war is dealt with alongside the familiar military and political events. This inclusive approach allows the reader to consider equally the history of men and women, blacks and whites in the conflict. It deals with both the Union and the Confederacy, integrating the latest literature on the war and society into a clear account. The book concludes with an assessment of emancipation, the rebuilding of the economy, and the war's consequences. An array of primary documents supports the text, together with a chronology, glossary and Who's Who guide to key figures.

This is a concise and accessible introduction to the American Civil War

More than just a factual account of the war, this book provides a synthesis of a vast amount of writings about the Civil War. Although the military is covered, equal attention is given to the economy and society, including the role of women, and politics - both in the Union and the Confederacy. Emancipation, and its social consequences, and wartime reconstruction are also explored. The book includes a collection of documents, a chronology of the main events, and a guide to the main characters.

In many ways, the Northern soldier in the Civil War fought as if he had never left home. On campsites and battlefields, the Union volunteer adapted to military life with attitudes shaped by networks of family relationships, in units of men from the same hometown. Understanding these links between the homes the troops left behind and the war they had to fight, writes Reid Mitchell, offers critical insight into how they thought, fought, and persevered through four bloody years of combat.
In The Vacant Chair, Mitchell draws on the letters, diaries, and memoirs of common soldiers to show how mid-nineteenth-century ideas and images of the home and family shaped the union soldier's approach to everything from military discipline to battlefield bravery. For hundreds of thousands of "boys," as they called themselves, the Union army was an extension of their home and childhood experiences. Many experienced the war as a coming-of-age rite, a test of such manly virtues as self-control, endurance, and courage. They served in companies recruited from the same communities, and they wrote letters reporting on each other's performance--conscious that their own behavior in the army would affect their reputations back home. So, too, were they deeply affected by letters from their families, as wives and mothers complained of suffering or demanded greater valor. Mitchell also shows how this hometown basis for volunteer units eroded respect for military rank, as men served with officers they saw as equals: "Lieut Col Dewey introduced Hugh T Reid," one sergeant wrote dryly, "by saying, 'Boys, behold your colonel, ' and we _beheld_ him." In return, officers usually adopted paternalist attitudes toward their "boys"--especially in the case of white officers commanding black soldiers. Mitchell goes on to look at the role of women in the soldiers' experiences, from the feminine center of their own households to their hatred of Confederate women as "she-devils."
The intimate relations and inner life of the Union soldier, the author writes, tell us much about how and why he kept fighting through four bloody years--and why demoralization struck the Confederate soldier as the war penetrated the South, threatening his home and family while he was at the front. "The Northern soldier did not simply experience the war as a husband, son, father, or brother--he fought that way as well," he writes. "That was part of his strength. The Confederate soldier fought the war the same way, and, in the end, that proved part of his weakness." The Vacant Chair uncovers this critical chapter in the Civil War experience, showing how the Union soldier saw--and won--our most costly conflict.

With this colorful study, Reid Mitchell takes us to Mardi Gras--to a yearly ritual that sweeps the richly multicultural city of New Orleans into a frenzy of parades, pageantry, dance, drunkenness, music, sexual display, and social and political bombast. In "All on a Mardi Gras Day" Mitchell tells us some of the most intriguing stories of Carnival since 1804. Woven into his narrative are observations of the meaning and messages of Mardi Gras--themes of unity, exclusion, and elitism course through these tales as they do through the Crescent City.

Moving through the decades, Mitchell describes the city's diverse cultures coming together to compete in Carnival performances. We observe powerful social clubs, or krewes, designing their elaborate parade displays and extravagant parties; Creoles and Americans in conflict over whose dances belong in the ballroom; enslaved Africans and African Americans preserving a sense of their heritage in processions and dances; white supremacists battling Reconstruction; working-class blacks creating the flamboyant Krewe of Zulu; the birth and reign of jazz; the gay community holding lavish balls; and of course tourists purchasing an authentic experience according to the dictates of our commercial culture. Interracial friction, nativism, Jim Crow separatism, the hippie movement--Mitchell illuminates the expression of these and other American themes in events ranging from the 1901 formation of the anti-prohibitionist Carrie Nation Club to the controversial 1991 ordinance desegregating Carnival parade krewes.

Through the conflicts, Mitchell asserts, "I see in Mardi Gras much what I hear in a really good jazz band: a model for the just society, thejoyous community, the heavenly city...A model for community where individual expression is the basis for social harmony and where continuity is the basis for creativity." "All on a Mardi Gras Day" journeys into a world where hope persists for a rare balance between diversity and unity.

"The Battle of Bull's Run, so disastrous to the National Arms, and yet so little profitable, as a military event, to the Confederates, was in its immediate effects a profound enigma to the people of the whole country. They could not understand it. The Confederates held the field, yet they did not seek profit from the panic and flight of their opponents, by a pursuit. The Nationals were beaten and dispersed; yet, after the first paralysis of defeat, they instantly recovered their faith and elasticity. There had been marches, and bivouacs, and skirmishes, and a fierce battle, within the space of a week; and at the end of twenty-four hours after the close of the conflict, the respective parties in the contest were occupying almost the same geographical position which they did before the encounter."--from The Pictorial Field-Book of the Civil War

Before the rise of "professional" academic history, there were devoted Brahmins of a literary bent (George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and Henry Adams) and skilled researchers and chroniclers, men such as J. Thomas Scharf of Maryland history fame and--the most prolific of all--Ben Lossing of New York, who, since they made their living by writing history, could rightly be labeled "professional" after all. Every literate history lover in the mid-to-late nineteenth century knew of Lossing and his work; he may not have been academically trained, but he knew where to look for evidence, did the digging we would expect him to do, and wrote with a flair for the dramatic. In his Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War, Lossing takes the same "on-the-scene approach" to the Civil War--visiting the sites of battles and other events, making sketches of theseplaces, talking with people about their experiences--that earned his earlier Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution and Pictorial Book of the War of 1812 a wide and enthusiastic readership.