New Perspectives on the Union War explores, at a wide array of points along the political spectrum, the many shapes patriotic sentiment took in the loyal states during the Civil War. The essays ...provide new insights into well-known figures such as Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, political philosopher Francis Lieber, African American author/entrepreneur Elizabeth Keckley, abolitionist Abby Kelly Foster, New York governor Horatio Seymour, and Attorney General Edward Bates. They also offer the perspectives of common soldiers, of the partisan press, of the clergy, and of social reformers.
Viewing the Civil War as a major turning point in American religious thought, Mark A. Noll examines writings about slavery and race from Americans both white and black, northern and southern, and ...includes commentary from Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada. Though the Christians on all sides agreed that the Bible was authoritative, their interpretations of slavery in Scripture led to a full-blown theological crisis.
At the center of Lincoln’s political thought and career is an intense passion for equality that runs so deep in the speeches, messages, and letters that it has the force of religious conviction for ...Lincoln. George Kateb examines these writings to reveal that this passion explains Lincoln’s reverence for both the Constitution and the Union.
The War Criminal's Sonbrings to life hidden aspects of the Civil War through the sweeping saga of the firstborn son in the infamous Confederate Winder family, who shattered family ties to stand with ...the Union. Gen. John H. Winder was the commandant of most prison camps in the Confederacy, including Andersonville. When Winder gave his son William Andrew Winder the order to come south and fight, desert, or commit suicide, William went to the White House and swore his allegiance to President Lincoln and the Union. Despite his pleas to remain at the front,it was not enough.Winder was ordered to command Alcatraz, a fortress that became a Civil War prison, where he treated his prisoners humanely despite repeated accusations of disloyalty and treason because the Winder name had become shorthand for brutality during an already brutal war. John Winder died before he could be brought to justice as a war criminal. Haunted by his father's villainy, William went into a self-imposed exile for twenty years and eventually ended up at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, to fulfill his longstanding desire to better the lot of Native Americans. InThe War Criminal's SonJane Singer evokes the universal themes of loyalty, shame, and redemption in the face of unspeakable cruelty.
In the spring of 1862, Union forces marched into neighboring Carteret and Craven Counties in southeastern North Carolina, marking the beginning of an occupation that would continue for the rest of ...the war. Focusing on a wartime community with divided allegiances, Judkin Browning offers new insights into the effects of war on southerners and the nature of civil-military relations under long-term occupation, especially coastal residents' negotiations with their occupiers and each other as they forged new social, cultural, and political identities.Unlike citizens in the core areas of the Confederacy, many white residents in eastern North Carolina had a strong streak of prewar Unionism and appeared to welcome the Union soldiers when they first arrived. By 1865, however, many of these residents would alter their allegiance, developing a strong sense of southern nationalism. African Americans in the region, on the other hand, utilized the presence of Union soldiers to empower themselves, as they gained their freedom in the face of white hostility. Browning's study ultimately tells the story of Americans trying to define their roles, with varying degrees of success and failure, in a reconfigured country.
In Fighting for Citizenship , Brian Taylor complicates
existing interpretations of why black men fought in the Civil War.
Civil War-era African Americans recognized the urgency of a core
political ...concern: how best to use the opportunity presented by
this conflict over slavery to win abolition and secure enduring
black rights, goals that had eluded earlier generations of black
veterans. Some, like Frederick Douglass, urged immediate enlistment
to support the cause of emancipation, hoping that a Northern
victory would bring about the end of slavery. But others counseled
patience and negotiation, drawing on a historical memory of
unfulfilled promises for black military service in previous
American wars and encouraging black men to leverage their position
to demand abolition and equal citizenship. In doing this, they also
began redefining what it meant to be a black man who fights for the
United States. These debates over African Americans' enlistment
expose a formative moment in the development of American
citizenship: black Northerners' key demand was that military
service earn full American citizenship, a term that had no precise
definition prior to the Fourteenth Amendment. In articulating this
demand, Taylor argues, black Northerners participated in the
remaking of American citizenship itself-unquestionably one of the
war's most important results.
During the winter of 1864, more than 3,000 Federal prisoners of war escaped from Confederate prison camps into South Carolina and North Carolina, often with the aid of local slaves. Their flight ...created, in the words of contemporary observers, a "Yankee plague," heralding a grim end to the Confederate cause. In this fascinating look at Union soldiers' flight for freedom in the last months of the Civil War, Lorien Foote reveals new connections between the collapse of the Confederate prison system, the large-scale escape of Union soldiers, and the full unraveling of the Confederate States of America. By this point in the war, the Confederacy was reeling from prison overpopulation, a crumbling military, violence from internal enemies, and slavery's breakdown. The fugitive Federals moving across the countryside in mass numbers, Foote argues, accelerated the collapse as slaves and deserters decided the presence of these men presented an opportune moment for escalated resistance.Blending rich analysis with an engaging narrative, Foote uses these ragged Union escapees as a lens with which to assess the dying Confederate States, providing a new window into the South's ultimate defeat.
Flowing from its source in northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River borders or passes through ten different states and serves as one of the most important transportation ...systems in the United States. During the Civil War, both sides believed that whoever controlled the river would ultimately be victorious. Cotton exports generated much-needed revenue for the Confederacy, and the Mississippi was also the main conduit for the delivery of materials and food. Similarly, the Union sought to maintain safe passage from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cairo, Illinois, but also worked to bisect the South by seizing the river as part of the Anaconda Plan.
Drawing heavily on the diaries and letters of officers and common sailors, Barbara Brooks Tomblin explores the years during which the Union navy fought to win control of the Mississippi. Her approach provides fresh insight into major battles such as Memphis and Vicksburg, but also offers fascinating perspectives on lesser-known aspects of the conflict from ordinary sailors engaged in brown-water warfare. These men speak of going ashore in foraging parties, assisting the surgeon in the amputation of a fellow crewman's arm, and liberating supplies of whiskey from captured enemy vessels. They also offer candid assessments of their commanding officers, observations of the local people living along the river, and their views on the war.The Civil War on the Mississippinot only provides readers with a comprehensive and vivid account of the action on the western rivers; it also offers an incredible synthesis of first-person accounts from the front lines.
Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil ...War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority--and the public coffers--to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties.Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.
Women's War McCurry, Stephanie
2019, 2019-04-15
eBook
The Civil War is remembered as a war of brother against brother, with women standing innocently on the sidelines. But battlefield realities soon challenged this simplistic understanding of women's ...place in war. Stephanie McCurry shows that women were indispensable to the unfolding of the Civil War, as they have been—and continue to be—in all wars.
