Browse

Union soldiers left home in 1861 with expectations that the conflict would be short, the purpose of the war was clear, and public support back home was universal. As the war continued, however, Union soldiers began to perceive a great difference between what they expected and what was actually occurring. Their family relationships were evolving, the purpose of the war was changing, and civilians were questioning the leadership of the government and Army to the point of debating whether the war should continue at all. Separated from Northern civilians by a series of literal and figurative divides, Union soldiers viewed the growing disparities between their own expectations and those of their families at home with growing concern and alarm. Instead of support for the war, an extensive and oft-violent anti-war movement emerged. Often at odds with those at home and with limited means of communication to their homes at their disposal, soldiers used letters, newspaper editorials, and political statements to influence the actions and beliefs of their home communities. When communication failed, soldiers sometimes took extremist positions on the war, its conduct, and how civilian attitudes about the conflict should be shaped. This book reveals the wide array of factors that prevented the Union Army and the civilians on whose behalf they were fighting from becoming a united front during the Civil War. It illustrates how the divided spheres of Civil War experience created social and political conflict far removed from the better-known battlefields of the war.

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would “have no lawful right” to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln asserted that he was endowed “with the law of war in time of war”. This book contends Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the intellectual warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This book traces the decline and fall of agriculture in the Confederate States of America. The backbone of the southern economy, agriculture was a source of power that southerners believed would ensure their independence. But, season by season and year by year, the book convincingly shows how the disintegration of southern agriculture led to the decline of the Confederacy's military, economic, and political power. It examines regional variations in the Eastern and Western Confederacy, linking the fates of individual crops and different modes of farming and planting to the wider story. After a dismal harvest in late 1864, southerners—faced with hunger and privation throughout the region, ransacked farms in the Shenandoah Valley, and pillaged plantations in the Carolinas and the Mississippi Delta—finally realized that their agricultural power, and their government itself, had failed. The book shows how this ultimate lost harvest had repercussions that lasted well beyond the end of the Civil War. Assessing agriculture in its economic, political, social, and environmental contexts, the book sheds new light on the fate of the Confederacy from the optimism of secession to the reality of collapse.

American Civil Wars takes readers away from battlefields and sectional divides to view the conflict from outside the national arena. Contributors to this volume position the conflict squarely in the context of a much wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings—all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate America’s sectional strife, one caught up in a much larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future. These struggles were all part of a vast web, connecting Washington and Richmond but also Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Rio de Janeiro and—on the other side of the Atlantic—London, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. In doing so, this volume breaks new ground by charting a hemispheric upheaval borne of much wider forces. By expanding Civil War scholarships in the realms of transnational and imperial history, the work sheds new light on the interconnectedness of uprising and civil wars in and outside of American borders and places the United States within a global context of other nations, rather than a country acting as if in a vacuum.

The Maryland campaign of September 1862 ranks among the most important military operations of the American Civil War. Crucial political, diplomatic, and military issues were at stake as Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan maneuvered and fought in the western part of the state. The climactic clash came on September 17 at the battle of Antietam, where more than 23,000 men fell in the single bloodiest day of the war. Approaching topics related to Lee's and McClellan's operations from a variety of perspectives, contributors to this book explore questions regarding military leadership, strategy, and tactics; the impact of the fighting on officers and soldiers in both armies; and the ways in which participants and people behind the lines interpreted and remembered the campaign. They also discuss the performance of untried military units and offer a look at how the United States Army used the Antietam battlefield as an outdoor classroom for its officers in the early twentieth century.

In the dramatic period leading to the American Revolution, no event did more to foment patriotic sentiment among colonists than the armed occupation of Boston by British soldiers. This book presents a narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. The book moves between the governor's mansion and cobble-stoned back-alleys as it traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. The book reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and James Otis Jr. as they responded to London's new policies, and it evokes the outrage many Bostonians felt toward Parliament and its local representatives. The text also captures the popular mobilization under the leadership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams that met the oppressive imperial measures—most notably the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act—with demonstrations, Liberty Trees, violence, and non-importation agreements. When the British government responded with the decision to garrison Boston with troops, it was a deeply felt affront to the local population. Almost immediately, tempers flared and violent conflicts broke out. The book's narrative culminates in the swirling tragedy of the Boston Massacre and its aftermath, including the trial of the British troops involved—and sets the stage for what was to follow.

Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860–61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion? This book seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, it takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. The book also provides a glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted “American” values.

Music was everywhere during the Civil War. Tunes could be heard ringing out from parlor pianos, thundering at political rallies, and setting the rhythms of military and domestic life. With literacy still limited, music was an important vehicle for communicating ideas about the war, and it had a lasting impact in the decades that followed. Drawing on an array of published and archival sources, this book analyzes the myriad ways music influenced popular culture in the years surrounding the war, and discusses its deep resonance for both whites and blacks, South and North. Though published songs of the time have long been catalogued and appreciated, the author is the first to explore what Americans actually said and did with these pieces. By gauging the popularity of the most prominent songs and examining how Americans used them, he returns music to its central place in American life during the nation's greatest crisis. The result is a portrait of a war fought to music.

Fought on July 28, 1864, the Battle of Ezra Church was a dramatic engagement during the Civil War's Atlanta Campaign. Confederate forces under John Bell Hood desperately fought to stop William T. Sherman's advancing armies as they tried to cut the last Confederate supply line into the city. Confederates under General Stephen D. Lee nearly overwhelmed the Union right flank, but Federals under General Oliver O. Howard decisively repelled every attack. After five hours of struggle, 5,000 Confederates lay dead and wounded, while only 632 Federals were lost. The result was another major step in Sherman's long effort to take Atlanta. This study presents an account of the fighting at Ezra Church. Detailing Lee's tactical missteps and Howard's vigilant leadership, it challenges many common misconceptions about the battle. This work sheds new light on the complexities and significance of this important engagement, both on and off the battlefield.

On July 20, 1864, the Civil War struggle for Atlanta reached a pivotal moment. As William T. Sherman's Union forces came ever nearer the city, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced the defending Confederate Army of Tennessee's commander, Joseph E. Johnston, and elevated John Bell Hood to replace him. This decision stunned and demoralized Confederate troops just when Hood was compelled to take the offensive against the approaching Federals. Attacking northward from Atlanta's defences, Hood's men struck George H. Thomas's Army of the Cumberland just after it crossed Peach Tree Creek on July 20. Initially taken by surprise, the Federals fought back with spirit and nullified all the advantages the Confederates first enjoyed. As a result, the Federals achieved a remarkable defensive victory. This book offers new and definitive interpretations of the battle's place within the Atlanta campaign. It demonstrated that several Confederate regiments and brigades made a show of advancing but then stopped partway to the objective and took cover for the rest of the afternoon on July 20. Morale played an unusually important role in determining the outcome of the battle at Peach Tree Creek. A soured mood among the Confederates and overwhelming confidence among the Federals spelled disaster for one side and victory for the other.

War destroys, but it is also inspires, stimulates, and creates. It is, in this way, a muse, and a powerful one at that. The American Civil War was a particularly prolific muse—inspiring countless letters, diaries, and volumes both then and now. This book engages the Civil War writings of five of the most significant and best known narrators of the conflict: Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ambrose Bierce, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Considering their writings as both literary expressions and as engagements with momentous events of the war, the book analyzes their narratives and underlying aesthetics to offer a richer understanding of how Civil War writing both recorded the rigors of the conflict and has framed its memory. Drawing on a historically informed aesthetic sensibility and interweaving two sets of histories—military and literary—the book treats the Civil War writings of these five men not only as histories of events but as instances in the history of writing. In doing so, the book demonstrates the myriad ways in which war changed the lives of his narrators, and, how the Civil War fundamentally transformed American letters.

This examination of Union and Confederate foreign relations during the Civil War from both European and American perspectives demonstrates that the consequences of the conflict between North and South reached far beyond American soil. The book explores a number of themes, including the international economic and political dimensions of the war, the North's attempts to block the South from winning foreign recognition as a nation, Napoleon III's meddling in the war and his attempt to restore French power in the New World, and the inability of Europeans to understand the interrelated nature of slavery and union, resulting in their tendency to interpret the war as a senseless struggle between a South too large and populous to have its independence denied and a North too obstinate to give up on the preservation of the Union. Most of all, the book explores the horrible nature of a war that attracted outside involvement as much as it repelled it.

This history of the Civil War era reveals how unexpected bonds of union forged among diverse peoples in the Ohio-Kentucky borderlands furthered emancipation through a period of spiraling chaos, violence, and war between 1830 and 1865. Moving beyond familiar arguments about Lincoln’s deft politics or regional commercial ties, Bonds of Union recovers the potent religious, racial, and political attachments holding the country together at one of its most likely breaking points, the Ohio River. Living in a bitterly contested region, the Americans examined here—Protestant and Catholic, black and white, northerner and southerner—wanted to understand the daily lives and struggles of those on the opposite side of vexing human and ideological divides. Through close study of religious devotionalism, universal public education regardless of race, and relief from suffering during wartime, this book recovers a surprisingly capacious and inclusive sense of political union in the Civil War era. While accounting for the era’s many disintegrative forces, Bonds of Union reveals the imaginative work that went into bridging stark differences in lived experience, and the author posits that work as a precondition for slavery’s end and the Union’s persistence. This book reveals greater cultural flexibility or malleability among Americans in an era defined by the hardening of ideological positions. Bonds of Union also deepens our understanding of the antislavery origins of the United States’ Civil War in a region conventionally thought to be hostile to emancipation and racial equality.

Did preoccupations with family and work crowd out interest in politics in the nineteenth century, as some have argued? Arguing that social historians have gone too far in concluding that Americans were not deeply engaged in public life, and that political historians have gone too far in asserting that politics informed all of Americans' lives, the author of this book seeks to gauge the importance of politics for ordinary people in the Civil War era. Looking beyond the usual markers of political activity, he sifts through the political bric-a-brac of the era—lithographs and engravings of political heroes, campaign buttons, songsters filled with political lyrics, photo albums, newspapers, and political cartoons. In each of four chapters, he examines a different sphere—the home, the workplace, the gentlemen's Union League Club, and the minstrel stage—where political engagement was expressed in material culture. He acknowledges that there were boundaries to political life, but as his investigation shows, political expression permeated the public and private realms of Civil War America.

Born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1837, Stephen Dodson Ramseur rose meteorically through the military ranks. Graduating from West Point in 1860, he joined the Confederate army as a captain, and, by the time of his death near the end of the war at the Battle of Cedar Creek, had attained the rank of major general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Ramseur excelled in every assignment and was involved as a senior officer in many of the war's most important conflicts east of the Appalachians. His letters—over 180 of which are collected and transcribed here—provide his incisive observations on these military events, and, at the same time, offer a rare insight into the personal opinions of a high-ranking Civil War officer. Correspondence by Civil War figures is often strictly professional. But in Ramseur's personal letters to his wife, Nellie, and best friend, David Schenk, this book candidly expresses beliefs about the social, military, and political issues of the day. It also shares vivid accounts of battle and daily camp life, providing colorful details on soldiering during the war.

Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s reputation has suffered ever since the Civil War. The most-hated man of the Confederacy was blamed for lost battles and branded as a chief cause of Confederate defeat. This new biography breaks away from prevailing historiography to portray Bragg in a balanced way, as a man with unusual talent that was recognized by many, especially the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, his chief supporter. Bragg was considered a tyrant who callously executed his own soldiers, often for seemingly trivial causes and without due process of military law. Most of that reputation was based on false stories and rather than causing Rebel defeat, Bragg was actually the best commander of the Army of Tennessee but he worked under a wide variety of problems typical of most high-ranking Southern commanders. His problems in dealing with newspaper editors and reporters forms a major theme of the study. The book humanizes Bragg by looking at his relations with his supportive wife and shows that many of his colleagues and soldiers continued to believe in his leadership despite the many controversies surrounding his troubled Civil War career. Bragg sought vindication after the war in an effort to reshape the memory of his role in the conflict. Reluctant to write his memoirs, he failed to find a historian to tell his story. In this new biography, Bragg’s accomplishments are high-lighted, his faults are honestly examined, and his legacy in Confederate history, for the first time, receives fair treatment.

Immediately after the Civil War, white women across the South organized to retrieve the remains of Confederate soldiers. In Virginia alone, these Ladies' Memorial Associations (LMAs) relocated and reinterred the remains of more than 72,000 soldiers. Challenging the notion that southern white women were peripheral to the Lost Cause movement until the 1890s, this book restores these women as the earliest creators and purveyors of Confederate tradition. It shows that, long before national groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were established, local LMAs were earning sympathy for defeated Confederates. This exploration introduces new ways in which gender played a vital role in shaping the politics, culture, and society of the late nineteenth-century South.

In 1846, Cecelia, a 15-year-old slave girl traveled to Niagara Falls with her young Louisville mistress, Frances “Fanny” Thruston Ballard. During their stay, Cecelia made the bold decision to escape, to endure separation from her mother and brother, still enslaved in Kentucky, in order to begin life anew as a free woman in Canada. Yet the separation gnawed at her. So in the 1850s she opened a correspondence with Fanny, as a way of re-establishing connection with her mother. Fanny's return letters, preserved in Louisville archives for a century, allow a glimpse into the thoughts, feelings, and negotiations between these two women as the United States moved inexorably toward civil war over the issue of human slavery. The story of this 50-year relationship between a former slave and her former mistress brings to life the web of family connections forged by slavery and illustrates the ways that race, class, and gender structured women's lives in the nineteenth century.

A variety of important but lesser-known dimensions of the Chancellorsville campaign of spring 1863 are explored in this collection of eight original essays. Departing from the traditional focus on generalship and tactics, the contributors address the campaign's broad context and implications and revisit specific battlefield episodes that have in the past been poorly understood. Chancellorsville was a remarkable victory for Robert E. Lee's troops, a fact that had enormous psychological importance for both sides, which had met recently at Fredericksburg and would meet again at Gettysburg in just two months. But the achievement, while stunning, came at an enormous cost: more than 13,000 Confederates became casualties, including Stonewall Jackson, who was wounded by friendly fire and died several days later. The topics covered in this volume include the influence of politics on the Union army, the importance of courage among officers, the impact the war had on children, and the state of battlefield medical care. Other essays illuminate the important but overlooked role of Confederate commander Jubal Early, reassess the professionalism of the Union cavalry, investigate the incident of friendly fire that took Stonewall Jackson's life, and analyze the military and political background of Confederate colonel Emory Best's court-martial on charges of abandoning his men.

The Civil War is a much plumbed area of scholarship, so much so that at times it seems there is no further work to be done in the field. However, the experience of children and youth during that tumultuous time remains a relatively unexplored facet of the conflict. This book seeks a deeper investigation into the historical record by and giving voice and context to their struggles and victories during this critical period in American history. The chapters explore issues important to both the Civil War era and to the history of children and youth, including the experience of orphans, drummer boys, and young soldiers on the front lines, and even the impact of the war on the games children played. Each chapter places the history of children and youth in the context of the sectional conflict, while in turn shedding new light on the sectional conflict by viewing it through the lens of children and youth. The book touches on some of the most important historiographical issues with which historians of children and youth and of the Civil War home front have grappled over the last few years.