Books : History : United States : Civil War : Historiography

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Books : History : United States : Civil War : Historiography

• The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

  
  The controversies in South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas over the display of Confederate symbols illustrate the power and saliency of the myth of the Lost Cause (the Confederacy was doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union, but its forces fought heroically against all odds for the cause of states' rights). In reality, this was and is an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. In this volume, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying the ways in which it falsifies history. They have created a thoughtful and provocative volume that makes a major contribution to Civil War historiography.
  
   

• History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past

  
  From the “taming of the West” to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of the past has become a battleground at the heart of American politics. What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? In History Wars, eight prominent historians consider the angry swirl of emotions that now surrounds public memory. Included are trenchant essays by Paul Boyer, John W. Dower, Tom Engelhardt, Richard H. Kohn, Edward Linenthal, Micahel S. Sherry, Marilyn B. Young, and Mike Wallace.
  
   

• Gettysburg: A Journey in Time

  William A. Frassanito

  
  A unique example of photographic detective work in which the famous battle is re-created almost as if it were a contemporary news event. The reader is transported to the battlefield by the photographs and through the analysis of the photographs to the battle itself. We watch it unfold, action by action. In meticulous close-up fashion, with documentary force, we see the terrible encounters of men at war.
  
   

• On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War (Defining Moments in American Photography)

  Anthony W. Lee, Elizabeth Young

  
  Soon after Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Bookwas published, in 1866, it became the Civil War's best-known visual record and helped define how viewers, then and in subsequent generations, would come to know the war. Gardner's classic also became foundational in the history of American photography, combining, for the first time, words and images in a sophisticated and moving account. This book, written by the art historian Anthony W. Lee and the literary scholar Elizabeth Young, interprets the story of the war as told by Gardner, unraveling his careful choice of words and images and the complicated play between them, and understanding them against the backdrop of the literary and photographic cultures of the American antebellum and Reconstruction eras. This book presents a unique study of a pivotal American historical document, approaching it from the perspective of visual studies as well as American literature and history.
  
   

• These Honored Dead: How The Story Of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory

  Thomas A. Desjardin

  
  Ever since the guns of Gettysburg fell silent, and Lincoln delivered his famous two-minute speech four months after the battle, the story of this three-day conflict has become an American legend. We remember Gettysburg as, perhaps, the biggest, bloodiest, and most important battle ever fought-the defining conflict in American history. But how much truth is behind the legend?In These Honored Dead, Thomas A. Desjardin, a prominent Civil War historian and a perceptive cultural observer, demonstrates how flawed our knowledge of this enormous event has become, and why. He examines how Americans, for seven score years, have shaped, used, altered, and sanctified our national memory, fashioning the story of Gettysburg as a reflection of, and testimony to, our culture and our nation.
  
   

• Slavery, Resistance, Freedom (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books)

  
  Americans have always defined themselves in terms of their freedoms--of speech, of religion, of political dissent. How we interpret our history of slavery--the ultimate denial of these freedoms--deeply affects how we understand the very fabric of our democracy.
  This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America's top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged--indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office.
  Wide-ranging, authoritative, and filled with invaluable historical insight, Slavery, Resistance, Freedom brings a host of powerful voices to America's evolving conversation about race.
  
   

• The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (Modern War Studies)

  Dudley Taylor Cornish

  
  A bona fide classic, The Sable Arm was the first work to fully chronicle the remarkable story of the nearly 180,000 black troops who served in the Union army. This work paved the way for the exploration of the black military experience in other wars. This edition, with a new foreword by Herman Hattaway and bibliographical essay by the author, makes available once again a pioneering work that will be especially useful for scholars and students of Civil War, black, and military history.
  
   

• Pickett's Charge in History and Memory

  Carol Reardon

  
  
   

• The Confederate War

  Gary W. Gallagher

  

  If one is to believe contemporary historians, the South never had a chance. Many allege that the Confederacy lost the Civil War because of internal division or civilian disaffection; others point to flawed military strategy or ambivalence over slavery. But, argues distinguished historian Gary Gallagher, we should not ask why the Confederacy collapsed so soon but rather how it lasted so long. In The Confederate War he reexamines the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it to show how the home front responded to the war, endured great hardships, and assembled armies that fought with tremendous spirit and determination.

  Gallagher's portrait highlights a powerful sense of Confederate patriotism and unity in the face of a determined adversary. Drawing on letters, diaries, and newspapers of the day, he shows that Southerners held not only an unflagging belief in their way of life, which sustained them to the bitter end, but also a widespread expectation of victory and a strong popular will closely attuned to military events. In fact, the army's "offensive-defensive" strategy came remarkably close to triumph, claims Gallagher--in contrast to the many historians who believe that a more purely defensive strategy or a guerrilla resistance could have won the war for the South. To understand why the South lost, Gallagher says we need look no further than the war itself: after a long struggle that brought enormous loss of life and property, Southerners finally realized that they had been beaten on the battlefield.

  Gallagher's interpretation of the Confederates and their cause boldly challenges current historical thinking and invites readers to reconsider their own conceptions of the American Civil War.

  
   

• Lee and His Generals in War and Memory

  Gary W. Gallagher

  
  Historical images of Robert E. Lee and his lieutenants have been shaped to a remarkable degree by former Confederates, who in reminiscences and other writings constructed the Lost Cause interpretation of the conflict. They portrayed Lee as a perfect Christian warrior, Stonewall Jackson as his peerless right arm, and the Army of Northern Virginia as the backbone of Confederate resistance. In this collection of thirteen essays, prominent Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher explores the effect of Lost Cause arguments on popular perceptions of Lee and his most famous subordinates, astutely examining the ways in which historical memory is created and perpetuated.
  
   

• The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (Civil War America)

  
  The Civil War retains a powerful hold on the American imagination, with each generation since 1865 reassessing its meaning and importance in American life. This volume collects twelve essays by leading Civil War scholars who demonstrate how the meanings of the Civil War have changed over time.

  The essays move among a variety of cultural and political arenas--from public monuments to parades to political campaigns; from soldiers' memoirs to textbook publishing to children's literature--in order to reveal important changes in how the memory of the Civil War has been employed in American life. Setting the politics of Civil War memory within a wide social and cultural landscape, this volume recovers not only the meanings of the war in various eras, but also the specific processes by which those meanings have been created. By recounting the battles over the memory of the war during the last 140 years, the contributors offer important insights about our identities as individuals and as a nation.

  
   

• The Hospital on Seminary Ridge at the Battle of Gettysburg

  Michael A. Dreese

  
  "Old Dorm," which served as the first classroom and dormitory of the Gettysburg Lutheran Theological Seminary, is a familiar tourist site-Union Cavalry General John Buford directed the opening stages of the battle of Gettysburg from the building's distinctive cupola and some of the bloodiest fighting of the three-day conflict took place on Seminary Ridge. However, few visitors realize the building's important role as the second largest hospital at Gettysburg, both during and after the battle. During the peak occupancy, 600-700 wounded soldiers from both armies were cared for at this site.

  This work presents the history of the Gettysburg Seminary during the Civil War and the important cast of characters that have passed through its halls by utilizing the firsthand accounts of soldiers, civilians, surgeons, and relief agency personnel. Also included is the prewar and postwar history of the Seminary, as well as information about President Samuel S. Schmucker and the Abolition Movement.

  
   

• The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War

  Iver Bernstein

  
  For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history.
  In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the "winners" and "losers" of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime.
  An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible.
  
   

• Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937

  Sarah E. Gardner

  
  During the Civil War, its devastating aftermath, and the decades following, many southern white women turned to writing as a way to make sense of their experiences. Combining varied historical and literary sources, Sarah Gardner argues that women served as guardians of the collective memory of the war and helped define and reshape southern identity.

  Gardner considers such well-known authors as Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and Margaret Mitchell and also recovers works by lesser-known writers such as Mary Ann Cruse, Mary Noailles Murfree, and Varina Davis. In fiction, biographies, private papers, educational texts, historical writings, and through the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, southern white women sought to tell and preserve what they considered to be the truth about the war. But this truth varied according to historical circumstance and the course of the conflict. Only in the aftermath of defeat did a more unified vision of the southern cause emerge. Yet Gardner reveals the existence of a strong community of Confederate women who were conscious of their shared effort to define a new and compelling vision of the southern war experience.

  In demonstrating the influence of this vision, Gardner highlights the role of the written word in defining a new cultural identity for the postbellum South.

  
   

• Americans Interpret Their Civil War

  Thomas J. Pressly

  
  
   

• A Killer Angels Companion

  D. Scott Hartwig

  
  The popularity of Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Killer Angels, is legendary. There are currently six million copies in print. But how faithful to the truth was this novelist's view of the Battle of Gettysburg and its key figures? What happened to the major characters after Gettysburg? After 20 years as historian at Gettysburg National Military Park, few know the battle or battlefield better than Scott Hartwig. In this informative book, he answers these questions and more. if you have ever read and loved The Killer Angels, than this book will be a wonderful and welcome read.
  
   

• Justice Curtis In The Civil War Era: At The Crossroads Of American Constitutionalism (Constitutionalism and Democracy)

  Stuart Streichler

  
  During a career as both a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, Benjamin R. Curtis addressed practically every major constitutional question of the mid-nineteenth century, making judgments that still resonate in American law. Aside from a family memoir written by his brother over one hundred years ago, however, no book-length treatment of Curtis exists. Now Stuart Streichler has filled this gap in judicial biography, using Curtis's life and work as a window on the most serious constitutional crisis in American history, the Civil War.

  Curtis was the lead attorney for President Andrew Johnson in the Senate's impeachment trial, where he delivered the pivotal argument, and his was an influential voice in the pervasive constitutional struggle between states and the federal government. He is best remembered, however, for dissenting in the Dred Scott case, in which he disputed Chief Justice Taney's proslavery ruling that no black person could ever become a citizen of the United States. In the wake of the decision, Curtis resigned from the court, the only justice in the Supreme Court's history to do so on grounds of principle. Yet he also clashed with Boston's abolitionists over enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, and he opposed the Emancipation Proclamation.

  In a period when the Constitution was radically transformed from a charter that protected slavery to one that granted all persons equal rights of citizenship, Justice Curtis maintained his faith in the Constitution as an adaptable instrument of self-government and tried to mark out a path for gradual change. Streichler assesses Curtis's common-law methods in the context of his divisive times and shows how the judge's views continue to shed light on issues that have become once again relevant, such as the presidential impeachment process and, after 9/11, the use of military tribunals to try civilians.

  
   

• A Companion to the American South (Blackwell Companions to American History)

  
  
  

  A Companion to the American South surveys and evaluates the most important and innovative writing on the entire sweep of the history of the southern United States.
  

  
  
  • Contains 29 original essays by leading experts in American Southern history.
    
  • Covers the entire sweep of Southern history, including slavery, politics, the Civil War, race relations, religion, and women's history.
    
  • Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
    
  • Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.
  
   

• The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War

  Kenneth M. Stampp

  
  
   

• Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle (The American South Series)

  Stephen Cushman

  
  On 5 and 6 May 1864, the Union and Confederate armies met near an unfinished railroad in central Virginia, with Lee outmanned and outgunned, hoping to force Grant to fight in the woods. The name of the battle--Wilderness--suggests the horror of combat at close quarters and an inability to see the whole field of engagement, even from a distance. Indeed, the battle is remembered for its brutality and ultimate futility for Lee: even with 26,000 casualties on both sides, the Wilderness only briefly stemmed Grant's advance.

  Stephen Cushman lives fifty miles south of this battlefield. A poet and professor of American literature, he wrote Bloody Promenade to confront the fractured legacy of a battle that haunts him through its very proximity to his everyday life. Cushman's personal narrative is not another history of the battle. "If this book is a history of anything," he writes, "it's the history of verbal and visual images of a single, particularly awful moment in the American Civil War." Reflecting on that moment can begin in the present, with the latest film or reenactment, but it leads Cushman back to materials from the past. Writing in an informal, first-person style, he traces his own fascination with the conflict to a single book, a pictorial history he read as a boy. His abiding interest and poetic sensibility yield a fresh perspective on the war's continuing grip on Americans--how it pervades our lives through films and songs; novels such as The Red Badge of Courage, Killer Angels, and Cold Mountain; Whitman's poetry and Winslow Homer's painting; or the pull of the abstract idea of the triumph of freedom.

  With maps and a brief discussion of the Battle of the Wilderness for those not familiar with the landscape and actors, Bloody Promenade provides a personal tour of one of the most savage engagements of the Civil War, then offers a lively discussion of its aftermath.