The material for the volume was gathered in 1913, nearly fifty years after the war ended. Some of the narrators were small children in the Civil War days, but whatever their age had been the incidents of that chaotic time were indelibly impressed on their memories. They told of what they had seen with convincing vividness, and fortunately, also, with much of humor and picturesqueness.
These history travel guides provide an introduction discussing the history and preservation of the present-day site and facilities and include a detailed, walking tour interspersed with first-hand accounts about the cemetery and events that have taken place there. A timeline runs through the walking tour giving descriptions of key personalities who conceived, planned and designed the area with brief and colorful biographies. Also included is information that visitors to the site need to know about planning a trip there, including where to stay, eat, and what to see nearby.
Read the story of the Battle of Antietam from the African American perspective. The African American community around Sharpsburg, Maryland witnessed John Brown's raid, wartime skirmishes, the Battle of South Mountain, and the aftermath of the bloodiest day in American history. Read stories of encounters with Abraham Lincoln and Union and Confederate generals, and of Black civilian suffering and sacrifice in the cause of freedom. Their experiences during four years of Civil War come to life in vivid detail, often in their own words. Award-winning historian Emilie Amt recounts the personal stories of African Americans, both enslaved and free, who lived on the battlefield and who worked in the armies who clashed there.
Walk through the battlefield of Antietam with those who fought there The Battle of Antietam, waged on September 17, 1862, marked the bloodiest single day's fighting in American history. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This book brings you face-to-face as never before with the people and events that shaped this epic event. It features: - An introduction discussing the history and preservation of the present-day site - A timeline that adds further texture to the history described - Concise biographies of key participants - A historical tour - Where to stay and eat, and places to visit nearby - Archival and color photos throughout - Two PopOut maps—an archival map showing the battle as it unraveled, and another showing the same location today About the Timeline series These one-of-a-kind books bring you face to face with the people and events that have shaped American history and who have left their mark on some of the nation's most important historical landmarks and locations.
Gettysburg has been written about and studied in great detail over the last 140 years, but there are still many participants whose experiences have been overlooked. In augmenting this incomplete history, Margaret Creighton presents a new look at the decisive battle through the eyes of Gettysburg's women, immigrant soldiers, and African Americans. An academic with a superb flair for storytelling, Creighton draws on memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspapers to get to the hearts of her subjects. Mag Palm, a free black woman living with her family outside of town on Cemetery Ridge, was understandably threatened by the arrival of Lee's Confederate Army; slavers had tried to capture her three years before. Carl Schurz, a political exile who had fled Germany after the failed 1848 revolution, brought a deeply held fervor for abolitionism to the Union Army. Sadie Bushman, a nine-year-old cabinetmaker's daughter, was commandeered by a Union doctor to assist at a field hospital. In telling the stories of these and a dozen other participants, Margaret Creighton has written a stunningly fluid work of original history -- a narrative that is sure to redefine the Civil War's most essential battle.
Though civilians constituted the majority of the nation's population and were intimately involved with almost every aspect of the war, we know little about the civilian experience of the Civil War. That experience was inherently dramatic. Southerners lived through the breakup of basic social and economic institutions, including, of course, slavery. Northerners witnessed the reorganization of society to fight the war. And citizens of the border regions grappled with elemental questions of loyalty that reached into the family itself. These original essays--all commissioned from established scholars, based on archival research, and written for a wide readership--recover the stories of civilians from Natchez to New England. They address the experiences of men, women, and children; of whites, slaves, and free blacks; and of civilians from numerous classes. Not least of these stories are the on-the-ground experiences of slaves seeking emancipation and the actions of white Northerners who resisted the draft. Many of the authors present brand new material, such as the war's effect on the sounds of daily life and on reading culture. Others examine the war's premiere events, including the battle of Gettysburg and the Lincoln assassination, from fresh perspectives. Several consider the passionate debate that broke out over how to remember the war, a debate that has persisted into our own time. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Peter W. Bardaglio, William Blair, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Margaret S. Creighton, J. Matthew Gallman, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Anthony E. Kaye, Robert Kenzer, Elizabeth D. Leonard, Amy E. Murrell, George C. Rable, Nina Silber, Mark M. Smith, Mary Saracino Zboray, and Ronald J. Zboray. Together they describe the profound transformations in community relations, gender roles, race relations, and culture wrought by the central event in American history.
“An exhaustive compilation of first-hand accounts of the Gettysburg battlefield in the days, weeks, and months following the fight . . . heartbreaking.” —Austin Civil War Round Table Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was the largest battle fought on the American continent. Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and tons of detritus scattered in every direction? How did the civilians cope with their radically changed lives? Gregory Coco’s A Strange and Blighted Land offers a comprehensive account of these and other issues. Arranged in a series of topical chapters, A Strange and Blighted Land begins with a tour of the battlefield, mostly through eyewitness accounts, of the death and destruction littering the sprawling landscape. Once the size and scope are exposed to readers, Coco moves on to discuss the dead of Gettysburg, North and South, how their remains were handled, and how and why the Gettysburg National Cemetery was established. The author also discusses at length how the wounded and prisoners were handled and the fate of the thousands of stragglers and deserters left behind once the armies left before concluding with the preservation efforts that culminated in the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895. Coco’s prose is gripping, personal, and brutally honest. There is no mistaking where he comes down on the issue: There was nothing pretty or glorious or romantic about a battle—especially once the fighting ended.
The Sesquicentennial edition of African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign updates the original 2006 edition, as James M. Paradis introduces readers to the African-American role in this famous Civil War battle. In addition to documenting their contribution to the war effort, it explores the members of the black community in and around the town of Gettysburg and the Underground Railroad activity in the area.
