Emancipation's Diaspora
Emancipation's Diaspora

Author: Leslie Ann Schwalm

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 080783291X

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Helping readers understand the national impact of the transition from slavery to freedom, this book features the lives and experiences of thousands of men and women who liberated themselves from slavery and worked to live in dignity as free women and men and as citizens.

Aberration of Mind
Aberration of Mind

Author: Diane Miller Sommerville

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 146964357X

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More than 150 years after its end, we still struggle to understand the full extent of the human toll of the Civil War and the psychological crisis it created. In Aberration of Mind, Diane Miller Sommerville offers the first book-length treatment of suicide in the South during the Civil War era, giving us insight into both white and black communities, Confederate soldiers and their families, as well as the enslaved and newly freed. With a thorough examination of the dynamics of both racial and gendered dimensions of psychological distress, Sommerville reveals how the suffering experienced by Southerners living in a war zone generated trauma that, in extreme cases, led some Southerners to contemplate or act on suicidal thoughts. Sommerville recovers previously hidden stories of individuals exhibiting suicidal activity or aberrant psychological behavior she links to the war and its aftermath. This work adds crucial nuance to our understanding of how personal suffering shaped the way southerners viewed themselves in the Civil War era and underscores the full human costs of war.