This fascinating journal of Kate Cumming, one of the first women to offer her services for the care of the South’s wounded soldiers of the bloody Civil War, represents a detailed record of her activities and thoughts as a nurse. Spanning the time she was assigned to her first post in Okolona, Mississippi in April 186, working under Doctor S. H. Stout, a progressive military physician committed to the employment of women in hospitals, until May 29, 1865, this book provides a solid look behind the lines of Civil War action in depicting civilian attitudes, army medical practices, and the administrative workings of the Confederate hospital system.
Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jefferson Davis Award A companion volume to Army of the Heartland Near the end of 1862 the Army of Tennessee began a long and frustrating struggle against overwhelming obstacles and ultimate defeat. Federal strength was growing, and after the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg, the total Union effort became concentrated against the Army of Tennessee. In the face of these external military problems, the army was also plagued with internal conflict, continuing command discord, and political intrigue. In Autumn of Glory, the final volume of Thomas Lawrence Connelly’s definitive history of one of the Confederacy’s two major military forces, Connelly analyzes the factors underlying the army’s failure during the last two years of the Civil War. The army’s military operations—including such major battles and campaigns as Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw Mountain, Peachtree Creek, Atlanta, Ezra Church, Jonesboro, and Bentonville—are viewed in perspective with its growing internal problems and the personality peculiarities of its commanders. In late 1863 a well-organized movement within the army against General Bragg failed. After his departure, a semblance of the anti-Bragg organization still remained, and subsequently the army’s leadership became embroiled in national Confederate politics. Connelly traces these growing problems of command discord and political intrigue and examines their disastrous effects upon the army’s political fortunes. Connelly’s first volume, Army of the Heartland, explores the military significance of the “heartland” of the Confederacy and covers the army’s operations from 1861 to late 1862. With the completion of these two volumes, the author has narrowed the historiographical gap between Lee’s Army of Virginia and the Confederacy’s “other army.”
Excerpt from Gleanings From Southland: Sketches of Life and Manners of the People of the South Before, During and After the War of Secession, With Extracts From the Author's Journal and an Epitome of the New South Shortly after publishing my work, "Hospital Life," I sent a copy of the book to Mrs. Gen. Robert E. Lee. As soon as she perused it she wrote to me, saying: "I am thankful some one has kept a record of our trials." She also said she wished I had had the book published in the North, for she was certain that if the people there would read it they would have some idea of our suffering, and the facts so given would have a good tendency. It is with the same idea in view that I now offer this volume to the public. I have given our thoughts and feelings as they were at the time of our terrible struggle, feeling assured that no generous minded man or woman but will say they were natural under the circumstances. Being the victors, the Northern people can well afford to listen to our side of the story. While visiting in the North, although treated with the greatest kindness, many circumstances served to show that there was need of just such a work as "Gleanings from Southland." I have every reason to hope it will be the means of making the two sections better known to each other than they now are. I sincerely trust that the people of this great land of ours may be long united in spirit as well as in name, and hope, in the words of our beloved priest-poet. Father Ryan, that "The graves of the dead with the grass overgrown, May yet form the footstool of liberty's throne; And each single wreck in the war-path of might Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Presented here are excerpts from diaries and letters written by Southern women from different walks of life and areas of the country. Mary White, a fifteen-year-old girl, attempted to get through the blockade in Wilmington, North Carolina; Nancy Jones lived in fear amid the violence that rocked Missouri and saw her close friends and family murdered and her young son taken prisoner by the Yankees; Sarah Dandridge Duval and her family were refugees living near Richmond, Virginia. The book includes personal reminiscences from Union and Confederate women living in Winchester, Virginia, a town that reportedly changed hands 76 times during the war, and the reactions of Southern women to the surrender at Appomattox.
This book is the first omnibus history of the literature of the American Civil War, the deadliest conflict in US history. A History of American Civil War Literature examines the way in which the war has been remembered and rewritten over time in prose, poems, and other narratives. This history incorporates new directions in Civil War historiography and cultural studies while giving equal attention to writings from both northern and southern states. It redresses the traditional neglect of southern literary cultures by moving between the North and the South, thus finding a balance between Union and Confederate texts. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book works to redefine the boundaries of American Civil War literature while posing a fundamental question: why does this 150-year-old conflict continue to capture the American imagination?
Scholars of Reconstruction have generally described Republican party factional conflicts in racial terms, as if the Radical agenda evoked unified black support. As Michael W. Fitzgerald shows in the first major study of black popular politics in the urban South in the years surrounding the Civil War, that depiction oversimplifies a contentious and often overlooked intraracial dynamic. Republican political power, he argues, heightened divisions within the African American community, divisions that were ultimately a major factor in the failure of Reconstruction. Focusing on Mobile, the Confederacy’s fourth largest city, Fitzgerald traces how the rivalry between longtime black residents and destitute freedmen fleeing the countryside yielded a startlingly antagonistic political scene. He demonstrates that the Republican factionalism that helped doom Reconstruction went beyond competing cliques of white officeholders. Boldly challenging reigning theories about the nature of post–Civil War politics, Urban Emancipation will spark historical debate for years to come.
