"Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Kansas Territory was a national issue that dominated America's press, not to mention three sessions of Congress." "Craig Miner now offers the first in-depth study of national media coverage devoted to the beleaguered territory, unearthing new examples of what Americans were saying about Kansas and showing how those words affected the course of national events." "Miner draws on dozens of newspapers and magazines from all parts of the country and of all political persuasions: a trove of rich quotations and unvarnished epithets, nearly all of them published here for the first time. He reveals how the heated, polarizing rhetoric widened the sectional rift, weakened chances of accommodation, and contributed more to the onset of civil war than has been previously recognized."--BOOK JACKET.
Loyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. So argues Elizabeth R. Varon in Armies of Deliverance, a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Northerners imagined the war as a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination and to bring democracy, prosperity, and education to the region. As the war escalated, Lincoln and his allies built the case that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit the North and South alike. The theme of deliverance was essential in mobilizing a Unionist coalition of Northerners and anti-Confederate Southerners. Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, were determined to preempt, discredit, and silence Yankee appeals to the Southern masses. In their quest for political unity Confederates relentlessly played up two themes: Northern barbarity and Southern victimization. Casting the Union army as ruthless conquerors, Confederates argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South. Interweaving military and social history, Varon shows that everyday acts on the ground--from the flight of slaves, to protests against the draft, the plundering of civilian homes, and civilian defiance of military occupation--reverberated at the highest levels of government. Varon also offers new perspectives on major battles, illuminating how soldiers and civilians alike coped with the physical and emotional toll of the war as it grew into a massive humanitarian crisis. The Union's politics of deliverance helped it to win the war. But such appeals failed to convince Confederates to accept peace on the victor's terms, ultimately sowing the seeds of postwar discord. Armies of Deliverance offers innovative insights on the conflict for those steeped in Civil War history and novices alike.
"Quite a literary accomplishment...The reader watches with increasing fascination as the Union and Confederate ghosts of a small but deadly skirmish come alive again between the rows of the author's golden harvest." THE NEW YORK TIMES Peter Svenson, a successful artist, dreamed as many people do, of owning a farm where he could live and work in bucolic splendor. But the forty acres of rolling hayfield that he bought in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley turned out to be the site of the Battle of Cross Keys, a Civil War engagement during which Stonewall Jackson's army scored a victory over the Union forces. Intertwining field reports, letters, and histories of the Battle of Cross Keys with the tasks of building a new house and raising a first crop, Svenson masterfully conjures up two separate but deeply conjoined worlds. Even as we come to share his reverence for the land, we become swept up with him in the momentous events that transpired there on June 8, 1862--the strategies of the indecisive army commanders, the emotions of the men in the field, the heavy casualties that both sides suffered. The two stories make BATTLFIELD a beautifully written memoir and a powerful work of historical recreation.
The American Civil War was a bloody time in American History. The Battle of Shiloh was the true turning point of this war. It would become a battle of blunders for three generals: Grant, Sherman, and Beauregard-who showed their stupidity and arrogance at this battle. All three should have been court-martialed and ran out of the Union and Confederate armies for the huge mistakes they made. Over ten thousand men lost their lives because of the stupidity of these three generals. P. G. T. Beauregard might have been the most disobedient general of the Civil War. He could not and would not follow orders. He would change General Albert Sidney Johnston's original battle plan to go with the one Napoleon had used to great failure at Waterloo. If Johnston's plan had been used, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman would have been annihilated by noon on the first day of battle at Shiloh. They were not entrenched nor prepared for this battle. When the battle started, Grant was downriver at a boarding house having breakfast. The importance of this battle has been looked over by many historians. The Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers' importance cannot be overlooked; they were the way for the Union army to pave a way for invasion into the Deep South. If the Confederate army wins this battle on the first day-and again, Beauregard had chance after chance to accomplish this-a total different outcome to the American Civil could have happened.
In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets “grows in our consciousness,” arousing complex emotions and leaving “a gallery of great human images for our contemplation.”
