This volume makes available a fascinating narrative and a document of singular importance to the study of the Civil War. It provides a clear and realistic account of the author's reaction to combat and prison life on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie. Originally published 1966. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
On an "I will if you will" dare, John Haley enlisted in the 17th Maine Regiment in August 1862 "for three years, unless sooner discharged." ("Discharged, shot, or starved" would have been more accurate, Haley later wryly observed.) Though a reluctant soldier at first, he served steadfastly in the Army of the Potomac for nearly three years, participating in some of the most significant battles of the Civil War. John Haley was not the only soldier to record each day's events in his journal by firelight or by picket's lantern, for his was a literate generation. He was unusual in that he later painstakingly rewrote his battlefield notes, "reflecting at leisure" and adding fascinating political and personal commentary to produce the remarkable volume he calls Haley's Chronicles.
This unconventional culinary history explores the campfire experiences shared by soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and includes recipes commonly used on the battlefield.
Perhaps no topic is more heated, and the sources more tendentious, than that of Civil War prisons and the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Partisans of each side, then and now, have vilified the other for maltreatment of their POWs, while seeking to excuse their own distressing record of prisoner of war camp mismanagement, brutality, and incompetence. It is only recently that historians have turned their attention to this contentious topic in an attempt to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of partisan rancor. Roger Pickenpaugh has previously studied a Union prison camp in careful detail (Camp Chase) and now turns his attention to the Union record in its entirety, to investigate variations between camps and overall prison policy and to determine as nearly as possible what actually happened in the admittedly over-crowded, under-supplied, and poorly-administered camps. He also attempts to determine what conditions resulted from conscious government policy or were the product of local officials and situations. A companion to Pickenpaugh's Captives in Blue.
“Outstanding essays” exploring how educated Northerners viewed, and discussed, the Civil War (Michael B. Ballard, Civil War News). With contributions from multiple historians, this volume addresses the role intellectuals played in framing the Civil War and implementing their vision of a victorious Union. Broadly defining “intellectuals” to encompass doctors, lawyers, sketch artists, college professors, health reformers, and religious leaders, the essays address how these thinkers disseminated their ideas, sometimes using commercial or popular venues and organizations to implement what they believed. To what extent did educated Americans believe that the Civil War exposed the failure of old ideas? Did the Civil War promote new strains of authoritarianism in northern intellectual life, or reinforce democratic individualism? How did it affect northerners’ conception of nationalism and their understanding of their relationship to the state? These essays explore myriad topics, including: *How antebellum ideas about the environment and the body influenced conceptions of democratic health *How leaders of the Irish American community reconciled their support of the United States and the Republican Party with their allegiances to Ireland and their fellow Irish immigrants *How intellectual leaders of the northern African American community explained secession, civil war, and emancipation *The influence of southern ideals on northern intellectuals *Wartime and postwar views from college and university campuses—and the ideological acrobatics that professors at Midwestern universities had to perform in order to keep their students from leaving the classroom *How northern sketch artists helped influence the changing perceptions of African American soldiers over the course of the war Collectively, So Conceived and So Dedicated offers an in-depth look at this part of the nation’s intellectual history—and suggests that antebellum modes of thinking remained vital and tenacious well after the Civil War.
Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard narratives of the period pay scant attention to religion. Now, in God's Almost Chosen Peoples, Li
