“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.
The Maryland campaign of September 1862 ranks among the most important military operations of the American Civil War. Crucial political, diplomatic, and military issues were at stake as Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan maneuvered and fought in the western part of the state. The climactic clash came on September 17 at the battle of Antietam, where more than 23,000 men fell in the single bloodiest day of the war. Approaching topics related to Lee's and McClellan's operations from a variety of perspectives, contributors to this volume explore questions regarding military leadership, strategy, and tactics, the impact of the fighting on officers and soldiers in both armies, and the ways in which participants and people behind the lines interpreted and remembered the campaign. They also discuss the performance of untried military units and offer a look at how the United States Army used the Antietam battlefield as an outdoor classroom for its officers in the early twentieth century. The contributors are William A. Blair, Keith S. Bohannon, Peter S. Carmichael, Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley J. Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, Robert E. L. Krick, Robert K. Krick, Carol Reardon, and Brooks D. Simpson.
Thirty-two years after the battle of Shiloh, Lew Wallace returned to the battlefield, mapping the route of his April 1862 march. Ulysses S. Grant, Wallace's commander at Shiloh, expected Wallace and his Third Division to arrive early in the afternoon of April 6. Wallace and his men, however, did not arrive until nightfall, and in the aftermath of the bloodbath of Shiloh Grant attributed Wallace's late arrival to a failure to obey orders. By mapping the route of his march and proving how and where he had actually been that day, the sixty-seven-year-old Wallace hoped to remove the stigma of "Shiloh and its slanders." That did not happen. Shiloh still defines Wallace's military reputation, overshadowing the rest of his stellar military career and making it easy to forget that in April 1862 he was a rising military star, the youngest major general in the Union army. Wallace was devoted to the Union, but he was also pursuing glory, fame, and honor when he volunteered to serve in April 1861. In Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War, author Gail Stephens specifically addresses Wallace's military career and its place in the larger context of Civil War military history.
During the battle of Gettysburg, as Union troops along Cemetery Ridge rebuffed Pickett's Charge, they were heard to shout, "Give them Fredericksburg!" Their cries reverberated from a clash that, although fought some six months earlier, clearly loomed large in the minds of Civil War soldiers. Fought on December 13, 1862, the battle of Fredericksburg ended in a stunning defeat for the Union. Confederate general Robert E. Lee suffered roughly 5,000 casualties but inflicted more than twice that many losses--nearly 13,000--on his opponent, General Ambrose Burnside. As news of the Union loss traveled north, it spread a wave of public despair that extended all the way to President Lincoln. In the beleaguered Confederacy, the southern victory bolstered flagging hopes, as Lee and his men began to take on an aura of invincibility. George Rable offers a gripping account of the battle of Fredericksburg and places the campaign within its broader political, social, and military context. Blending battlefield and home front history, he not only addresses questions of strategy and tactics but also explores material conditions in camp, the rhythms and disruptions of military life, and the enduring effects of the carnage on survivors--both civilian and military--on both sides.
Walking down the dirt, cobblestone, or paved streets of downtown Cincinnati in the past, there is no telling whom a person would meet. Someone might rub elbows with future presidents, such as Hayes, Taft, or that visiting lawyer from Illinois--Lincoln; dine with Generals Wayne, Grant, or Sherman; have tea with Harriet Beecher Stowe; or share a mug of Hauck beer with Frank Duveneck, Stephen Foster, or that poet-warrior William Lytle. A person lingering in the opulent hotels may meet visiting artists such as Junius Booth, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Henry Irving, and his manager, Bram Stoker; hear a speech by abolitionist Salmon P. Chase or flirt with the pretty Confederate spy Lottie Moon. Once the furthest expansion of the western frontier, every street and corner of downtown Cincinnati has been tread by the famous and infamous. Historic Downtown Cincinnati is the story of America, of businessmen like the brothers-in-law Procter and Gamble, of visionaries like McGuffy, and powerful political bosses like George Cox.
In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces. Fahs mines these rich but long-neglected resources to recover the diversity of the war's political and social meanings. Instead of narrowly portraying the Civil War as a clash between two great, white armies, popular literature offered a wide range of representations of the conflict and helped shape new modes of imagining the relationships of diverse individuals to the nation. Works that explored the war's devastating impact on white women's lives, for example, proclaimed the importance of their experiences on the home front, while popular writings that celebrated black manhood and heroism in the wake of emancipation helped readers begin to envision new roles for blacks in American life. Recovering a lost world of popular literature, The Imagined Civil War adds immeasurably to our understanding of American life and letters at a pivotal point in our history.
In The Politics of Faith during the Civil War, Timothy L. Wesley examines the engagement of both northern and southern preachers in politics during the American Civil War, revealing an era of denominational, governmental, and public scrutiny of religious leaders. Controversial ministers risked ostracism within the local community, censure from church leaders, and arrests by provost marshals or local police. In contested areas of the Upper Confederacy and Border Union, ministers occasionally faced deadly violence for what they said or would not say from their pulpits. Even silence on political issues did not guarantee a preacher's security, as both sides arrested clergymen who defied the dictates of civil and military authorities by refusing to declare their loyalty in sermons or to pray for the designated nation, army, or president. The generation that fought the Civil War lived in arguably the most sacralized culture in the history of the United States. The participation of church members in the public arena meant that ministers wielded great authority. Wesley outlines the scope of that influence and considers, conversely, the feared outcomes of its abuse. By treating ministers as both individual men of conscience and leaders of religious communities, Wesley reveals that the reticence of otherwise loyal ministers to bring politics into the pulpit often grew not out of partisan concerns but out of doctrinal, historical, and local factors. The Politics of Faith during the Civil War sheds new light on the political motivations of homefront clergymen during wartime, revealing how and why the Civil War stands as the nation's first concerted campaign to check the ministry's freedom of religious expression.
A free region deeply influenced by southern mores, the Lower Middle West represented a true cultural and political median in Civil War–era America. Here grew a Unionism steeped in the mythology of the Loyal West--a myth rooted in regional and racial animosities and the belief that westerners had won the war. Matthew E. Stanley's intimate study explores the Civil War, Reconstruction, and sectional reunion in this bellwether region. Using the lives of area soldiers and officers as a lens, Stanley reveals a place and a strain of collective memory that was anti-rebel, anti-eastern, and anti-black in its attitudes--one that came to be at the forefront of the northern retreat from Reconstruction and toward white reunion. The Lower Middle West's embrace of black exclusion laws, origination of the Copperhead movement, backlash against liberalizing war measures, and rejection of Reconstruction were all pivotal to broader American politics. And the region's legacies of white supremacy--from racialized labor violence to sundown towns to lynching--found malignant expression nationwide, intersecting with how Loyal Westerners remembered the war. A daring challenge to traditional narratives of section and commemoration, The Loyal West taps into a powerful and fascinating wellspring of Civil War identity and memory.
The Civil War was primarily a land conflict, but it was not only that. “Nor must Uncle Sam’s web-feet be forgotten,” wrote Abraham Lincoln. “At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.” From the Arctic Circle to the Caribbean, swift Rebel raiders decimated Union commerce pursued by the U. S. Navy. Offshore, storm-tossed blockaders in hundreds of vessels patrolled from Hatteras to Galveston while occasionally lobbing a few shots at a speeding Rebel runner. Around the continental periphery, it was ships vs. powerful fortifications as titanic clashes erupted: Port Royal, New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile. Massive army-navy amphibious operations presaged twentieth-century conflicts: The Peninsula, North Carolina Sounds, Fort Fisher. In the heartland, the two services invented riverine warfare: Forts Henry and Donelson, Island No. 10, Memphis, Vicksburg. And through it all, emerging technology of the machine age played a critical role: iron armor, torpedoes, steam propulsion, heavy naval artillery. However, nothing in the history and traditions of the United States Navy had prepared it for civil war. The sea service would expand tenfold from a third-rate force to (temporarily) one of the most powerful and advanced navies. Meanwhile, former shipmates in the Confederacy struggled to construct a fleet from nothing, applying innovative technologies and underdog strategies to achieve more than anyone thought possible. Both sides faced unprecedented strategic, tactical, and technological challenges that made their navies indispensable—even as the navies themselves faced those same sorts of challenges. The Civil War on the Water: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War compiles favorite navy tales and obscure narratives by distinguished public historians of the Emerging Civil War in celebration of the organization’s tenth anniversary. This eclectic collection presents new stories and familiar battles from a unique perspective—from the water—sea, surf, and stream.
