Six Years of Hell: Harpers Ferry During the Civil War
Author: Chester G. Hearn
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9780807141298
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The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon
Author: Jonah Franklin Dyer
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2003-01-01
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780803266377
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJ. Franklin Dyer?s journal offers a rare perspective on three years of the Civil War as seen through the eyes of a surgeon at the front. The journal, taken from letters written to his wife, Maria, describes in lengthy and colorful detail the daily life of a doctor who began as a regimental surgeon in the Nineteenth Massachusetts Volunteers and was promoted to acting medical director of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac. ø This firsthand account traces Dyer?s attempts to manage his Gloucester household even as the Second Corps fought on the Peninsula, at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and from the Wilderness to Petersburg. Over time his letters to his wife become fraught with the tension of a man losing his early martial ardor as he witnesses the ghastly procession of suffering and death. ø Both a talented surgeon and a careful administrator, Dyer nevertheless declined opportunities to work at hospitals in the rear in order to stay near his old regiment and the fighting. He confronted the aftermath of battle?thousands of wounded and dying men?with a small staff and simple instruments. He and his fellow surgeons saved lives as best they could?often at the cost of amputated limbs?then dropped to the ground from exhaustion and slept in blood-drenched uniforms until the cries of the wounded woke them and induced them back to work. Dyer also provides a glimpse of the most devastating opponent the armies faced: disease. He and his medical colleagues fought cholera, typhus, dysentery, measles, and, despite official denials in Washington , a scurvy outbreak that weakened Federal units during the Peninsula campaign.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Author: John Stauffer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-05-09
Total Pages: 391
ISBN-13: 0199339589
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt was sung at Ronald Reagan's funeral, and adopted with new lyrics by labor radicals. John Updike quoted it in the title of one of his novels, and George W. Bush had it performed at the memorial service in the National Cathedral for victims of September 11, 2001. Perhaps no other song has held such a profoundly significant--and contradictory--place in America's history and cultural memory than the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." In this sweeping study, John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis show how this Civil War tune has become an anthem for cause after radically different cause. The song originated in antebellum revivalism, with the melody of the camp-meeting favorite, "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us." Union soldiers in the Civil War then turned it into "John Brown's Body." Julia Ward Howe, uncomfortable with Brown's violence and militancy, wrote the words we know today. Using intense apocalyptic and millenarian imagery, she captured the popular enthusiasm of the time, the sense of a climactic battle between good and evil; yet she made no reference to a particular time or place, allowing it to be exported or adapted to new conflicts, including Reconstruction, sectional reconciliation, imperialism, progressive reform, labor radicalism, civil rights movements, and social conservatism. And yet the memory of the song's original role in bloody and divisive Civil War scuttled an attempt to make it the national anthem. The Daughters of the Confederacy held a contest for new lyrics, but admitted that none of the entries measured up to the power of the original. "The Battle Hymn" has long helped to express what we mean when we talk about sacrifice, about the importance of fighting--in battles both real and allegorical--for the values America represents. It conjures up and confirms some of our most profound conceptions of national identity and purpose. And yet, as Stauffer and Soskis note, the popularity of the song has not relieved it of the tensions present at its birth--tensions between unity and discord, and between the glories and the perils of righteous enthusiasm. If anything, those tensions became more profound. By following this thread through the tapestry of American history, The Battle Hymn of the Republic illuminates the fractures and contradictions that underlie the story of our nation.
Counter-Thrust
Author: Benjamin Franklin Cooling (III)
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2020-02-17
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 1496209109
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDuring the summer of 1862, a Confederate resurgence threatened to turn the tide of the Civil War. When the Union's earlier multitheater thrust into the South proved to be a strategic overreach, the Confederacy saw its chance to reverse the loss of the Upper South through counteroffensives from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi. Benjamin Franklin Cooling tells this story in Counter-Thrust, recounting in harrowing detail Robert E. Lee's flouting of his antagonist George B. McClellan's drive to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond and describing the Confederate hero's long-dreamt-of offensive to reclaim central and northern Virginia before crossing the Potomac. Counter-Thrust also provides a window into the Union's internal conflict at building a successful military leadership team during this defining period. Cooling shows us Lincoln's administration in disarray, with relations between the president and field commander McClellan strained to the breaking point. He also shows how the fortunes of war shifted abruptly in the Union's favor, climaxing at Antietam with the bloodiest single day in American history--and in Lincoln's decision to announce a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Here in all its gritty detail and considerable depth is a critical moment in the unfolding of the Civil War and of American history.
Cultural Landscape Report for the United States Armory at Harpers Ferry and Potomac Riverfront, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
Author: Allison A. Crosbie
Publisher:
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmerican Civil War [6 volumes]
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2013-09-30
Total Pages: 3030
ISBN-13: 1851096825
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis expansive, multivolume reference work provides a broad, multidisciplinary examination of the Civil War period ranging from pre-Civil War developments and catalysts such as the Mexican-American War to the rebuilding of the war-torn nation during Reconstruction. The Civil War was undoubtedly the most important and seminal event in 19th-century American history. Students who understand the Civil War have a better grasp of the central dilemmas in the American historical narrative: states rights versus federalism, freedom versus slavery, the role of the military establishment, the extent of presidential powers, and individual rights versus collective rights. Many of these dilemmas continue to shape modern society and politics. This comprehensive work facilitates both detailed reading and quick referencing for readers from the high school level to senior scholars in the field. The exhaustive coverage of this encyclopedia includes all significant battles and skirmishes; important figures, both civilian and military; weapons; government relations with Native Americans; and a plethora of social, political, cultural, military, and economic developments. The entries also address the many events that led to the conflict, the international diplomacy of the war, the rise of the Republican Party and the growing crisis and stalemate in American politics, slavery and its impact on the nation as a whole, the secession crisis, the emergence of the "total war" concept, and the complex challenges of the aftermath of the conflict.
The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
Author: Teresa S. Moyer
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780759110663
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHarpers Ferry National Historical Park is most widely known today for the attempted slave revolt led by John Brown in 1859, the nucleus for the interpretation of the current national park. Here, Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel tell the behind-the-scenes story of how this event was chosen and preserved for commemoration, providing lessons for federal, state, local, and non-profit organizations who continually struggle over the dilemma about which past to present to the public. Professional and non-professional audiences alike will benefit from their important insights into how federal agencies interpret the past, and in turn shape public memory.
Archaeology and Created Memory
Author: Paul A. Shackel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2006-03-01
Total Pages: 207
ISBN-13: 0306471736
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArchaeology can either bolster memory and tradition, or contradict the status quo and provide an alternative view of the past. An archaeology of Harpers Ferry's wartime and Victorian eras confronts time-honored historical interpretations of the past (created and perpetuated by such interest groups as historians and the National Park Service) and in so doing allows us to be more inclusive of the town's forgotten histories and provides alternative voices to a past.
Blood Image
Author: Paul Christopher Anderson
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2006-03-21
Total Pages: 279
ISBN-13: 0807152366
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith Blood Image, Paul Anderson shows that the symbol of a man can be just as important as the man himself. Turner Ashby was one of the most famous fighting men of the Civil War. Rising to colonel of the 7th Virginia Cavalry, Ashby fought brilliantly under Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign until he died in battle. Anderson demonstrates that Ashby's image -- a catalytic, mesmerizing, and often contradictory combination of southern antebellum cultural ideals and wartime hopes and fears -- emerged during his own lifetime and was not a later creation of the Lost Cause. The stylistic synergy of Anderson's startling narrative design fuels a poignant irony: men like Ashby -- a chivalrous, charismatic "knight" who had difficulty complying with Stonewall Jackson's authority -- become trapped by the desire to have their real lives reflect their imagined ones.
The Children's Civil War
Author: James Alan Marten
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2000-10-01
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 9780807849040
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Children's Civil War is an exploration of childhood during our nation's greatest crisis. James Marten describes how the war changed the literature and schoolbooks published for children, how it affected children's relationships with absent fathers and brothers, how the responsibilities forced on northern and especially southern youngsters shortened their childhoods, and how the death and destruction that tore the country apart often cut down children as well as adults.
