The most contentious event in our nation's history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms -- Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens. No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland -- where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers to portray the passions of a wide variety of people -- merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, civic leaders, and children -- caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland's Southern sympathies -- while genuine -- never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland. Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.
Voices from the Gathering Storm explains the dramatic change in thinking about the nature and value of the American Union from 1846 to 1861 which impelled citizens from 11 southern states to declare independence and the remaining 22 states to fight the bloodiest war in the nation's history. This reader tells the story of seventeen Northerners and Southerners who lived through the critical fifteen years prior to the Civil War. In their letters and diaries, they describe in their own words what it was like to live during the sectional crisis and the coming of the war. Men like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis thought deeply about issues of patriotism and states' rights, issues which remain of great importance today. Women and black Americans were also passionate in their beliefs. Harriet Beecher Stowe felt so strongly about slavery that she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Frederick Douglass and Charlotte Forten GrimkÈ wrote of their abhorrence of slavery and the need to end that 'evil institution.' The lives of Southern women were also affected as they were forced to confront the issue of slavery and the Northern effort to end it. The voices of these men and women are heard in this new volume. At this time the North and South made decisions that resulted in two very different civilizations-the South embraced slavery and states' rights, while the North rejected the expansion of slavery and accepted the idea of an indivisible Union. These pre-Civil War years contain the key to understanding how the war came to be and also enable students to comprehend the modern North and South. Voices from the Gathering Storm is the only text that uses primary sources to illustrate the conflicts that divided the nation before the war. This use of primary sources allows students to enter more deeply into the lives of Northerners and Southerners and to understand and appreciate the way in which they responded to this tense period in American history. The author provides chapter introductions that connect the d
Letting ordinary people speak for themselves, this book uses primary documents to highlight daily life among Americans—Union and Confederate, black and white, soldier and civilian—during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Focusing on routines as basic as going to school and cooking and cleaning, Voices of Civil War America: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life explores the lives of ordinary Americans during one of the nation's most tumultuous eras. The book emphasizes the ordinary rather than the momentous to help students achieve a true understanding of mid-19th-century American culture and society. Recognizing that there is no better way to learn history than to allow those who lived it to speak for themselves, the authors utilize primary documents to depict various aspects of daily life, including politics, the military, economics, domestic life, material culture, religion, intellectual life, and leisure. Each of the documents is augmented by an introduction and aftermath, as well as lists of topics to consider and questions to ask.
The Pennsylvania border county of York and its people stood smack in the middle of things - where South met North - in the American Civil War. That war roiled York County from its tip near the capital of Harrisburg to its 40-mile base at the Mason-Dixon Line. Union soldiers moved to the South after seasoning and staging on county soil. Train cars dripping with blood carried many wounded and diseased soldiers back to a mammoth U.S. military hospital on York parkland. Thousands of York County residents donned blue uniforms, and untold scores died. The war marched onto county soil in those terrible days before the Battle of Gettysburg. The four-day Confederate visit drained money, food, supplies, and horseflesh. Soldiers in blue and gray died in fighting at Hanover and Wrightsville. Gettysburg came next, and county residents gathered food and supplies to treat the wounds of battle, a short 30 miles away. In "Civil War Voices from York County, Pa.," Scott L. Mingus Sr. and James McClure use oral histories, letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts to tell the stories of York countians in those bleak days, 150 years ago. They give a vibrant voice to those living, serving, and dying in a border county in this most tumultuous period in America's history.
Presents poems that adopt the voices of soldiers, commanders, and slaves and other civilians during the Civil War, pairing each poem with a period photo, and includes facts on the conflict.
The Army of Northern Virginia's chaotic dispersal began even before Lee and Grant met at Appomattox Court House. As the Confederates had pushed west at a relentless pace for nearly a week, thousands of wounded and exhausted men fell out of the ranks. When word spread that Lee planned to surrender, most remaining troops stacked their arms and accepted paroles allowing them to return home, even as they lamented the loss of their country and cause. But others broke south and west, hoping to continue the fight. Fearing a guerrilla war, Grant extended the generous Appomattox terms to every rebel who would surrender himself. Provost marshals fanned out across Virginia and beyond, seeking nearly 18,000 of Lee's men who had yet to surrender. But the shock of Lincoln's assassination led Northern authorities to see threats of new rebellion in every rail depot and harbor where Confederates gathered for transport, even among those already paroled. While Federal troops struggled to keep order and sustain a fragile peace, their newly surrendered adversaries seethed with anger and confusion at the sight of Union troops occupying their towns and former slaves celebrating freedom. In this dramatic new history of the weeks and months after Appomattox, Caroline E. Janney reveals that Lee's surrender was less an ending than the start of an interregnum marked by military and political uncertainty, legal and logistical confusion, and continued outbursts of violence. Janney takes readers from the deliberations of government and military authorities to the ground-level experiences of common soldiers. Ultimately, what unfolds is the messy birth narrative of the Lost Cause, laying the groundwork for the defiant resilience of rebellion in the years that followed.
“A vast choral pageant that recounts the momentous work of the civil rights struggle.”—The New York Times Book Review A monumental volume drawing upon nearly one thousand interviews with civil rights activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and others, weaving a fascinating narrative of the civil rights movement told by the people who lived it Join brave and terrified youngsters walking through a jeering mob and up the steps of Central High School in Little Rock. Listen to the vivid voices of the ordinary people who manned the barricades, the laborers, the students, the housewives without whom there would have been no civil rights movements at all. In this remarkable oral history, Henry Hampton, creator and executive producer of the acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize, and Steve Fayer, series writer, bring to life the country’s great struggle for civil rights as no conventional narrative can. You will hear the voices of those who defied the blackjacks, who went to jail, who witnessed and policed the movement; of those who stood for and against it—voices from the heart of America.