Articles and databases
- America: History & Life This link opens in a new window Key database for research in American and Canadian history. Indexes journals from the 19th century to the present, containing articles on all eras of American history.
- Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window Military & Government Collection offers journal articles and current news about all branches of the military and includes military titles, trade publications, and news weeklies. More than 200 peer reviewed journals are indexed, 120 of which are in full text.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window JSTOR allows you to search across approximately 2,000 journal titles from more than 50 disciplines. It contains complete backfiles of scholarly journals starting with the first issues, many of which date back from the 1800s. Although the majority of titles do not have the most recent 3 to 5 years available in full text, there are some which have the current issues available. Note: Additional content has been permanently added to JSTOR, including archived journal collections and primary resources. Searches performed using the databases page link will include results from the additional sources, as will the link above.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Full text database of journals in disciplines such as art, literature, history, political science, and economics. Some full text will come from the JSTOR database, in PDF format.
Encyclopedias and other reference resources
Encyclopedia of the American Civil War by
An award-winning and highly recommended comprehensive reference set on the political, social, and military aspects of the American Civil War. * Over 1,600 signed A-Z entries, authored by notable scholars and referenced for further reading * Over 300 contributors, including some of the leading Civil War scholars at work today * More than 500 illustrations, including contemporary photographs, lithographs, and drawings * 75 maps created specifically for this encyclopedia * A chronology, glossary, and exhaustive index * Over 250 primary source documents
Call Number: General Collection, E468 .E53 2000Publication Date: 2000
The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Student Companion by
The Civil War was the most devastating event in U.S. history, in which over half a million Americans paid for their beliefs with their lives. The heroic battles, harrowing marches, and military genius of generals on both sides still inspire books, movies, and the imaginations of Civil Warbuffs. Less obvious are the economic, political, social, and cultural repercussions of the war, which continue to influence American life. Reconstruction and the end of slavery brought deep-seated problems to the reunited nation. This single-volume encyclopedia includes 245 entries on all facets of the conflicted era. It features articles on: * Battles and campaigns (Gettysburg, Shiloh, Sherman's March to the Sea) * Culture (music, photography, religion) * Economic affairs (cost of the war, gold, Richmond Bread Riot) * Foreign affairs (France, Great Britain, Laird rams) * Health and welfare (disease, medicine, prisons) * Ideologies (federalism, free-labor ideology) * Legislative landmarks (14th Amendment, Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Wade-Davis bill) * Military terms, strategy, and weaponry (cavalry, rifles, tactics) * Minorities (black suffrage, emancipation, Native Americans) * Political events and organizations (Constitutional Union party, election of 1860, fire-eaters) * Prominent individuals (Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman) * Social reform (abolitionism, women's rights movement) * Women (nurses, women in the war, individual women) More than 200 black-and-white illustrations, including over a dozen maps, complement the entries. A list of selected Civil War museums and historic sites, suggestions for further reading, recommended websites, and a chronology of the war round out this essential resource.
Call Number: General Collection, E468 .B319 2001Publication Date: 2001
The Chronological Tracking of the American Civil War per the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion by
Condenses & presents on a day-by-day basis -1861 through 1865- every event reported in the 128 volume set of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. The book presents the promotion of every Confederate & Federal general, in excess of 1,000, plus the descriptive death of every Civil War general through 1865. In many instances, the author presents a brief account of combat encounters, adding additional events of importance. Over 10,000 reported events makes this reference manual a most exhaustive & detailed book of its kind on the American Civil War. Copies sold to many major College & University Departments & Libraries, plus individuals from Florida to Maine to California to Canada. Jane C. of Livermore, CA writes, "Received the manual, & love it! Can't wait to show my brother; he'll be envious." Pre-publication price of $29.95 through October 15, 1994. Regularly priced at $34.95. Add $5.00 postage & handling per book. Presented by: James River Publications, 102 Maple Lane, Williamsburg, VA 23185-8106, (804) 220-4912.
Call Number: General Collection, E468.3 .M67 1994Publication Date: 1995-12-01
Atlas of the Civil War by
Offering the clearest and most comprehensive examination of the conflict that transformed the United States, the Atlas of the Civil War reveals the full dimensions of this historic confrontation. Surpassing the scope of any previously published single-volume work, this atlas pairs expertscholarship with bold mapping to vividly depict the ebb and flow of destruction and reconstruction. Divided chronologically into five sections, the Atlas of the Civil War illustrates every significant battle and military campaign while simultaneously considering the important social themes that shaped the country during the same time period. All theaters of war in which armies fought andmaneuvered will be covered in detail and, marking a major departure from other atlases, this volume will devote substantial attention to the nonmilitary elements of the struggle between North and South. Maps of population, economic development, elections, transportation networks and patterns ofenlistment illuminate the intersections between the home front and the battlefield, demonstrating with specially commissioned cartography that no war is fought in isolation from the rest of society. Approximately forty three-dimensional maps of terrain and troop movements add yet another uniqueelement to this ambitious reference. Written by two esteemed Civil War historians, Kenneth Winkle and Steven Woodworth, the pithy text is accented with black and white photography and illustrations that bring key characters and settings to life. Pulitzer-prize winning author James McPherson, guides the project, setting the tone of theatlas with a foreword and five shorter essays the open each of the sections.
Call Number: General Collection Oversize, E468 .W875 2004Publication Date: 2004
Women During the Civil War by
For more information, including a full list of entries, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the WomenDuring the Civil Warwebsite. Women During theCivil War: An Encyclopediais the first A-Z reference work to offer a panoramic presentation of the contributions, achievements, and personal stories of American women during one of the most turbulent eras of the nation's history. Incorporating the most recent scholarship as well as excerpts from diaries, letters, newspapers, and other primary source documents, this Encyclopediaencompasses the wartime experiences of famous and lesser-known women of all ethnic groups and social backgrounds throughout the United States during the Civil War era.
Call Number: General Collection, E628 .H37 2004Publication Date: 2003
Leaders of the American Civil War by
Covering both the great military leaders and the critical civilian leaders, this book provides an overview of their careers and a professional assessment of their accomplishments. Entries consider the leaders' character and prewar experiences, their contributions to the war effort, and the war's impact on the rest of their lives. The entries then look at how history has assessed these leaders, thus putting their longtime reputations on the line. The result is a thorough revision of some leaders' careers, a call for further study of others, and a reaffirmation of the accomplishments of the greatest leaders. Analyzing the leaders historiographically, the work shows how the leaders wanted to be remembered, how postwar memorists and biographers saw them, the verdict of early historians, and how the best modern historians have assessed their contributions. By including a variety of leaders from both civilian and military roles, the book provides a better understanding of the total war, and by relating their lives to their times, it provides a better understanding of historical revisionism and of why history has been so interested in Civil War lives.
Call Number: General Collection, E467 .L43 1998Publication Date: 1998
Books
Listed below are some recent books about the U.S. Civil War. Many more are available; to find others, search OneSearch for "United States" and "Civil War," and limit your results to "book/ebook." For additional tips, see this guide's "Books" page.
Engineering Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War by
Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineering--not superior military strategy or industrial advantage--as the critical determining factor in the war's outcome. Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggled to cut supply lines and stop the Yankees from pressing any advantage. By presenting detailed case studies from both theaters of the war, Army clearly demonstrates how the soldiers' education, training, and talents spelled the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat. He also reveals massive logistical operations as critical in determining the war's outcome.
Call Number: General Collection, E468.9 .A67 2018Publication Date: 2018
The Election Of 1860: "A Campaign Fraught with Consequences" by
Because of its extraordinary consequences and because of Abraham Lincoln's place in the American pantheon, the presidential election of 1860 is probably the most studied in our history. But perhaps for the same reasons, historians have focused on the contest of Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas in the northern free states and John Bell versus John C. Breckinridge in the slaveholding South. In The Election of 1860 a preeminent scholar of American history disrupts this familiar narrative with a clearer and more comprehensive account of how the election unfolded and what it was actually about. Most critically, the book counters the common interpretation of the election as a referendum on slavery and the Republican Party's purported threat to it. However significantly slavery figured in the election, The Election of 1860 reveals the key importance of widespread opposition to the Republican Party because of its overtly anti-southern rhetoric and seemingly unstoppable rise to power in the North after its emergence in 1854. Also of critical importance was the corruption of the incumbent administration of Democrat James Buchanan--and a nationwide revulsion against party. Grounding his history in a nuanced retelling of the pre-1860 story, Michael F. Holt explores the sectional politics that permeated the election and foreshadowed the coming Civil War. He brings to light how the campaigns of the Republican Party and the National (Northern) Democrats and the Constitutional (Southern) Democrats and the newly formed Constitutional Union Party were not exclusively regional. His attention to the little-studied role of the Buchanan Administration, and of perceived threats to the preservation of the Union, clarifies the true dynamic of the 1860 presidential election, particularly in its early stages.
Call Number: General Collection, E440 .H645 2017Publication Date: 2017
Midnight in America: Darkness, Dreams, and Sleep During the Civil War by
The Civil War brought many forms of upheaval to America, not only in waking hours but also in the dark of night. Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War-era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them. White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness.
Call Number: General Collection, BF1078 .W45 2017Publication Date: 2017
Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States Since 1865 by
At a cost of at least 800,000 lives, the Civil War preserved the Union, aborted the breakaway Confederacy, and liberated a race of slaves. Civil War Memories is the first comprehensive account of how and why Americans have selectively remembered, and forgotten, this watershed conflict since its conclusion in 1865. Drawing on an array of textual and visual sources as well as a wide range of modern scholarship on Civil War memory, Robert J. Cook charts the construction of four dominant narratives by the ordinary men and women, as well as the statesmen and generals, who lived through the struggle and its tumultuous aftermath. Part One explains why the Yankee victors' memory of the "War of the Rebellion" drove political conflict into the 1890s, then waned with the passing of the soldiers who had saved the republic. It also touches on the leading role southern white women played in the development of the racially segregated South's "Lost Cause"; explores why, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had embraced a powerful reconciliatory memory of the Civil War; and details the failed efforts to connect an emancipationist reading of the conflict to the fading cause of civil rights. Part Two demonstrates the Civil War's capacity to thrill twentieth-century Americans in movies such as The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. It also reveals the war's vital connection to the black freedom struggle in the modern era. Finally, Cook argues that the massacre of African American parishioners in Charleston in June 2015 highlighted the continuing relevance of the Civil War by triggering intense nationwide controversy over the place of Confederate symbols in the United States. Written in vigorous prose for a wide audience and designed to inform popular debate on the relevance of the Civil War to the racial politics of modern America, Civil War Memories is required reading for informed Americans today.
Call Number: General Collection, E468.9 .C66 2017Publication Date: 2017
Reconstruction in a Globalizing World by
As one of the most complexly divisive periods in American history, Reconstruction has been the subject of a rich scholarship. Historians have studied the period's racial views, political maneuverings, divisions between labor and capital, debates about woman suffrage, and of course its struggle between freed slaves and their former masters. Yet, on each of these fronts scholarship has attended overwhelmingly to the eastern United States, especially the South, thereby neglecting important transnational linkages. This volume, the first of its kind, will examine Reconstruction's global connections and contexts in ways that, while honoring the field's accomplishments, move it beyond its southern focus. The volume will bring together prominent and emerging scholars to showcase the deepening interplay between scholarships on Reconstruction and on America's place in world history. Through these essays, Reconstruction in a Globalizing World will engage two dynamic fields of study to the benefit of them both. By demonstrating that the South and the eastern United States were connected to other parts of the globe in complex and important ways, the volume will challenge scholars of Reconstruction to look outwards. Likewise, examining these same connections will compel transnationally-minded scholars to reconsider Reconstruction as a pivotal era in the shaping of the United States' relations with the rest of the world.
Call Number: General Collection, E668 .R388 2018Publication Date: 2018
Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory by
Sherman's March, cutting a path through Georgia and the Carolinas, is among the most symbolically potent events of the Civil War. In Through the Heart of Dixie, Anne Sarah Rubin uncovers and unpacks stories and myths about the March from a wide variety of sources, including African Americans, women, Union soldiers, Confederates, and even Sherman himself. Drawing her evidence from an array of media, including travel accounts, memoirs, literature, films, and newspapers, Rubin uses the competing and contradictory stories as a lens into the ways that American thinking about the Civil War has changed over time. Compiling and analyzing the discordant stories around the March, and considering significant cultural artifacts such as George Barnard's 1866 Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and E. L. Doctorow's The March, Rubin creates a cohesive narrative that unites seemingly incompatible myths and asserts the metaphorical importance of Sherman's March to Americans' memory of the Civil War. The book is enhanced by a digital history project, which can be found at shermansmarch.org.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2014
Paying Freedom's Price: A History of African-Americans in the Civil War by
Paying Freedom's Price provides a comprehensive yet brief and readable history of the role of African Americans both slave and free from the decade leading up to the Civil War until its immediate aftermath. Rather than focusing on black military service, the white-led abolitionist movement, or Lincoln s emergence as the great emancipator, Escott concentrates on the black military and civilian experience in the North as well as the South. He argues that African Americans slaves, free Blacks, civilians, soldiers, men, and women played a crucial role in transforming the sectional conflict into a war for black freedom. The book is organized chronologically as well as thematically. The chronological organization will help readers understand how the Civil War evolved from a war to preserve the Union to a war that sought to abolish slavery, but not racial inequality. Within this chronological framework, Escott provides a thematic structure, tracing the causes of the war and African American efforts to include abolition, black military service, and racial equality in the wartime agenda. Including a timeline, selected primary sources, and an extensive bibliographic essay, Escott s book will be provide a superb starting point for students and general readers who want to explore in greater depth this important aspect of the Civil War and African American history."
Call Number: General Collection, E453 .E746 2017Publication Date: 2016
Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary by
"This exhaustively researched, well-paced book should take its place as the new, standard biography of the ill-tempered man who helped save the Union: It is fair, judicious, authoritative and comprehensive."--The Wall Street Journal "A welcome and significant addition to the ample literature on the Civil War and Reconstruction." --Ron Chernow, author of The New York Times bestseller Alexander Hamilton Walter Stahr, award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Seward, tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the man the president entrusted with raising the army that preserved the Union. Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for "war crimes," such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln's assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time. Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan's Attorney General and then as Lincoln's aggressive Secretary of War. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln's deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He informed the nation of the President's death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial. Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president. Walter Stahr's essential book is the first major biography of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this underexplored figure to his proper place in American history.
Call Number: General Collection, E467.1.S8 S73 2017Publication Date: 2017
Primary sources online
For primary sources from and about the Civil War, you should try the resources and strategies listed on this guide's "Primary Sources" page. However, the databases, collections, and recent books below might be of particular interest to those researching the Civil War.
- Images of the American Civil War This link opens in a new window Presents the dramatic imagery of nineteenth-century Americana as experienced from the social, military, and political perspectives. Images are drawn from archives around the country, documenting the camp and battle experiences of Union and Confederate soldiers.
- The Frank A. Bracken Civil War Collection (Ball State University Digital Media Repository) From the University Libraries' Digital Media Repository: "The Frank A. Bracken Civil War Collection provides online access to U.S. Civil War related correspondence, certificates, maps, photographs, plaques, weapons, uniforms, and other artifacts from circa 1860-2000 collected by Frank A. Bracken. Frank A Bracken is the son of Alexander M. Bracken and Rosemary Ball Bracken. Bracken began his career as an attorney for Bingham McHale LLP. He has served in leadership and board positions for several local companies including the George and Francis Ball Foundation, Ball Corporation, Ball State University, and First Merchants Corporation. In 1989, Bracken was nominated as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and remained in that role until 1993. Bracken was also a researcher of Civil War topics and was involved in battle reenactments and battle field preservation as a member of the Civil War Preservation Trust. As a result of his active research and preservation efforts, Bracken established a personal collection of Civil War books, paintings, photographs, and artifacts, many of which are featured in this digital collection."
A Surgeon's Civil War: The Letters and Diaries of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. by
Daniel M. Holt, a successful country doctor in the upstate village of Newport, New York, accepted the position of assistant surgeon in the 121st New York Volunteer Army in August 1862. At age 42 when he was commissioned, he was the oldest member of the staff. But his experience served him well, as his regiment participated in nearly all the major campaigns in the eastern theater of the war--Crampton's Gap before Antietam, Fredericksburg, Salem Church, the Mine Run campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, and Appomattox. In A Surgeon's Civil War, the educated and articulate Holt describes camp life, army politics, and the medical difficulties that he and his colleagues experienced. His reminiscences and letters provide an insider's look at medicine as practiced on the battlefield and offer occasional glimpses of the efficacy of Surgeon General William A. Hammond's reforms as they affected Holt's regiment. He also comments on other subjects, including slavery and national events. Holt served until October 17, 1864 when ill health forced him to resign.
Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 0873385381Publication Date: 1991
The Best Writings of Ulysses S. Grant by
Famous for his military acumen and for his part in saving the Union during the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant also remains known for his two-volume memoirs, considered among the greatest military memoirs ever written. Grant's other writings, however, have not received the same acclaim, even though they show the same literary skill. Originally published in the thirty-two volumes of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, the letters and speeches are the major source of information about Grant's life and era and have played a key role in elevating his reputation to that of the leading general of the Civil War and the first of the modern presidents. In this collection, editor John F. Marszalek presents excerpts from Grant's most insightful and skillfully composed writings and provides perspective through introductory comments tying each piece to the next. The result is a fascinating overview of Grant's life and career. In sixteen chronological chapters, selections from Grant's letters and other writings reveal his personal thoughts on the major events of his momentous life, including the start of the Civil War, the capture of Vicksburg, Lincoln's reelection, Lee's surrender, his terms as president, the Panic of 1873, and his bouts of mouth and throat cancer. Throughout, Grant's prose reveals clearly the power of his words and his ability to present them well. Although some historians have maligned his presidency as one of the most corrupt periods in American history, these writings reinforce Grant's greatness as a general, demonstrate the importance of his presidency, and show him to be one of the driving forces of the nineteenth century. With this compendium, Marszalek not only celebrates the literary talent of one of America's greatest military figures but also vindicates an individual who, for so long, has been unfairly denigrated. A concise reference for students of American history and Civil War enthusiasts as well as a valuable introduction for those who are new to Grant's writings, this volume provides intriguing insight into one of the nineteenth century's most important Americans.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2015
Welcome the Hour of Conflict by
Vivid and lively letters from a young Confederate in Lee's Army. In the spring of 1861 a 22-year-old Alabamian did what many of his friends and colleagues were doing--he joined the Confederate Army as a volunteer. The first of his family to enlist, William Cowan McClellan, who served as a private in the 9th Alabama Infantry regiment, wrote hundreds of letters throughout the war, often penning for friends who could not write home for themselves. In the letters collected in John C. Carter's volume, this young soldier comments on his feelings toward his commanding officers, his attitude toward military discipline and camp life, his disdain for the western Confederate armies, and his hopes and fears for the future of the Confederacy. McClellan's letters also contain vivid descriptions of camp life, battles, marches, picket duty, and sickness and disease in the army. The correspondence between McClellan and his family dealt with separation due to war as well as with other wartime difficulties such as food shortages, invasion, and occupation. The letters also show the rise and fall of morale on both the home front and on the battlefield, and how they were closely intertwined. Remarkable for their humor, literacy, and matter-of-fact banter, the letters reveal the attitude a common soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia had toward the day-to-day activity and progression of the war. John C. Carter includes helpful appendixes that list the letters chronologically and offer the regimental roster, casualty/enlistment totals, assignments, and McClellan's personal military record.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2007
Letters of a Civil War Nurse by
She was called "The Florence Nightingale of America." From the fighting at Gettysburg to the capture of Richmond, this young Quaker nurse worked tirelessly to relieve the suffering of soldiers. She was one of the great heroines of the Union. Cornelia Hancock served in field and evacuating hospitals, in a contraband camp, and (defying authority) on the battlefield. Her letters to family members are witty, unsentimental, and full of indignation about the neglect of wounded soldiers and black refugees. Hancock was fiercely devoted to the welfare of the privates who had "nothing before them but hard marching, poor fare, and terrible fighting."
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 1998
In the Country of the Enemy by
"Anyone interested in the Civil War along the eastern seaboard--and most especially North Carolina--will applaud the availability of a scholarly, well-edited edition of the Haines book."--Daniel Sutherland, University of Arkansas "The most comprehensive account by a private soldier of the 1862-1863 campaigns in North Carolina."--Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography Last printed by the ,Boston Herald in 1863, Corporal Zenas T. Haines's dispatches from the Civil War in eastern North Carolina provide a lively, detailed account of the history of a Massachusetts regiment operating in the hostile southern coastal lowlands during the winter of 1862-63. In reports originally prepared for the Herald, Haines follows the organization, training, occupation, and combat service of the 44th Massachusetts from recruitment to mustering out. Observing these citizen soldiers with a journalist's eye for detail and color, Haines describes their motivation, experience in combat, diversions in camp, and perspectives on and reactions to the people and countryside of the Confederate home front through which they passed. Especially valuable are their remarks about slaves (including those enlisting in the African Brigade) and their strong sentiments in support of emancipation and the recruitment of blacks in the Federal army. Haines's reports are important for their on-the-spot history of the entire life span of a regiment of novitiate urban soldiers and their critical role in defeating the Confederate army's effort to drive Union forces from eastern North Carolina. William C. Harris's introduction places these reports in the broader context of the nine-month troops raised by the War Department and provides additional background on the individual men of the 44th Massachusetts, their purposes in joining the regiment, and the history of the war in eastern North Carolina. Virtually unknown by Civil War students and aficionados, Haines's reports expand our knowledge of Union soldiers during the Civil War and provide new insights both on the middle-class urban men who volunteered for service and on the region of the Confederacy in which they operated. William C. Harris, professor of history at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, is the author of seven books on Civil War and Reconstruction topics, including With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union, which was a recipient of the 1998 Lincoln Prize for Civil War scholarship.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 1999
Propaganda from the American Civil War by
Offering comprehensive coverage for those examining Civil War propaganda, this volume provides a broad analysis of efforts by both Union and Confederate sides to influence public opinion of America's deadliest conflict. This illuminating reference work contains excerpts from roughly 100 individual pieces of propaganda generated during the American Civil War in the North and the South, as well as contextual analysis to assist readers in understanding its utility, importance, and effect. It includes written arguments, staged photographs, and political cartoons, all of which were used to advance one side's objectives while undermining the enemy's. This helps readers to understand the underlying arguments of each side as well as the willingness of each to distort the truth for political, military, or economic advantage. This book is organized chronologically, allowing readers to understand how propaganda developed and expanded throughout the war. It includes a chapter dedicated to each of the war years (1861-1865), an antebellum chapter, and a postwar chapter. Each document comprised in the volume includes an analysis of the significance and effectiveness of the piece and guides readers to examine it with a critical eye. The original source documents remain in their original verbiage, including common spelling errors and other interesting aspects of 19th-century communication. * Provides the original sources for Civil War propaganda for examination, enabling readers to conduct their own analyses of the materials under discussion * Offers a wide variety of types of materials, from written to visual formats, demonstrating the broad selection of propaganda items generated in the war * Demonstrates the importance of influence operations in the bloodiest war in American history * Balances the competing perspectives between Union and Confederate partisans, including abolitionists and slaveholders
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2019
Primary sources in physical book format
Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality by
There are few periods in American history more consquential but less understood than Reconstruction, the tumultuous twelve years after Appomattox, when the battered nation sought to reconstitute itself and confront the legacy of two centuries of slavery. This Library of America anthology brings together more than one hundred contemporary letters, diary entries, interviews, petitions, testimonies, and newspaper and magazine articles by well-known figures--Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Andrew Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, Ulysses S. Grant, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Albion Tourgee--as well as by dozens of ordinary men and women, black and white, northern and southern, to tell the story of our nation's first attempt to achieve racial equality. Through their eyes readers experience the fierce contest between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans resulting in the nation's first presidential impeachment; the adoption of the revolutionary Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; the first achievements of black political power; and the murderous terrorism of the Klan and other groups that, combined with northern weariness, indifference, and hostility, eventually resulted in the restoration of white supremacy in the South. Throughout, Americans confront the essential questions left unresolved by the defeat of secession- What system of labor would replace slavery, and what would become of the southern plantations? Would the war end in the restoration of a union of sovereign states, or in the creation of a truly national government? What would citizenship mean after emancipation, and what civil rights would the freed people gain? Would suffrage be extended to African American men, and to all women?
Call Number: General Collection, E668 .R4245 2018Publication Date: 2018
The Real War Will Never Get in the Books by
"These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded, all sorts of wounds, operated on, pallid with diarrhea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, andc. open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines thanany yet, showing our humanity, (I sometimes put myself in fancy in the cot, with typhoid, or under the knife,) tried by terrible, fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul's, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bounds of art." So wrote Walt Whitman in March of 1863, in a letter tellingfriends in New York what he had witnessed in Washington's war hospitals. In this, we see both a description of war's ravages and a major artist's imaginative response to the horrors of war as it "bursts the petty bounds of art." In "...the real war will never get in the books", Louis Masur has brought together fourteen of the most eloquent and articulate writers of the Civil War period, including such major literary figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, HermanMelville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott. Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, Masur captures the reactions of these writers as the war was waged, providing a broad spectrum of views. Emerson, for instance, sees the war "come as a frostyOctober, which shall restore intellectual and moral power to these languid and dissipated populations." African-American writer Charlotte Forten writes sadly of the slaughter at Fort Wagner: "It seems very, very hard that the best and noblest must be the earliest called away. Especially has it beenso throughout this dreadful war." There are writings by soldiers in combat. John Esten Cooke, a writer of popular pre-Revolutionary romances serving as a Confederate soldier under J.E.B. Stuart, describes Stonewall Jackson's uniform: "It was positively scorched by sun--had that dingy hue, theproduct of sun and rain, and contact with the ground...but the men of the old Stonewall Brigade loved that coat." And John De Forest, a Union officer, describes facing a Confederate volley: "It was a long rattle like that which a boy makes in running with a stick along a picket-fence, only vastlylouder; and at the same time the sharp, quiet whit-whit of bullets chippered close to our ears." And along the way, we sample many vivid portraits of the era, perhaps the most surprising of which is Louisa May Alcott's explanation of why she preferred her noon-to-midnight schedule in a Washingtonhospital: "I like it as it leaves me time for a morning run which is what I need to keep well....I trot up and down the streets in all directions, some times to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing andambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, and I long to follow." With unmatched intimacy and immediacy, "...the real war will never get in the books" illuminates the often painful intellectual and emotional efforts of fourteen accomplished writers as they come to grips with "The American Apocalypse."
Call Number: General Collection, PS128 .H39 1995Publication Date: 1995
Josie Underwood's Civil War Diary by
A well-educated, outspoken member of a politically prominent family in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Josie Underwood (1840--1923) left behind one of the few intimate accounts of the Civil War written by a southern woman sympathetic to the Union. This vivid portrayal of the early years of the war begins several months before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861. "The Philistines are upon us," twenty-year-old Josie writes in her diary, leaving no question about the alarm she feels when Confederate soldiers occupy her once-peaceful town. Offering a unique perspective on the tensions between the Union and the Confederacy, Josie reveals that Kentucky was a hotbed of political and military action, particularly in her hometown of Bowling Green, known as the Gibraltar of the Confederacy. Located along important rail and water routes that were vital for shipping supplies in and out of the Confederacy, the city linked the upper South's trade and population centers and was strategically critical to both armies. Capturing the fright and frustration she and her family experienced when Bowling Green served as the Confederate army's headquarters in the fall of 1861, Josie tells of soldiers who trampled fields, pilfered crops, burned fences, cut down trees, stole food, and invaded homes and businesses. In early 1862, Josie's outspoken Unionist father, Warner Underwood, was ordered to evacuate the family's Mount Air estate, which was later destroyed by occupying forces. Wartime hardships also strained relationships among Josie's family, neighbors, and friends, whose passionate beliefs about Lincoln, slavery, and Kentucky's secession divided them. Published for the first time, Josie Underwood's Civil War Diary interweaves firsthand descriptions of the political unrest of the day with detailed accounts of an active social life filled with travel, parties, and suitors. Bringing to life a Unionist, slave-owning young woman who opposed both Lincoln's policies and Kentucky's secession, the diary dramatically chronicles the physical and emotional traumas visited on Josie's family, community, and state during wartime.
Call Number: General Collection, F459.B7 U53 2009Publication Date: 2009- Mary Chesnut's Civil War by
An authorized account of the Civil War, drawn from the diaries of a Southern aristocrat, records the disintegration and final destruction of the Confederacy.
Call Number: General Collection, E487 .C5Publication Date: 1981
The Untried Life: The Twenty-Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War by
Told in unflinching detail, this is the story of the Twenty-Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, also known as the Giddings Regiment or the Abolition Regiment, after its founder, radical abolitionist Congressman J. R. Giddings. The men who enlisted in the Twenty-Ninth OVI were, according to its lore, handpicked to ensure each was as pure in his antislavery beliefs as its founder. Whether these soldiers would fight harder than other soldiers, and whether the people of their hometowns would remain devoted to the ideals of the regiment, were questions that could only be tested by the experiment of war. The Untried Life is the story of these men from their very first regimental formation in a county fairground to the devastation of Gettysburg and the march to Atlanta and back again, enduring disease and Confederate prisons. It brings to vivid life the comradeship and loneliness that pervaded their days on the march. Dozens of unforgettable characters emerge, animated by their own letters and diaries: Corporal Nathan Parmenter, whose modest upbringing belies the eloquence of his writings; Colonel Lewis Buckley, one of the Twenty-Ninth's most charismatic officers; and Chaplain Lyman Ames, whose care of the sick and wounded challenged his spiritual beliefs. The Untried Life shows how the common soldier lived--his entertainments, methods of cooking, medical treatment, and struggle to maintain family connections--and separates the facts from the mythology created in the decades after the war.
Call Number: General Collection, E525.5 29TH .F74 2012Publication Date: 2012
Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis by
In Notes from a Colored Girl, Karsonya Wise Whitehead examines the life and experiences of Emilie Frances Davis, a freeborn twenty-one-year-old mulatto woman, through a close reading of three pocket diaries she kept from 1863 to 1865. Whitehead explores Davis's worldviews and politics, her perceptions of both public and private events, her personal relationships, and her place in Philadelphia's free black community in the nineteenth century. Although Davis's daily entries are sparse, brief snapshots of her life, Whitehead interprets them in ways that situate Davis in historical and literary contexts that illuminate nineteenth-century black American women's experiences. Whitehead's contribution of edited text and original narrative fills a void in scholarly documentation of women who dwelled in spaces between white elites, black entrepreneurs, and urban dwellers of every race and class. Notes from a Colored Girl is a unique offering to the fields of history and documentary editing as the book includes both a six-chapter historical reconstruction of Davis's life and a full, heavily annotated edition of her Civil War-era pocket diaries. Drawing on scholarly traditions from history, literature, feminist studies, and sociolinguistics, Whitehead investigates Davis's diary both as a complete literary artifact and in terms of her specific daily entries. From a historical perspective, Whitehead re-creates the narrative of Davis's life for those three years and analyzes the black community where she lived and worked. From a literary perspective, Whitehead examines Davis's diary as a socially, racially, and gendered nonfiction text. From a feminist studies perspective, she examines Davis's agency and identity, grounded in theories elaborated by black feminist scholars. And, from linguistic and rhetorical perspectives, she studies Davis's discourse about her interpersonal relationships, her work, and external events in her life in an effort to understand how she used language to construct her social, racial, and gendered identities. Since there are few primary sources written by black women during this time in history, Davis's diary--though ordinary in its content--is rendered extraordinary simply because it has survived to be included in this very small class of resources. Whitehead's extensive analysis illuminates the lives of many through the simple words of one.
Call Number: General Collection, F158.44 .W55 2014Publication Date: 2014
Allegany to Appomattox: The Life and Letters of Private William Whitlock of the 188th New York Volunteers by
On September 7, 1864, William Whitlock, aged thirty-five, left his wife and four children in Allegany, New York, to join the Union army in battle. More than 100 years later, his unpublished letters to his wife were found in the attic of a family home. These letters serve as the foundation for Allegany to Appomattox, giving readers a vivid glimpse into the environment and political atmosphere that surrounded the Civil War from the perspective of a northern farmer and lumberman. Whitlock's observations tell of exhausting marches, limited rations, and grueling combat. In plainspoken language, the letters also reveal a desperate homesickness, consistently expressing concern for the family's health and financial situation and requesting news from home. Dunham's detailed descriptions of the war's progress and specific battles provide a rich context for Whitlock's letters, orienting readers to both the broad narrative of the Civil War and the intimate chronicle of one soldier's impressions.
Call Number: General Collection, E523.5 188TH .D86 2013Publication Date: 2013
Sherman's Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865 by
The first major modern edition of the wartime correspondence of General William T. Sherman, this volume features more than 400 letters written between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the day Sherman bade farewell to his troops in 1865. Together, they trace Sherman's rise from obscurity to become one of the Union's most famous and effective warriors. Arranged chronologically and grouped into chapters that correspond to significant phases in Sherman's life, the letters--many of which have never before been published--reveal Sherman's thoughts on politics, military operations, slavery and emancipation, the South, and daily life in the Union army, as well as his reactions to such important figures as General Ulysses S. Grant and President Lincoln. Lively, frank, opinionated, discerning, and occasionally extremely wrong-headed, these letters mirror the colorful personality and complex mentality of the man who wrote them. They offer the reader an invaluable glimpse of the Civil War as Sherman saw it.
Call Number: General Collection, E467.1.S55 A4 1999Publication Date: 1999
The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It by
After 150 years the Civil War is still our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic-our Iliad, but also our Bible, a story of sin and judgment, suffering and despair, death and resurrection in a "new birth of freedom." Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles, poems, songs, military reports, legal opinions, and memoirs, The Civil War: The First Year gathers over 120 pieces by more than sixty participants to create a unique firsthand narrative of this great historical crisis. Beginning on the eve of Lincoln's election in November 1860 and ending in January 1862 with the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, this volume presents writing by figures well-known-Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Mary Chesnut, Frederick Douglass, and Lincoln himself among them-and less familiar, like proslavery advocate J.D.B. DeBow, Lieutenants Charles B. Haydon of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and Henry Livermore Abbott of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and plantation mistresses Catherine Edmondston of North Carolina and Kate Stone of Mississippi. Together, the selections provide a powerful sense of the immediacy, uncertainty, and urgency of events as the nation was torn asunder. Includes headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, full-color hand-drawn endpaper maps, and an index. Companion volumes will gather writings from the second, third, and final years of the conflict. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Call Number: General Collection, E464 .C56 2011Publication Date: 2011
