Books in the Civil War America series

Delving into wartime diaries kept by women of the southern slave-owning class, Steven Stowe recaptures their motivations to keep the days close even as war tore apart the brutal system of slavery that had benefited them. In studying the inner lives of these unsympathetic characters, Stowe also explores the importance - and the limits - of historical empathy as a condition for knowing the past.

In this text the author argues that the coming of the Yankees and the occupation of the South were essential parts of the experience of defeat that helped shape the southern post-war mentality. Topics explored include the evolution of Union occupation policy from leniency to repression.

A comprehensive picture of western North Carolina society during the Civil War. Men and women, masters and slaves, planters and yeomen, soldiers and civilians, Confederates and Unionists, bushwhackers and home guardsmen, Democrats and Whigs - all their stories are told here.

Challenging the popular conception of Southern youth on the eve of the Civil War as intellectually lazy, violent, and dissipated, this book looks at the lives of more than one hundred young white men from Virginia's last generation to grow up with the institution of slavery.

A Gunner in Lee's Army offers the definitive edition of Carter's letters, which he sent over 100 to his wife about his service, meticulously transcribed and carefully annotated. This impressive collection provides a wealth of Carter's unvarnished opinions of the people and events that shaped his wartime experience, shedding new light on Lee's army and Confederate life in Virginia.

At Cedar Mountain on August 9, 1862, Stonewall Jackson exercised independent command of a campaign for the last time. From diaries, reminiscences, letters and newspaper articles, Robert Krick reconstructs a detailed account of the confrontation at Cedar Mountain and Jackson's victory there.

Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate myth-making as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. This book aims to show that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee's troops were more numerous yet far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested.

General Richard Stoddert Ewell holds a unique place in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. For four months, Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate. This title examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, offering a portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.

Offering an investigation of Confederate political culture, this title focuses on the assumptions, values, and beliefs that formed the foundation of Confederate political ideology. It shows how southerners attempted to purify the political process and avoid what they saw as the evils of parties and partisanship.

A comprehensive study of the experience of Virginia soldiers and their families in the Civil War that captures the inner world of the rank-and-file. It challenges earlier arguments that middle- and lower-class southerners gradually withdrew their support for the Confederacy because their class interests were not being met.

Introducing readers to women whose Civil War experiences have long been ignored, Judith Giesberg examines the lives of working-class women in the North, for whom the home front was a battlefield of its own. She offers a dramatic reinterpretation of how America's Civil War reshaped the lived experience of race and gender and brought swift and lasting changes to working-class family life.

During the late summer of 1862, Confederate forces attempted a three-pronged strategic advance into the North. The third offensive, the northern Mississippi campaign, led to the devastating and little-studied defeats at Iuka and Corinth. This work details the tactical stories of Iuka and Corinth, analyzing troop movements.

Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War

This personal account of the American Civil War by General Edward Porter Alexander, provides an assessment of people and events. Alexander was involved in nearly all of the great battles of the East and had frequent contact with the high command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

As many as 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals during America's bloodiest war. Jane E. Schultz provides a first full history of these female relief workers, showing how the domestic and military arenas merged in Civil War America, blurring the line between homefront and battlefront.

The role of slaves and free blacks in the politics of secession.

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy.

Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath

Why did many Irish Americans, who did not have a direct connection to slavery, choose to fight for the Confederacy? This perplexing question is at the heart of Gleeson's comprehensive analysis of the Irish in the Confederate States of America.

Draws on original documents, diaries, and letters composed as the US Civil War unfolded to produce a clear and credible portrait of everyday life in Appomattox, as well as examining the galvanizing events of April 1865. The also scrutinizes Appomattox the national symbol, exposing and explaining some of the cherished myths surrounding the surrender there.

In this illuminating study, Steven E. Nash chronicles the history of Reconstruction as it unfolded in the mountains of western North Carolina. Nash presents a complex story of the region's grappling with the war's aftermath, examining the persistent wartime loyalties that informed bitter power struggles between factions of white mountaineers determined to rule.

In this rich study of Union governors and their role in the US Civil War, Stephen D. Engle examines how these politicians were pivotal in securing victory. While providing detailed and engaging portraits of these men, their state-level actions, and their collective cooperation, Engle brings into new focus the era's complex political history.

During the US Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D.H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war", an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort.

Examining the breadth of Northern popular culture, J. Matthew Gallman offers a dramatic reconsideration of how the Union's civilians understood the meaning of duty and citizenship in wartime. Gallman shows how thousands of authors, artists, and readers together created a new set of rules for navigating life in a nation at war.

American Civil Wars takes readers beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the U.S. Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings?all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate how the United States' sectional strife was caught up in a larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future. These struggles were all part of a vast web, connecting not just Washington and Richmond but also Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Rio de Janeiro and--on the other side of the Atlantic--London, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. This volume breaks new ground by charting a hemispheric upheaval and expanding Civil War scholarship into the realms of transnational and imperial history. American Civil Wars creates new connections between the uprisings and civil wars in and outside of American borders and places the United States within a global context of other nations.Contributors:Matt D. Childs, University of South CarolinaAnne Eller, Yale UniversityRichard Huzzey, University of LiverpoolHoward Jones, University of AlabamaPatrick J. Kelly, University of Texas at San AntonioRafael de Bivar Marquese, University of Sao PauloErika Pani, College of MexicoHilda Sabato, University of Buenos AiresSteve Sainlaude, University of Paris IV SorbonneChristopher Schmidt-Nowara, Tufts UniversityJay Sexton, University of Oxford