This distracted and anarchical people : new answers for old questions about the Civil War-era North / edited by Andrew L. Slap and Michael Thomas Smith.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Slap, Andrew L.

Smith, Michael Thomas, 1970-

Series:

North's Civil War

The North's Civil War

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.

United States.

History.

United States--Politics and government--1861-1865.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xvi, 274 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2013.

Summary:

While most of the fighting took place in the South, the Civil War profoundly affected the North. As farm boys became soldiers and marched off to battle, social, economic, and political changes transformed Northern society. In the generations following the conflict, historians tried to understand and explain the North's Civil War experience. Many historical explanations became taken for granted, such as that the Union Army was ideologically Republican, Northern Democrats were disloyal, and German Americans were lousy soldiers. Now in this eye-opening collection of eleven stimulating essays plus an introduction and an afterword, new and important information is unearthed that solidly challenges the old historical arguments.

The essays in This Distracted and Anarchical People range widely throughout the history of the Civil War North, using new methods and sources to reexamine old theories and discover new aspects of the nation's greatest conflict. Many of these issues are just as important today as they were a century and a half ago. What were the extent and limits of wartime dissent in the North? How could a president most effectively present himself to the public? Can the savagery of war ever be tamed? How did African Americans create and maintain their families?

This Distracted and Anarchical People highlights the newest scholarship on a diverse array of topics, bringing fresh insight to bear on some of the most important topics in history today-such as the democratic press in the antebellum North, peace movements, the Union Army and the elections of1864, Liberia and the U.S. Civil War, and African American veterans and marriage practices after Emancipation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: new answers for old questions about the Civil War-era North / Andrew L. Slap and Michael Thomas Smith

"A press that speaks its opinions frankly and openly and fearlessly": the contentious relationship between the Democratic press and the party in the antebellum North / Matthew Isham

Abraham Lincoln, manhood, and nineteenth-century American political culture / Michael Thomas Smith

Damnable treason or party organs? democratic secret societies in Pennsylvania / Robert M. Sandow

Copperheads in Connecticut: a peace movement that imperiled the union / Matthew Warshauer

"All manner of schemes and rascalities": the politics of promotion in the Union Army / Timothy J. Orr

"For my part I dont care who is elected president": the Union Army and the elections of 1864 / Jonathan W. White

New perspectives in Civil War ethnic history and their implications for twenty-first-century scholarship / Christian B. Keller

The black flag and Confederate soldiers: total war from the bottom up? / Michael J. Bennett

Liberia and the U.S. Civil War / Karen Fisher Younger

"No regular marriage": African American veterans and marriage practices after emancipation / Andrew L. Slap

"She is a member of the 23rd": Lucy Nichols and the community of the Civil War regiment / Barbara A. Gannon

Afterword: on Mark Neely : an appreciation / Harold Holzer.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823245680

0823245683

9780823245697

0823245691

OCLC:

795172123