Weirding the war : stories from the Civil War's ragged edges / edited by Stephen Berry.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Berry, Stephen William.

Series:

Uncivil wars.

Uncivil wars

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (399 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"It is well that war is so terrible," Robert E. Lee reportedly said, "or we would grow too fond of it." The essays collected here make the case that we have grown too fond of it, and therefore we must make the war ter­rible again. Taking a "freakonomics" approach to Civil War studies, each contributor uses a seemingly unusual story, incident, or phenomenon to cast new light on the nature of the war itself. Collectively the essays remind us that war is always about damage, even at its most heroic and even when certain people and things deserve to be damaged. Here then is not only the grandness of the Civil War but its more than occasional littleness. Here are those who profited by the war and those who lost by it-and not just those who lost all save their honor, but those who lost their honor too. Here are the cowards, the coxcombs, the belles, the deserters, and the scavengers who hung back and so survived, even thrived. Here are dark topics like torture, hunger, and amputation. Here, in short, is war.

Contents:

How a cold snap in Kentucky led to freedom for thousands : an environmental story of emancipation / Amy Murrell Taylor

Rituals of horsemanship : a speculation on the ring tournament and the origins of the Ku Klux Klan / Paul Christopher Anderson

The loyal deserters : African American soldiers and community in Civil War Memphis / Andrew L. Slap

The arrest and court martial of Captain George Dobson / Kenneth W. Noe

Soldier-speak / Peter S. Carmichael

The Civil War career of General James Abbott Whistler / Daniel E. Sutherland

Confederate amputees and the women who loved (or tried to love) them / Brian Craig Miller

"Will they ever be able to forget?" : Confederate soldiers and mental illness in the defeated South / Diane Miller Sommerville

Ira Forbes's war / Lesley J. Gordon

Afterword / Michael Fellman.

Letting the war slip through our hands : material culture and the weakness of words in the Civil War era / Michael DeGruccio

The pleasures of Civil War ruins / Megan Kate Nelson

Confederate menace : sequestration on the North Carolina home front / Rodney J. Steward

The tale of three Kates : outlaw women, loyalty, and Missouri's long Civil War / LeeAnn Whites

"Days of lightly-won and lightly-held hearts" : courtship and coquetry in the Southern Confederacy / Anya Jabour

Love is a battlefield : Lizzie Alsop's flirtation with the Confederacy / Steven E. Nash

Dissecting the torture of Mrs. Owens : the story of a Civil War atrocity / Barton A. Myers

Hungry people in the wartime South : civilians, armies, and the food supply / Joan E. Cashin

The historian as death investigator / Stephen Berry.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-30369-8

9786613303691

0-8203-4185-1