Confederate Cities : The Urban South during the Civil War Era / Frank Towers, Andrew L. Slap.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goldfield, David

Slap, Andrew L., Editor.

Towers, Frank, Editor.

Series:

Historical studies of urban America.

Historical Studies of Urban America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urbanization--Confederate States of America--History--19th century.

Urbanization.

Cities and towns--Confederate States of America--History--19th century.

Cities and towns.

Secession--Southern States.

Secession.

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

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (319 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When we talk about the Civil War, we often describe it in terms of battles that took place in small towns or in the countryside: Antietam, Gettysburg, Bull Run, and, most tellingly, the Battle of the Wilderness. One reason this picture has persisted is that few urban historians have studied the war, even though cities hosted, enabled, and shaped Southern society as much as they did in the North. Confederate Cities, edited by Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers, shifts the focus from the agrarian economy that undergirded the South to the cities that served as its political and administrative hubs. The contributors use the lens of the city to examine now-familiar Civil War-era themes, including the scope of the war, secession, gender, emancipation, and war's destruction. This more integrative approach dramatically revises our understanding of slavery's relationship to capitalist economics and cultural modernity. By enabling a more holistic reading of the South, the book speaks to contemporary Civil War scholars and students alike-not least in providing fresh perspectives on a well-studied war.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction: Historians and the Urban South's Civil War

1. Regionalism and Urbanism as Problems in Confederate Urban History

2. Urban Processes in the Confederacy's Development, Experience, and Consequences

3. To Be the "New York of the South": Urban Boosterism and the Secession Movement

4. Gender and Household Metaphors in Mid-Nineteenth- Century Nation-Building Cities

5. Stephen Spalding's Fourth of July in New Orleans

6. "More like Amazons than starving people": Women's Urban Riots in Georgia in 1863

7. African American Veterans, the Memphis Region, and the Urbanization of the Postwar South

8. Black Political Mobilization and the Spatial Transformation of Natchez

9. African Americans' Struggle for Education, Citizenship, and Freedom, in Mobile, Alabama, 1865-1868

10. Invasion, Destruction, and the Remaking of Civil War Atlanta

11. Freeing the Lavish Hand of Nature: Environment and Economy in Nineteenth-Century Hampton Roads

Conclusion: Cities and the History of the Civil War South

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226300344

022630034X

OCLC:

923011120