Civil War Memories: Nineteen stories of battle, bravery, love, and tragedy

Nineteen stories of battle, bravery, love, and tragedy S. Joshi. T. Introduction. he American Civil War has probably inspired more miscellaneous commentary—.
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We counter that with risking our life to the point of finally losing it for nothing? How about just finding a new girlfriend? Another story has a Captain so blindly following orders that he knowingly engages in friendly fire because ordered to "shoot ahead no matter what" by a superior who had also told him to never question an order. But there are also some real gems. Parker Addison, Philosopher is my favorite. A Union spy engages in a witty, belligerent repartee with a Confederate General who has him in custody. The wit and belligerence is all on the side of the spy.

The general merely asks formal questions. He even smiles at some of the remarks. The spy apparently has no belief in any kind of afterlife and thumbs his nose at his imminent death. Until he is unexpectedly faced with it. The ending is tense and the action lightening-speed paced culminating to a surprisingly peaceful end. Well, at least for one of them. Bierce doesn't spare the reader the horrors of war.

There is no romanticism here. Nevertheless his stories are told with rich descriptions and show the honor and respect due to both sides as they each act according to their convictions. Probably the most poignant of his stories deal with the dividing of families as each choose the side they serve, sometime with harrowing results. Anyone interested in Civil War history and plot twist play in the style of Poe, O Henry or even Lovecraft will enjoy this small collection of short stories by a man who, sadly, lived through enough of the war to become tired of living.

Aug 17, Ridgewalker rated it really liked it. This book was very well written and provides a wonderful view into the human aspect of the men on the side of the North that were in the battle. The formula surprise ending used in many of the stories can easily be forgiven because of the language and wit of the author. This is not a history book and does nothing to cover the battles, movement of troops or anything that you might have studied in school.

Top 10 wartime love stories | Books | The Guardian

It puts you in the shoes of an officer and tells you a story. This was a pleasure to read. Jun 07, P. Jun 05, Adelaide Mcginnity rated it it was amazing. This is an excellent anthology of a diverse assortment of tales that do a remarkable job of capturing the drama, tension, and psychology of those, like Bierce, who participated in the horror that was the Civil War. While An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is the most famous of these stories, I found the highlight of the collection to be Bierce's own recollection of his participation in the Battle of Shiloh, a battle that is regrettably little known today in spite of being at the time the bloodies This is an excellent anthology of a diverse assortment of tales that do a remarkable job of capturing the drama, tension, and psychology of those, like Bierce, who participated in the horror that was the Civil War.

While An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is the most famous of these stories, I found the highlight of the collection to be Bierce's own recollection of his participation in the Battle of Shiloh, a battle that is regrettably little known today in spite of being at the time the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. May 16, Wayne Walker rated it liked it. I was born and raised in Ohio, where we studied Ohio History in eighth grade at that time.

Because of my interest in the subject, the teacher gave a used copy of an older edition of our textbook, which I still have. The following was written about Bierce. He was noted for his biting comments on anything that seemed to him insincere. Most of them involve some kind of irony, often with a surprise ending, and a few of them might fall into the category of the macabre, ala Alfred Hitchcock. Many of the descriptions of the battles are rather graphic, and one story involves a suicide.

There is one reference to drinking wine. These dark and vivid tales are not for young children, but teens and adults who are Civil War buffs might appreciate them. A lot of the stories I found interesting, but a few just did not make a great deal of sense to me. In , Bierce, who had become increasingly disenchanted with his own life due to the divorce from his wife and the deaths of his two sons, went to Mexico to meet the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa and to observe firsthand the Civil War there.

It is generally assumed that he died at the siege of Ojinaga in January of Civil War Stories is a collection of short stories drawn on Ambrose Bierce's experiences as an officer in the Civil War. His writing demonstrates his true respect and admiration for the heroism he saw; contempt for cowardice; his appreciation and, yes, admiration for dedication to duty; and his outrage at the tragedies war brings about. There can be no doubt that this is a powerful antiwar document. Today if they remember him at all, most people remember Bierce, a well-known journalist and writer Civil War Stories is a collection of short stories drawn on Ambrose Bierce's experiences as an officer in the Civil War.

Today if they remember him at all, most people remember Bierce, a well-known journalist and writer in his time, only as the author of The Devil's Dictionary, a satirical compendium of the English language. A person who speaks when you wish him to listen". In Civil War Stories we read of Bierce's experiences in the battle of Shiloh, which are every bit as terrifying as you would expect, an unauthorized excursion behind enemy lines, and the simple heroism that seemingly ordinary men exhibit out of a sense of duty.

As I said, while he admires their brave actions he never ignores the sometimes tragic consequences of those actions or the unbearable suffering of the common soldiers. For example, from "What I Saw of Shiloh": In dry weather the upper stratum is as inflammable as tinder. A fire once kindled in it will spread with a slow, persistent advance as far as local conditions permit, leaving a bed of light ashes beneath which the less combustible accretions of previous years will smolder until extinguished by rains.

In many of the engagements of the war the fallen leaves took fire and roasted the fallen men. I suspect anyone with modern military experience will also recognize the occasional incompetence and obliviousness to reason of the chain of command and the civilian leadership who like to dabble in military affairs of which they have little understanding. Written in the nineteenth century, the stories are written in a style that may be slightly distracting, and when read at one sitting Bierce's fondness for the surprise ending can get repetitive.

These are the reasons I didn't give him five stars. Aug 10, globulon rated it it was amazing Shelves: Some books really give you a feel for a specific time and place. It's not so much that it gives a sophisticated intellectual understanding as that it gives a vivid impression of what it may have been like to live there at that time.

Perhaps all really great books do this, but it seems to me some do it more than others. This collection of short stories by Bierce is one of them. In it I get a feel for what the actual people who Some books really give you a feel for a specific time and place. In it I get a feel for what the actual people who fought the Civil War are like, how they are different from other people who fought other wars.

It may not all be accurate although it is informed by personal experience, but none the less it throws a striking image on the mind of the times and personalities involved. The stories themselves are for the most part driven by twist endings. Whether or not this is the highest form of the short story, the stories are readable and pungent. One comes away with a strong sense of how Bierce saw the war without him for the most part resorting to direct commentary.

Sep 22, Drew Martin rated it liked it Shelves: A literary figure who seems forgotten to most modern readers. A fate as mysterious as many of the stories he wrote. He writes w Ambrose Bierce. He writes with an eloquent style of prose and uses a twist ending in many of his stories. In this review of his collection titled Civil War Stories, my review will be a bit different. Bierce was a Union soldier during the Civil War, and all these stories share the setting.

To read the rest of this review go to https: Aug 25, Matthew rated it it was amazing. Glad this is pared down to a few of his best - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is as good as they say! His ideas on death are complex and almost contradictory. Crazy coincidences crop up often and are a definite motif.

And the horror in his stories still stands up today- the description of the retreating wounded soldiers at Chicamauga was insane. I'm still thinking about the extraordinary circumstances his characters are placed. Loved the story Parker Addison, Philosopher as God he's good!!!! Loved the story Parker Addison, Philosopher as well. I'll reread this someday Jan 10, Caroline rated it it was ok. Well, I'm so glad I finally finished. In all of the stories, Ambrose Bierce obsesses over the morbid aspects of the Civil War particularly the devastation of divided families and spatters his descriptions with dark humor and twisted irony.

Bierce's own service in the Civil War obviously inspired the morose and bitter themes that strung this book together. The story begins in and continues to , told through the voices of the participants. The gripping images draw readers into the turning point of the Civil War. The Civil War divided the United States and pitted North against South, brother against brother, and often children against children.

The next morning, he beats his drum as he and the other Union soldiers meet the Confederate Army on the battlefield. The book pays tribute both to the brave Civil War soldiers and to the dedicated re-enactors who preserve their memory. The Last Brother tells the story of one small boy amidst the dramatic events of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Though he is only 11 years old, Gabe is a bugler in the Union Army. He meets another young bugler — one who fights for the other side. Suddenly, what was so definite and clear has become complicated by friendship and compassion. Does one have to choose between service to country, to kin or to a friend? As the cannons fire and the battle rages on, Gabe must do his duty while searching for a way to honor all that he holds dear. This heart-wrenching historical picture book, based on a true story, presents us with two men from the Union Army who meet after a battle of the Civil War.

Pinkus Aylee, a black Union soldier, finds Sheldon Curtis left for dead and carries him home to be tended by his mother. When the two boys attempt to rejoin the Union troops, however, they are captured and sent to Andersonville Prison. No matter what happens, a drummer boy in the Civil War must keep playing his drum to relay orders and rally spirits. Portraits of American Women. Gender and the War. Portraits of American Women presents twenty-four short essays on American women beginning with Pocahontas and ending with Betty Friedan. Written during his celebrated career as a speaker and newspaper editor, My Bondage and My Freedom reveals the author of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass grown more mature, forceful, analytical, and complex with a deepened commitment to the fight for equal rights.

Benjamin achieved greater political power than perhaps any other Jewish American. Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution.

In Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution , James McPherson offers a series of engaging essays on aspects of Lincoln and the war that have rarely been discussed in depth. With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. In this award-winning biography, Lincoln steps forward out of the shadow of myth as a recognizable, fully drawn American.

Lives of the Union Commanders. Here are the West Point graduates and the political appointees; the gifted, the mediocre, and the inexcusably bad; those of impeccable virtue and those who abused their position; the northern-born, the foreign-born, and the southerners who remained loyal to the Union. The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries. Daughter of one senator from South Carolina and wife of another, she had kin and friends all over the Confederacy and knew intimately its political and military leaders. At Montgomery when the new nation was founded, at Charleston when the war started, and at Richmond during many crises, she traveled extensively during the war.

The diaries, filled with personal revelations and indiscretions, are indispensable to an appreciation of our most famous Southern literary insight into the Civil War. Cole, and Charles G. A Distant War Comes Home: Maine in the Civil War Era. Drawing upon original sources and published material, A Distant War Comes Home is a fascinating survey of the many individual stories that linked Maine with the war hundreds of miles away.

Many engrossing accounts, including firsthand experiences in famous battles, make this book a must for anyone interested in Maine or Civil War history. Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign. Fought amid rocks and trees, in thick blinding smoke, and under exceedingly stressful conditions, the.

In this powerfully narrated history, Maine historian Tom Desjardin tells the story of the 20th Maine Regiment, the soldiers who fought and won the battle of Little Round Top. Desjardin uses more than seventy first-hand accounts to tell the story of this campaign in critical detail. Ranging from the lowest ranking private to the highest officers, this book explores the terrible experiences of war and their tragic effect.

The Journals of John Edwards Godfrey: A Maine Town in the Civil War: The book is based on extensive research by Deer Isle native, Vernal Hutchinson. This biography of Israel Washington Jr. The village of Salmon Brook in Aroostook County was incorporated as the town of Washburn in his honor. Eastern Maine and the Rebellion: Whitman, William Edward Seaver.

Maine in the War for the Union: The authors endeavor to depict the scenes and incidents occurring at home during the Rebellion. Published when memories were fresh this book uses letters, newspapers and first person accounts to detail efforts to preserve the Union. Also included are brief histories of Eastern Maine Regiments. Maine and the Civil War: The Andersonville camp operated from February until April , when the Confederacy collapsed.


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More than 40, Union soldiers passed through a camp designed for 8,, with a peak population of more than 30, on a miserable 16 acres. The two-part movie aired on TNT and won the director an Emmy. The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. This silent film ran nearly three hours, portraying the saga of the Civil War and Reconstruction with remarkable scenes of the war. It tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families.

The Stonemans hail from the North, the Camerons from the South. The film negatively portrayed blacks in the South and made heroes of the Ku Klux Klansmen. In one of his five collaborations with veteran director Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood portrays a wounded Union soldier who is discovered and nursed back to health by members of an all-girl boarding school in Louisiana during the closing days of the Civil War.

As the soldier convalesces, he charms and eventually has secretive romantic encounters with several of the women. When they eventually discover what he is up to, they slowly and diabolically take their revenge on him. In this Civil War epic, Jude Law plays a Confederate soldier who goes absent without leave from a military hospital in Richmond in the closing months of A strange and haunting film.

With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. The Birdwells oppose violence, but as Confederate forces march closer—looting and burning as they go—the community prepares a defense. The famous Civil War battle is depicted with admirable immediacy and eloquence. Jeff Daniels stars as Union Col. The true carnage of the Civil War can be seen throughout this epic film, from the depiction of life in a Union prisoner-of-war camp to the battle for control of a bridge, to the last puff on a cigar by a dying soldier.

Grierson and the Battle of Newton Station. A Union Cavalry outfit is sent behind Confederate lines to destroy a railroad supply depot. The plan for the mission is overheard by a Southern belle who must be taken along to assure her silence. With the Civil War raging, and the death toll rising, the president focuses his energies on passage of the 13th Amendment. The rope breaks, and he lands in the river. Dodging bullets, he swims to shore and begins to make his way home.

While the journey is arduous, thoughts of his wife enable him to keep going. This film, with relatively little dialogue, jolts its audience in the climactic scene where Farquhar arrives at his plantation and is about to embrace his wife. In this movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, Mr. Rather than surrender to Union authorities at the end of the war, Wales flees to Texas to make a new life for himself. On his journey to Texas, he encounters war refugees, Indians, bounty hunters and carpetbaggers while being pursued by a cadre of Union soldiers with orders to bring him in.

Fleming is a Union soldier sent into battle for the first time. He is unprepared for the fight, but by the time battle breaks out, he finds his endurance and courage tested. Jimmy Stewart plays a Lincolnesque widower from Virginia who is adamant about keeping his sons out of the Civil War. He believes in America, not the North and South, and although the battles are practically at his front door, he wants none of it. A gem of a film. Northern Women and the American Civil War. Her book integrates the Civil War into the history of American gender relations and the development of feminism, providing a nuanced analysis of the relationship among gender construction, class development, and state formation in nineteenth- century America.

Ayers, Edward L, ed. Together, these readings provide a glimpse of the vast sweep and profound breadth of Americans, war among and against themselves, adding crucial voices to our understanding of the war and its meaning. Anthology of primary sources. Oxford University Press, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of The New York Public Library, rescued the voice of an entire segment of the black tradition by offering volumes of compelling and rare works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, biography, essays, and journalism, written by nineteenth-century black women.

Each book in this series of twelve books contains an introduction written by an expert in the field, as well as an overview by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history. An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context — the complex of social, cultural and political relations — that made the bloody events of July possible.

The Civil War in American Memory. Memory, Nationalism, and Reconstruction; Race Relations. After the Civil War, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. Confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war.

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the War. Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, Religion and War; After the War: But why, after the sacrifice made by thousands of Civil War patriots to arrive at this juncture, did the moment slip away, leaving many whites throughout the North and South more racist than before?

Blum takes a fresh look at this question in Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, , where he focuses on the vital role that religion played in reunifying northern and southern whites into a racially segregated society. Catton, Bruce and William Catton. Two Roads to Sumter: By showing how these two major figures — both Kentucky-born — developed divergent attitudes, the Cattons simultaneously reveal why the North and South became increasingly isolated from each other during the s, and why war became inevitable.

Union Soldiers and the Northern Homefront: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments. Soldiering, Recruitment, and Death; After the War: This collection brings fresh perspectives about the way soldiers and civilians interacted in the Civil War North, showing how the home front and the front lines remained intimately connected.

They also explore postwar problems such as the reintegration of soldiers into northern life and the claims to public memory, including those made by African Americans. The essays provide a better understanding of the larger scope and depth of wartime events experienced by both civilians and soldiers and of the ways those events nurtured the enduring connections between those who fought and those who remained at home. Clinton, Catherine, and Nina Silber, eds. Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War.

Battle Scars depicts the ways in which gender, race, nationalism, religion, literary culture, sexual mores, and even epidemiology underwent radical transformations from when Americans went to war in through Reconstruction. He argues that the non-owner soldiers grew embittered about fighting to preserve slavery, and fought less enthusiastically. He attributes the major Confederate defeats in at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge to this class conflict. McPherson , after reading thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that continued to the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty.

Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in —65, he says most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard. Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in rationalizing the national purpose and his skill in keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. The Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the President's war powers. Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break up the blockade the Union had created around the Southern ports and cities. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95 percent effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly.

The abundance of European cotton and Britain's hostility to the institution of slavery, along with Lincoln's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval blockades, severely decreased any chance that either Britain or France would enter the war. Historian Don Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on the course of world history. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues that:.

The North's victory decisively proved the durability of democratic government. Confederate independence, on the other hand, would have established an American model for reactionary politics and race-based repression that would likely have cast an international shadow into the twentieth century and perhaps beyond. Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South. The war resulted in at least 1,, casualties 3 percent of the population , including about , soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50, civilians.

David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately ,, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as , Based on census figures, 8 percent of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South. Union army dead, amounting to 15 percent of the over two million who served, was broken down as follows: In addition there were 4, deaths in the Navy 2, in battle and in the Marines in battle.

Black troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll, they amounted to 15 percent of disease deaths but less than 3 percent of those killed in battle. Of the 67, Regular Army white troops, 8. Of the approximately , United States Colored Troops , however, over 36, died, or In other words, the mortality "rate" amongst the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War was thirty-five percent greater than that among other troops, notwithstanding the fact that the former were not enrolled until some eighteen months after the fighting began.

Confederate records compiled by historian William F. Fox list 74, killed and died of wounds and 59, died of disease. Including Confederate estimates of battle losses where no records exist would bring the Confederate death toll to 94, killed and died of wounds. Fox complained, however, that records were incomplete, especially during the last year of the war, and that battlefield reports likely under-counted deaths many men counted as wounded in battlefield reports subsequently died of their wounds. Livermore, using Fox's data, put the number of Confederate non-combat deaths at ,, using the official estimate of Union deaths from disease and accidents and a comparison of Union and Confederate enlistment records, for a total of , deaths.

The United States National Park Service uses the following figures in its official tally of war losses: While the figures of , army deaths for the Union and , for the Confederacy remained commonly cited, they are incomplete. In addition to many Confederate records being missing, partly as a result of Confederate widows not reporting deaths due to being ineligible for benefits, both armies only counted troops who died during their service, and not the tens of thousands who died of wounds or diseases after being discharged.

This often happened only a few days or weeks later. Francis Amasa Walker , Superintendent of the Census, used census and Surgeon General data to estimate a minimum of , Union military deaths and , Confederate military deaths, for a total death toll of , soldiers. While Walker's estimates were originally dismissed because of the Census's undercounting, it was later found that the census was only off by 6.

Analyzing the number of dead by using census data to calculate the deviation of the death rate of men of fighting age from the norm suggests that at least , and at most ,, but most likely , soldiers, died in the war. Deaths among former slaves has proven much harder to estimate, due to the lack of reliable census data at the time, though they were known to be considerable, as former slaves were set free or escaped in massive numbers in an area where the Union army did not have sufficient shelter, doctors, or food for them. University of Connecticut Professor James Downs states that tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves died during the war from disease, starvation, exposure, or execution at the hands of the Confederates, and that if these deaths are counted in the war's total, the death toll would exceed 1 million.

Losses were far higher than during the recent defeat of Mexico , which saw roughly thirteen thousand American deaths, including fewer than two thousand killed in battle, between and One reason for the high number of battle deaths during the war was the continued use of tactics similar to those of the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the century, such as charging. This led to the adoption of trench warfare , a style of fighting that defined much of World War I. The wealth amassed in slaves and slavery for the Confederacy's 3.

Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied before the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or on December 6, by the Thirteenth Amendment. The war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment Confederate bonds was forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Income per person in the South dropped to less than 40 percent of that of the North, a condition that lasted until well into the 20th century. Southern influence in the U. While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee 's army had close family ties to slavery.

To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union , not to abolish slavery. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.

During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. In , Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.

When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat". In September , the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the subsequent War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges , Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves to fight for the Union. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware. Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.

White , 74 U. Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, , and it continued until From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to consolidate the Union victory on the battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a " republican form of government for the ex-Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.

President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in , when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free. They came to the fore after the elections and undid much of Johnson's work.

In the "Liberal Republicans" argued that the war goals had been achieved and that Reconstruction should end. They ran a presidential ticket in but were decisively defeated. In , Democrats, primarily Southern, took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction. The Compromise of closed with a national consensus that the Civil War had finally ended. The Civil War is one of the central events in American collective memory.

There are innumerable statues, commemorations, books and archival collections. The memory includes the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art, evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the moral and political lessons of the war. Professional historians have paid much more attention to the causes of the war, than to the war itself.

Military history has largely developed outside academe, leading to a proliferation of solid studies by non-scholars who are thoroughly familiar with the primary sources, pay close attention to battles and campaigns, and write for the large public readership, rather than the small scholarly community. Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote are among the best-known writers. Historian Wilson Fallin has examined the sermons of white and black Baptist preachers after the War.

Southern white preachers said:. God had chastised them and given them a special mission—to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor. God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help him; God would be their rock in a stormy land.

Memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause" , shaping regional identity and race relations for generations. Nolan notes that the Lost Cause was expressly "a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and fame" of those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery; some appeals highlight cultural differences between North and South; the military conflict by Confederate actors is idealized; in any case, secession was said to be lawful.

He also deems the Lost Cause "a caricature of the truth. This caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter" in every instance. The economic and political-power determinism forcefully presented by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard in The Rise of American Civilization was highly influential among historians and the general public until the civil rights movement of the s and s. The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality.

They ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. The Beards announced that the Civil War was really:. The Beards themselves abandoned their interpretation by the s and it became defunct among historians in the s, when scholars shifted to an emphasis on slavery. However, Beardian themes still echo among Lost Cause writers.

The first efforts at Civil War battlefield preservation and memorialization came during the war itself with the establishment of National Cemeteries at Gettysburg, Mill Springs and Chattanooga.

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Soldiers began erecting markers on battlefields beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in July , but the oldest surviving monument is the Hazen monument, erected at Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee , in the summer of by soldiers in Union Col. Hazen's brigade to mark the spot where they buried their dead in the Battle of Stones River. In , these five parks and other national monuments were transferred to the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The modern Civil War battlefield preservation movement began in with the founding of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites APCWS , a grassroots organization created by Civil War historians and others to preserve battlefield land by acquiring it.

Mint Civil War commemorative coin revenues designated for battlefield preservation. Although the two non-profit organizations joined forces on a number of battlefield acquisitions, ongoing conflicts prompted the boards of both organizations to facilitate a merger, which happened in with the creation of the Civil War Preservation Trust.

After expanding its mission in to include battlefields of the Revolutionary War and War of , the non-profit became the American Battlefield Trust in May , operating with two divisions, the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War Trust. The American Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities ranging from the reenactment of battles, to statues and memorial halls erected, to films being produced, to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which helped to shape public memory.

This varied advent occurred in greater proportions on the th and th anniversary. It was digitally remastered and re-released in There were numerous technological innovations during the Civil War that had a great impact on 19th-century science. The Civil War was one of the earliest examples of an " industrial war ", in which technological might is used to achieve military supremacy in a war. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Civil war in the United States from to Theaters of the American Civil War. Status of the states, States that seceded before April 15, States that seceded after April 15, Union states that permitted slavery.

Union states that banned slavery. Slave and free states. Stephen Douglas, author of the Kansas—Nebraska Act of Crittenden, of the Crittenden Compromise. United States presidential election, Battle of Fort Sumter. Border states American Civil War. Union territories not permitting slavery. Border Union states, permitting slavery. Union territories that permitted slavery claimed by Confederacy at the start of the war, but where slavery was outlawed in Child soldiers in the American Civil War. American Civil War prison camps. Blockade runners of the American Civil War. Diplomacy of the American Civil War.

Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. Western Theater of the American Civil War. Conclusion of the American Civil War. One in thirteen veterans were amputees. Remains of both sides were reinterred. National cemetery in Andersonville, GA. Contrabands —fugitive slaves—cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews—fled to the Union Army, but were not officially freed until In , the Union army accepted Freedmen. Seen here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers. Monument to the Grand Army of the Republic , a Union veteran organization.

Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Commemoration of the American Civil War. Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps. Grand Army of the Republic Union. Civil War , UKR. Contrabands and after the Emancipation Proclamation freedmen, migrating into Union control on the coasts and to the advancing armies, and natural increase are excluded. It omits losses from contraband and after the Emancipation Proclamation, freedmen migrating to the Union controlled coastal ports and those joining advancing Union armies, especially in the Mississippi Valley.

By , when it became clear that this would be a long war, the question of what to do about slavery became more general. The Southern economy and military effort depended on slave labor. It began to seem unreasonable to protect slavery while blockading Southern commerce and destroying Southern production. As one Congressman put it, the slaves " As laborers, if not as soldiers, they will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union. From early years of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans escaped to Union lines, especially in occupied areas like Nashville, Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region in , Tennessee from on, the line of Sherman's march, etc.

So many African Americans fled to Union lines that commanders created camps and schools for them, where both adults and children learned to read and write. Never Call Retreat , p. The American Missionary Association entered the war effort by sending teachers south to such contraband camps, for instance establishing schools in Norfolk and on nearby plantations.

In addition, approximately , or more African-American men served as soldiers and sailors with Union troops.

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Most of those were escaped slaves. Probably the most prominent of these African-American soldiers is the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. They used them as laborers to support the war effort. As Howell Cobb said, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. Lee argued in favor of arming blacks late in the war, and Jefferson Davis was eventually persuaded to support plans for arming slaves to avoid military defeat.

The Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox before this plan could be implemented. Winters referred to the exhilaration of the slaves when the Union Army came through Louisiana: They were 'all frantic with joy, some weeping, some blessing, and some dancing in the exuberance of their emotions. Others cheered because they anticipated the freedom to plunder and to do as they pleased now that the Federal troops were there. This led to a breakdown of the prisoner and mail exchange program and the growth of prison camps such as Andersonville prison in Georgia, where almost 13, Union prisoners of war died of starvation and disease.

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Restoration of Law in the State of Virginia. The New York Times. Retrieved December 23, Of which , were in the Navy and Marines, , were garrison troops and home defense militia, and , were in the field army. The Civil War Day by Day: The ones who died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties. Archived from the original on July 11, Retrieved October 14, University of Connecticut, April 13, The surviving records only include the number of black patients whom doctors encountered; tens of thousands of other slaves who died had no contact with army doctors, leaving no records of their deaths.

Oxford University Press, April 13, As horrific as this new number is, it fails to reflect the mortality of former slaves during the war. If former slaves were included in this figure, the Civil War death toll would likely be over a million casualties Retrieved January 14, Johns Hopkins University Press, , pp. Martin's, , Williams, "Doing Less and Doing More: The Emancipation Proclamation , pp. Retrieved September 22, Secessionists Triumphant — , pp. Retrieved December 21, Remembering the Civil War Speech. Sesquicentennial of the Start of the Civil War.

Retrieved August 29, Issues related to the institution of slavery precipitated secession It was not a tariff. It was not unhappiness with manner and customs that led to secession and eventually to war.

American Civil War

It was a cluster of issues profoundly dividing the nation along a fault line delineated by the institution of slavery. What They Fought For — Louisiana State University Press. For Cause and Comrades. The loyal citizenry initially gave very little thought to emancipation in their quest to save the union.

Most loyal citizens, though profoundly prejudice by 21st century standards, embraced emancipation as a tool to punish slave holders, weaken the confederacy, and protect the union from future internal strife. A minority of the white populous invoked moral grounds to attack slavery, though their arguments carried far less popular weight than those presenting emancipation as a military measure necessary to defeat the rebels and restore the Union.

Why 'this cruel war'? Archived from the original on February 1, Retrieved January 29, Causes of the civil war, — p. A Disease in the Public Mind: University of Kansas and Kansas Historical Society. Retrieved July 10, Imperium in Imperio, — Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism — Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War , p.

Turner, Beard, Parrington The Washington Peace Conference of Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November — April Vann Woodward , American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue , p. Honor, Grace, and War, s—s Porter, and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Retrieved November 28, Retrieved July 16, The Improvised War — , pp. Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri.

Proclamation 83 — Increasing the Size of the Army and Navy". Retrieved November 3, Retrieved May 28, Arrest of the Maryland Legislature, ". Archived from the original on January 11, Retrieved February 6, Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union University Press of Kansas, , p. Fourteen Months in American Bastiles. Retrieved August 18, Retrieved April 20, Over 10, military engagements took place during the war, 40 percent of them in Virginia and Tennessee.

See Gabor Boritt, ed. War Comes Again , p. Merton Coulter, Confederate States of America p. Nicolay and John Hay Abraham Lincoln: In his message of April 29 to the rebel Congress, Jefferson Davis proposed to organize for instant action an army of , Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy online edition. The railroads and banks grew rapidly. See Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. Bearman, "Desertion as localism: Army unit solidarity and group norms in the U.

The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy. University of Alabama Press. Smith, Tinclads in the Civil War: Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Naval War College Review. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: Oates , The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm — , p. Noyalas December 3, Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. Army War College 21 3, pp.


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See also, Michael Fellman, Inside War: Missouri alone was the scene of over 1, engagements between regular units, and uncounted numbers of guerrilla attacks and raids by informal pro-Confederate bands, especially in the recently settled western counties. Order Number 11 and the Evacuation of Western Missouri". Confederate Recruitment in Indian Territory". Confederate General in the Cherokee Nation".

Personal Memoirs of U. The Flight to Appomattox , pp. Census and Carter, Susan B. The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition 5 vols , At the beginning of , the Confederacy controlled one-third of its congressional districts, which were apportioned by population. The major slave-populations found in Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama were effectively under Union control by the end of The First Hundred Days".

Retrieved October 16,