Voices Of Civil War America

Letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, ballads, newspaper articles, and speeches depict life and events during the four years of the Civil War.

The most contentious event in our nation's history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms -- Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens. No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland -- where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers to portray the passions of a wide variety of people -- merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, civic leaders, and children -- caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland's Southern sympathies -- while genuine -- never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland. Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.

A compilation of stories by the participants of the Civil War.

The U.S. Civil War touched the lives of millions of children on the battlefield and the home front. Based on eyewitness accounts of 120 children, ages four to sixteen, "Reluctant Witnesses" gives their perspective on America's bloodiest conflict and how they managed to cope. Their diaries, letters, and reminiscences are a testimony to the astonishing resiliency of the human spirit. Like children of contemporary wars, these children from the Union and the Confederacy speak without hate but with the stubborn hope that peace might prevail in the end.

Contains primary source material in the form of personal recollections from letters, diaries, photographs, sketches, and artifacts of both soldiers and civilians.

Text and illustrations describe the events before, during and after the Battle of Gettysburg.

Letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, ballads, newspaper articles, and speeches depict life and events during the four years of the Civil War.

Voices from the Gathering Storm explains the dramatic change in thinking about the nature and value of the American Union from 1846 to 1861 which impelled citizens from 11 southern states to declare independence and the remaining 22 states to fight the bloodiest war in the nation's history. This reader tells the story of seventeen Northerners and Southerners who lived through the critical fifteen years prior to the Civil War. In their letters and diaries, they describe in their own words what it was like to live during the sectional crisis and the coming of the war. Men like Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis thought deeply about issues of patriotism and states' rights, issues which remain of great importance today. Women and black Americans were also passionate in their beliefs. Harriet Beecher Stowe felt so strongly about slavery that she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Frederick Douglass and Charlotte Forten GrimkÈ wrote of their abhorrence of slavery and the need to end that 'evil institution.' The lives of Southern women were also affected as they were forced to confront the issue of slavery and the Northern effort to end it. The voices of these men and women are heard in this new volume. At this time the North and South made decisions that resulted in two very different civilizations-the South embraced slavery and states' rights, while the North rejected the expansion of slavery and accepted the idea of an indivisible Union. These pre-Civil War years contain the key to understanding how the war came to be and also enable students to comprehend the modern North and South. Voices from the Gathering Storm is the only text that uses primary sources to illustrate the conflicts that divided the nation before the war. This use of primary sources allows students to enter more deeply into the lives of Northerners and Southerners and to understand and appreciate the way in which they responded to this tense period in American history. The author provides chapter introductions that connect the d