"...the real war will never get in the books"

Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199726868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
"These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded, all sorts of wounds, operated on, pallid with diarrhea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, &c. open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity, (I sometimes put myself in fancy in the cot, with typhoid, or under the knife,) tried by terrible, fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul's, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bounds of art." So wrote Walt Whitman in March of 1863, in a letter telling friends in New York what he had witnessed in Washington's war hospitals. In this, we see both a description of war's ravages and a major artist's imaginative response to the horrors of war as it "bursts the petty bounds of art." In "...the real war will never get in the books", Louis Masur has brought together fourteen of the most eloquent and articulate writers of the Civil War period, including such major literary figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott. Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, Masur captures the reactions of these writers as the war was waged, providing a broad spectrum of views. Emerson, for instance, sees the war "come as a frosty October, which shall restore intellectual & moral power to these languid & dissipated populations." African-American writer Charlotte Forten writes sadly of the slaughter at Fort Wagner: "It seems very, very hard that the best and noblest must be the earliest called away. Especially has it been so throughout this dreadful war." There are writings by soldiers in combat. John Esten Cooke, a writer of popular pre-Revolutionary romances serving as a Confederate soldier under J.E.B. Stuart, describes Stonewall Jackson's uniform: "It was positively scorched by sun--had that dingy hue, the product of sun and rain, and contact with the ground...but the men of the old Stonewall Brigade loved that coat." And John De Forest, a Union officer, describes facing a Confederate volley: "It was a long rattle like that which a boy makes in running with a stick along a picket-fence, only vastly louder; and at the same time the sharp, quiet whit-whit of bullets chippered close to our ears." And along the way, we sample many vivid portraits of the era, perhaps the most surprising of which is Louisa May Alcott's explanation of why she preferred her noon-to-midnight schedule in a Washington hospital: "I like it as it leaves me time for a morning run which is what I need to keep well....I trot up & down the streets in all directions, some times to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing & ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, & I long to follow." With unmatched intimacy and immediacy, "...the real war will never get in the books" illuminates the often painful intellectual and emotional efforts of fourteen accomplished writers as they come to grips with "The American Apocalypse."

"...the real war will never get in the books"

Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199726868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
"These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded, all sorts of wounds, operated on, pallid with diarrhea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, &c. open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity, (I sometimes put myself in fancy in the cot, with typhoid, or under the knife,) tried by terrible, fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul's, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bounds of art." So wrote Walt Whitman in March of 1863, in a letter telling friends in New York what he had witnessed in Washington's war hospitals. In this, we see both a description of war's ravages and a major artist's imaginative response to the horrors of war as it "bursts the petty bounds of art." In "...the real war will never get in the books", Louis Masur has brought together fourteen of the most eloquent and articulate writers of the Civil War period, including such major literary figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott. Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, Masur captures the reactions of these writers as the war was waged, providing a broad spectrum of views. Emerson, for instance, sees the war "come as a frosty October, which shall restore intellectual & moral power to these languid & dissipated populations." African-American writer Charlotte Forten writes sadly of the slaughter at Fort Wagner: "It seems very, very hard that the best and noblest must be the earliest called away. Especially has it been so throughout this dreadful war." There are writings by soldiers in combat. John Esten Cooke, a writer of popular pre-Revolutionary romances serving as a Confederate soldier under J.E.B. Stuart, describes Stonewall Jackson's uniform: "It was positively scorched by sun--had that dingy hue, the product of sun and rain, and contact with the ground...but the men of the old Stonewall Brigade loved that coat." And John De Forest, a Union officer, describes facing a Confederate volley: "It was a long rattle like that which a boy makes in running with a stick along a picket-fence, only vastly louder; and at the same time the sharp, quiet whit-whit of bullets chippered close to our ears." And along the way, we sample many vivid portraits of the era, perhaps the most surprising of which is Louisa May Alcott's explanation of why she preferred her noon-to-midnight schedule in a Washington hospital: "I like it as it leaves me time for a morning run which is what I need to keep well....I trot up & down the streets in all directions, some times to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing & ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, & I long to follow." With unmatched intimacy and immediacy, "...the real war will never get in the books" illuminates the often painful intellectual and emotional efforts of fourteen accomplished writers as they come to grips with "The American Apocalypse."

"...the real war will never get in the books"

Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199923426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
"These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded, all sorts of wounds, operated on, pallid with diarrhea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, &c. open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity, (I sometimes put myself in fancy in the cot, with typhoid, or under the knife,) tried by terrible, fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul's, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bounds of art." So wrote Walt Whitman in March of 1863, in a letter telling friends in New York what he had witnessed in Washington's war hospitals. In this, we see both a description of war's ravages and a major artist's imaginative response to the horrors of war as it "bursts the petty bounds of art." In "...the real war will never get in the books", Louis Masur has brought together fourteen of the most eloquent and articulate writers of the Civil War period, including such major literary figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Adams, and Louisa May Alcott. Drawing on a wide range of material, including diaries, letters, and essays, Masur captures the reactions of these writers as the war was waged, providing a broad spectrum of views. Emerson, for instance, sees the war "come as a frosty October, which shall restore intellectual & moral power to these languid & dissipated populations." African-American writer Charlotte Forten writes sadly of the slaughter at Fort Wagner: "It seems very, very hard that the best and noblest must be the earliest called away. Especially has it been so throughout this dreadful war." There are writings by soldiers in combat. John Esten Cooke, a writer of popular pre-Revolutionary romances serving as a Confederate soldier under J.E.B. Stuart, describes Stonewall Jackson's uniform: "It was positively scorched by sun--had that dingy hue, the product of sun and rain, and contact with the ground...but the men of the old Stonewall Brigade loved that coat." And John De Forest, a Union officer, describes facing a Confederate volley: "It was a long rattle like that which a boy makes in running with a stick along a picket-fence, only vastly louder; and at the same time the sharp, quiet whit-whit of bullets chippered close to our ears." And along the way, we sample many vivid portraits of the era, perhaps the most surprising of which is Louisa May Alcott's explanation of why she preferred her noon-to-midnight schedule in a Washington hospital: "I like it as it leaves me time for a morning run which is what I need to keep well....I trot up & down the streets in all directions, some times to the Heights, then half way to Washington, again to the hill over which the long trains of army wagons are constantly vanishing & ambulances appearing. That way the fighting lies, & I long to follow." With unmatched intimacy and immediacy, "...the real war will never get in the books" illuminates the often painful intellectual and emotional efforts of fourteen accomplished writers as they come to grips with "The American Apocalypse."

The Civil War

The Civil War PDF Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199792933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
One hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination, and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's social and political landscape. Louis P. Masur's The Civil War: A Concise History offers a masterful and eminently readable overview of the war's multiple causes and catastrophic effects. Masur begins by examining the complex origins of the war, focusing on the pulsating tensions over states rights and slavery. The book then proceeds to cover, year by year, the major political, social, and military events, highlighting two important themes: how the war shifted from a limited conflict to restore the Union to an all-out war that would fundamentally transform Southern society, and the process by which the war ultimately became a battle to abolish slavery. Masur explains how the war turned what had been a loose collection of fiercely independent states into a nation, remaking its political, cultural, and social institutions. But he also focuses on the soldiers themselves, both Union and Confederate, whose stories constitute nothing less than America's Iliad. In the final chapter Masur considers the aftermath of the South's surrender at Appomattox and the clash over the policies of reconstruction that continued to divide President and Congress, conservatives and radicals, Southerners and Northerners for years to come. In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley wrote that the war had "wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations." From the vantage of the war's sesquicentennial, this concise history of the entire Civil War era offers an invaluable introduction to the dramatic events whose effects are still felt today.

The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front

The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front PDF Author: Matthew J. Gallman
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 1461720974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In the wake of the firing on Fort Sumter, outraged Northerners looked forward to a quick and decisive victory over the Confederate rebels. But after the First Battle of Bull Run it became clear to supporters of the Union that the Civil War would be prolonged and deadly. How Northern society mobilized to fight this first great modern war is the subject of J. Matthew Gallman's perceptive history. Drawing on a wide range of up-to-date scholarship and addressing the issues from a fresh perspective, his book fills a surprising void in Civil War literature. Gallman's focus is on continuity and change—what traditions the North relied on in preparing for war, and what adjustments it made in its behavior and institutions. From his analysis it seems clear that the Civil War was not the great watershed in political, economic, and social development that is often supposed. Gallman's investigation of the status of women and blacks, for example, shows that wartime gains, if significant for a few, were on the whole decidedly modest. And while "total war" came to the battlefield in a frightening manner, its impact on the Northern home front was far less certain. American Ways Series.

A Literary History of Mississippi

A Literary History of Mississippi PDF Author: Lorie Watkins
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496811925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
With contributions by Ted Atkinson, Robert Bray, Patsy J. Daniels, David A. Davis, Taylor Hagood, Lisa Hinrichsen, Suzanne Marrs, Greg O'Brien, Ted Ownby, Ed Piacentino, Claude Pruitt, Thomas J. Richardson, Donald M. Shaffer, Theresa M. Towner, Terrence T. Tucker, Daniel Cross Turner, Lorie Watkins, and Ellen Weinauer Mississippi is a study in contradictions. One of the richest states when the Civil War began, it emerged as possibly the poorest and remains so today. Geographically diverse, the state encompasses ten distinct landform regions. As people traverse these, they discover varying accents and divergent outlooks. They find pockets of inexhaustible wealth within widespread, grinding poverty. Yet the most illiterate, disadvantaged state has produced arguably the nation's richest literary legacy. Why Mississippi? What does it mean to write in a state of such extremes? To write of racial and economic relations so contradictory and fraught as to defy any logic? Willie Morris often quoted William Faulkner as saying, "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." What Faulkner (or more likely Morris) posits is that Mississippi is not separate from the world. The country's fascination with Mississippi persists because the place embodies the very conflicts that plague the nation. This volume examines indigenous literature, Southwest humor, slave narratives, and the literature of the Civil War. Essays on modern and contemporary writers and the state's changing role in southern studies look at more recent literary trends, while essays on key individual authors offer more information on luminaries including Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, and Margaret Walker. Finally, essays on autobiography, poetry, drama, and history span the creative breadth of Mississippi's literature. Written by literary scholars closely connected to the state, the volume offers a history suitable for all readers interested in learning more about Mississippi's great literary tradition.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History PDF Author: Timothy J. Lynch
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199759251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1489

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Book Description
•Entries written by renowned diplomatic and military historians as well as key scholars in international relations •Provides assessments and analyses of key episodes, issues and actors in the military and diplomatic history of the United States •Based on the award-winning Oxford Companion to United States History •Comprehensive collection of entries that span the founding of the U.S. to its present state •Offers a wide range of perspectives to provide an encompassing context of the United States' military and diplomatic legacies •Expansive bibliographies and suggested readings for each article to aid in research The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History, a two-volume set, will offer both assessment and analysis of the key episodes, issues and actors in the military and diplomatic history of the United States. At a time of war, in which ongoing efforts to recalibrate American diplomacy are as imperative as they are perilous, the Oxford Encyclopedia will present itself as the first recourse for scholars wishing to deepen their understanding of the crucial features of the historical and contemporary foreign policy landscape and its perennially martial components. Entries will be written by the top diplomatic and military historians and key scholars of international relations from within the American academy, supplemented, as is appropriate for an encyclopedia of diplomacy, with entries from foreign-based academics, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The crucial importance of the subject is reflected in the popularity of university courses dedicated to diplomatic and military history and the enduring appeal of international relations (IR) as a political science discipline drawing on both. The Oxford Encyclopedia will be a basic reference tool across both disciplines - a potentially very significant market. Readership: University-level undergraduate and graduate students in History

The U.S. Civil War

The U.S. Civil War PDF Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197513662
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Examines the complex origins of the U.S. Civil War and its major political, social, and military events.

Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America

Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America PDF Author: David S. Heidler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313088756
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
While soldiers were off fighting on the fields of war, civilians on the home front fought their own daily struggles, sometimes removed from the violence but often enough from deep within the maelstrom of conflict. Chapters provide readers with an excellent, detailed description of how women, children, slaves, and Native Americans coped with privation and looming threat, and how they often used, or tried to use, periods of turmoil to their own advantage. While it is the soldiers who are often remembered for their strength, honor, and courage, it is the civilians who keep life going during wartime. This volume presents the lives of these brave citizens during the early colonial era, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. This volume begins with Armstrong Starkey's detailed description of wartime life during the American Colonial era, beginning with the Jamestown, VA settlement of 1607. Among his discussions of civilian lives during the Pequot War, King Philip's War, and the Seven Years' War, Starkey also examines Native American attitudes regarding war, Puritan lives, and Salem witchcraft and its connection to war. Wayne E. Lee continues with his chapter on the American Revolution, investigating how difficult it was for civilians to choose sides, including a telling look at soldier recruitment strategies. He also surveys how inflation and shortages adversely affected civilians, in addition to disease, women's roles, slaves, and Native Americans as civilians. Richard V. Barbuto discusses the War of 1812, taking a close look at life on the ever-expanding frontier, rural homes and families, and jobs and education in city life. Gregory S. Hospodor observes American life during the Mexican War, examining how that conflict amplified domestic tensions caused by sharply divided but closely-held beliefs about national expansion and slavery. Continuing, James Marten looks at southern life in the South during the Civil War, examining the constant burden of supporting Confederate armies or coping with invading northern ones. Paul A. Cimbala concludes this volume with a look at northerner's lives during the Civil War, offering an outstanding essay on a home front mobilized for a titanic struggle, and how the war, no matter how remote, became omnipresent in daily life.

Historical Dictionary of the Civil War

Historical Dictionary of the Civil War PDF Author: Terry L. Jones
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810879530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1818

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Book Description
The Civil War was the most traumatic event in American history, pitting Americans against one another, rending the national fabric, leaving death and devastation in its wake, and instilling an anger that has not entirely dissipated even to this day, 150 years later. This updated and expanded two-volume second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil War relates the history of this war through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on persons, places, events, institutions, battles, and campaigns. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil War.

A House Divided

A House Divided PDF Author: Jonathan Daniel Wells
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317352335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Consolidating one of the most complex and multi-faceted eras in American History, this new edition of Jonathan Wells’s A House Divided unifies the broad and varied scholarship on the American Civil War. Amassing a variety of research, this accessible and readable text introduces readers to both the war and the Reconstruction period, and how Americans lived during this time of great upheaval in the country's history. Designed for a variety of subjects and teaching styles, this text not only looks at the Civil War from a historical perspective, but also analyzes its ramifications on the United States and American identities through the present day. This second edition has been updated throughout, incorporating new scholarship from recent studies on the Civil War era, and includes additional photographs and maps (now incorporated throughout the text), updated bibliographies, and a supplementary companion website.