Paul Cimbala, Randall Miller

The Northern Home Front during the Civil War

Herausgeber: Cimbala, Paul

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book comprehensively covers the wide geographical range of the northern home fronts during the Civil War, emphasizing the diverse ways people interpreted, responded to, and adapted to war by their ideas, interests, and actions. The Northern Home Front during the Civil War provides the first extensive treatment of the northern home front mobilizing for war in two decades. It collates a vast and growing scholarship on the many aspects of a citizenship organizing for and against war. The text focuses attention on the roles of women, blacks, immigrants, and other individuals who typically fall outside of scrutiny in studies of American war-making society, and provides new information on subjects such as raising money for war, civil liberties in wartime, the role of returning soldiers in society, religion, relief work, popular culture, and building support for the cause of the Union and freedom. Organized topically, the book covers the geographic breadth of the diverse northern home fronts during the Civil War. The chapters supply self-contained studies of specific aspects of life, work, relief, home life, religion, and political affairs, to name only a few. This clearly written and immensely readable book reveals the key moments and gradual developments over time that influenced northerners' understanding of, participation in, and reactions to the costs and promise of a great civil war.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Praeger
• Seitenzahl: 264
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. Februar 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 240mm x 161mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 566g
• ISBN-13: 9780313352904
• ISBN-10: 0313352909
• Artikelnr.: 33256764

Autorenporträt

PAUL A. CIMBALA is Professor of History, Fordham University, and author of a number of books, including Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865-1870, Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front (with Randall M. Miller),and Historians and Race: Autobiography and the Writing of History (with Robert F. Himmelberg).

Inhaltsangabe

During four years of Civil War
most Northerners conducted their lives as they had before Confederate forces had fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Mothers nursed sick children
families earned their livelihoods
and youngsters attended school. Young adults did not give up courting
and men and women did not give up their amusements. Storekeepers tended to their customers and stocked their shelves. Politicians ran for office
listened to the concerns of their constituents
and generally conducted themselves as they had and always will
guided in their actions by a mixture of civic duty and self-interest. Local authorities still had to deal with chicken thieves and other petty criminals. Battles in Virginia
Tennessee
and elsewhere did not keep ministers and priests from worrying about the souls of their congregations and the roofs of their churches. Indeed
in April 1864
Irvine Masters
mayor of Cleveland
Ohio
admitted
as the city continued to prosper
it had "not directly felt the shock of war." Despite such aspects of normality
the war insinuated itself into all of these activities and thus the lives of even the most unaware people living in the free states of the North. In August 1861
Ralph Waldo Emerson warned that the war will "engulf us all
" and "no preoccupation can exclude
& no hermitage hide us." That same month
Nathaniel Hawthorne admitted his isolation to his daughters
noting that he either chose not to read or had no access to newspapers
a state that left him unaware of any Union disasters. Even so
he could not avoid the sounds of war. "Almost every hour
" he wrote
"however
I hear the noise of drums
over the water
from Marblehead to Salem
and very often the thunder of cannon
which sometimes continues for an hour together; so that I begin to think the war has overspread the whole country except just this little precinct in the neighborhood of West Beach." Almost a year later in his article in the July 1862 Atlantic Monthly
Hawthorne admitted: "There is no remoteness of life and thought
no hermetically sealed seclusion
except
possibly
that of the grave
into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate." Yankee writers
poets
and philosophers had the luxury to engage in exaggeration
but they also accepted their responsibility to speak the truth. Too often
the devastation in the Confederate states and the impact of emancipation
which fundamentally altered people's lives in the rebellious states
distracted attention from the many intrusions and disruptions the Civil War brought to people in the free Northern states. Most of the region escaped being trampled underfoot by invading armies or ravaged by guerilla raiders. But the war did indeed come to the North. As Massachusetts resident Charles A. Currier recalled
the war was always on the minds of the civilians from morning to night
discussed on the streets
in places of business
and in houses of worship. "[I]t turned our churches into depositories of hospital supplies
and made lint pickers of worshippers
" he noted
and while the romantic notions of the earliest days had passed
the conflict now "settled thoughtful men into the conviction
that until it was fought to a conclusion
it must be made the absorbing business of the entire North." If children continued to attend school
they also added to their daily concerns the welfare of brothers
fathers
and uncles who were in the army and new burdens and responsibilities once deferred to an older age. If families continued their economic routines
they did so in a marketplace influenced by new government policies and the demands of a wartime economy. If women continued to manage households
they also extended their talents and interests outward to support the war effort. If young women and men courted
they often did so separated by the distance from home front to battlefield. And no one could long ignore the steady drumbeat of casualty lists
maimed veterans
and funerals that became part of the routines of their communities. Even as Cleveland's Mayor Masters reported on the progress of his city
he acknowledged the human cost that reminded his constituents of the consequences of the conflict. "Individual families have indeed been reminded by the sad bereavements
or longing absence of loved ones
" he commented
"that war
in all its cruel and desolating power is raging in the land." It did not stop there
for the memory of the war also became part of the Northern mentality
as civilians and soldiers alike tried to make sense of what the conflict had wrought
insisting that the nation not forget the sacrifices so many people made to bring victory. Northerners
willingly or unwillingly
found their lives marked by America's ordeal. They could not escape being a part of the war and in fact were more than passive recipients of its consequences. In July 1861
William Y. Ripley
a Vermont businessman
wrote to his soldier son
explaining that despite what ideas politicians in Washington might have
"This war is a war of the people." That sentiment echoed Abraham Lincoln's insistence
on July 4
1861
that the war was and must be "essentially a People's contest" that demanded steady resolve and commitment from everyone to save the great experiment in democratic self-government and realize the hope for freedom. Armies alone could not win the war. Thus
it becomes important to understand how the war intersected with the lives of those ordinary people on the home front beyond the policies set forth by Washington
because
in the end
they were the ones who gave shape and substance to the Union's final victory. Any consideration of what the people did for the war
however
must also assess what the war did for and to them. Understanding the ways the Northern people engaged and understood the war
and the war's impact on Northern society
culture
economy
and politics
is the principal concern of this book. * * * In completing this volume
we have accumulated a number of debts that we can hardly repay
but wish to acknowledge. First is recognizing the book's genealogy. The seed for this book came from a much longer draft version of a book chapter by Paul A. Cimbala that appeared as "The Northern Home Front during the Civil War
" in Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America
Vol. 1: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War
edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler (Westport
CT: Greenwood Press
2007). Many of the ideas on subjects to investigate and the basic framework for our book derived from that initial chapter. Our book also owes much to the librarians at universities and archives who facilitated research
but special thanks go to the librarians at the Connecticut Historical Society
the Rockland
Maine
Historical Society
the Rockland
Maine
Public Library
Saint Joseph's University
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
the Library Company of Philadelphia
Haverford College
and the University of Pennsylvania for their knowledge and assistance in identifying resources and providing them. We thank ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Publishing for permission to use material from Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime noted above. Michael Millman
our editor at Praeger
deserves thanks for facilitating our request and for his patience in dealing with us over the many years we took to complete this book. John David Smith
the editor of the series in which this volume appears
has also stuck with us
encouraging this work as he has done so generously with other projects over the years. He also provided wise editorial counsel to insure our book's accuracy and enhance its value. He is our very good friend and mentor. Our beloved and uncommonly tolerant wives
Elizabeth C. Vozzola and Linda Patterson Miller
both esteemed scholars in their own right
kept us on task by reminding us that health and happiness can come from writing good history. We hope we have done so.