Author: Sam Aleckson Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781500755171 Category : Languages : en Pages : 82
Book Description
Through this text Aleckson attempts to suggest that African Americans are neither objects of pity for the north, nor tools to be used in labor by southern slaveholders, but something more. He places the black community in a hopeful and triumphant light, informing the reader that "you may disfranchise the Negro, you may oppress him, you may deport him, but unless you destroy the disposition to laugh in his nature you can do him no permanent injury. All unconscious to himself, perhaps. It is not solely the meaningless expression of 'vacant mind, ' nor is it simply a ray-It is the beaming light of hope-of faith. God has blessed him thus. He sees light where others see only the blackness of night" (p. 51). African Americans, Aleckson suggests, have been uniquely blessed by God to be able to persevere and overcome in the face of trials and adversity that implicitly would have destroyed others. Aleckson demonstrates in his narrative the spirit he points to. While undoubtedly exposed to great evil as a young slave and in his military service during the Civil War, Aleckson overcomes and perseveres, finding love and happiness in life despite his participation in a trying time in American history. The conclusion of the narrative reflects this optimistic spirit. Aleckson closes with a passionate post-racial appeal for all people to move past slavery and for both whites and African Americans to reconcile their differences and unite as a single people. His only fears, he explains, "are for the American nation, for, I feel as an American, and cannot feel otherwise" (p. 171). Hyrum Palmer
Author: Gary W. Gallagher Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674045629 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union.
Author: Abraham Lincoln Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504080246 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 9
Book Description
The complete text of one of the most important speeches in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember not only the grim bloodshed that had just occurred there, but also to remember the American ideals that were being put to the ultimate test by the Civil War. A rousing appeal to the nation’s better angels, The Gettysburg Address remains an inspiring vision of the United States as a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Author: D. H. Dilbeck Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469630524 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
During the Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D. H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war," an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort. Dilbeck tells how Union commanders crafted rules of conduct to ensure their soldiers defeated the Confederacy as swiftly as possible while also limiting the total destruction unleashed by the fighting. Dilbeck explores how Union soldiers abided by official just-war policies as they battled guerrillas, occupied cities, retaliated against enemy soldiers, and came into contact with Confederate civilians. In contrast to recent scholarship focused solely on the Civil War's carnage, Dilbeck details how the Union sought both to deal sternly with Confederates and to adhere to certain constraints. The Union's earnest effort to wage a just war ultimately helped give the Civil War its distinct character, a blend of immense destruction and remarkable restraint.
Author: Earl J. Hess Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
A reminder that the buisness of war is killing, this study recounts the hellish realms of Civil War combat. Drawing upon letters, diaries and memoirs of Northern soldiers, it reveals not only their deepest fears and shocks, but also their sources of inner strengths.
Author: Allan Nevins Publisher: Konecky & Konecky ISBN: 9781568522968 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 456
Book Description
"This account of the first year of the Civil War is much more than a merely military chronicle in which politicians stride on and off the stage. This volume, the first of four dedicated to the War, is a study of the transformation of a nation. Dr. Nevins is supremely conscious of the chaos that faced Lincoln on inauguration day and well aware that confusion could not be finally routed before Appomattox. But the author is also positive that in the opening months of the conflict the first steps were taken to transform the loosely organized country that fretted over Bull Run into the firmly knit nation that emerged in 1865. The war was fought for a more perfect union, and this the reader is never allowed to forget."--Publisher's description.
Author: Howard Jones Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 0807873977 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
Jones studies the crisis in Anglo-American relations during the Civil War and its impact on the South's attempt to win foreign support during the crucial years of 1861 and 1862. He argues that the central issue was the possibility that Britain would grant diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy, a move that would have legitimized secession and undermined the Constitution. Originally published in 1992. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Don H Doyle Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465080928 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, he had broader aims than simply rallying a war-weary nation. Lincoln realized that the Civil War had taken on a wider significance -- that all of Europe and Latin America was watching to see whether the United States, a beleaguered model of democracy, would indeed "perish from the earth." In The Cause of All Nations, distinguished historian Don H. Doyle explains that the Civil War was viewed abroad as part of a much larger struggle for democracy that spanned the Atlantic Ocean, and had begun with the American and French Revolutions. While battles raged at Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, a parallel contest took place abroad, both in the marbled courts of power and in the public square. Foreign observers held widely divergent views on the war -- from radicals such as Karl Marx and Giuseppe Garibaldi who called on the North to fight for liberty and equality, to aristocratic monarchists, who hoped that the collapse of the Union would strike a death blow against democratic movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Nowhere were these monarchist dreams more ominous than in Mexico, where Napoleon III sought to implement his Grand Design for a Latin Catholic empire that would thwart the spread of Anglo-Saxon democracy and use the Confederacy as a buffer state. Hoping to capitalize on public sympathies abroad, both the Union and the Confederacy sent diplomats and special agents overseas: the South to seek recognition and support, and the North to keep European powers from interfering. Confederate agents appealed to those conservative elements who wanted the South to serve as a bulwark against radical egalitarianism. Lincoln and his Union agents overseas learned to appeal to many foreigners by embracing emancipation and casting the Union as the embattled defender of universal republican ideals, the "last best hope of earth." A bold account of the international dimensions of America's defining conflict, The Cause of All Nations frames the Civil War as a pivotal moment in a global struggle that would decide the survival of democracy.
Author: James M. McPherson Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199743908 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 947
Book Description
Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.
Author: Sam Aleckson
Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Author: James W. Geary
Author: D. H. Dilbeck
Author: Earl J. Hess
Author: Allan Nevins
Author: Howard Jones
Author: Don H Doyle
Author: James M. McPherson