Exploring the American Civil War through 50 Historic Treasures brings together historic objects, documents, artwork, and the natural and built environments to tell the full story of this important event in American history. The American Civil War still matters. It matters because the war 3/4 its causes and its consequences 3/4 continue to influence America as a nation. At its core, the Civil War was about slavery. Began as a fight to secure the future of slavery, the Civil War resulted instead in the abolition of slavery. The complex racial issues at its core, however, remain with us today. Exploring the American Civil War through 50 Historic Treasures begins with the causes of the war, examining objects that tell the story of slavery and its expansion in the nineteenth century. Cultural treasures representing the war years explore the battlefield and the homefront and the men and women caught up in the war as well the ways in which the scale of the war forced technological innovations. Given the centrality of slavery, race, and emancipation in the story of the Civil War, one section presents objects that detail how free and enslaved blacks transformed the war effort and were in turn transformed by the war. In the final section, the historic treasures trace the ongoing impact of the war, including the dramatic increase in the removal of Confederate monuments in the summer of 2020. Each object's story is detailed with color photos that draw readers into the story of the American Civil War. Many of these objects appear here in print for the first time.
List of Figures List of Tables Preface Object Timeline Civil War Timeline Introduction Acknowledgements Part One: Causes For Sale - "A Day I'll Never Forgit" Good Credit, Good Prices, & Good Profits: The Slave Labor Economy Buy for the Sake of the Slave!: Quakers, Antislavery, and the Boycott of Slave Labor Strike a Blow for Freedom: Black Activism and the Abolitionist Movement "I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice": The Antebellum Antislavery Movement Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Sumner: Challenges to the Expansion of Slavery in the West Part Two: Politics "A Man Kidnapped!": Northern Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 "Honest Old Abe is Bound to Win": The Election of 1860 The Union is Dissolved!: The Secession Crisis "Strike for Your Altars and Your Fires!": The Fight for the Border States Securing Alliances: The Confederate Government and the Five Tribes John Bull Makes a Choice: Cotton and International Politics Part Three: Battlefield A Sacred Emblem of the Battle of Glorieta Pass Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site: The Indian Wars in the Civil War Era A Terrible Slaughter: The Battle of Gettysburg "We Will Prove Ourselves Men": The United States Colored Troops Caring for the Wounded: Nurses in the Civil War "His names was Bidwell Pedley": Caring for the Dead during the Civil War Part Four: Officers "Let them surrender and go home": Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House Lee's Right Army: Stonewall Jackson "The Beast": Benjamin Butler and the Occupation of New Orleans The "Father of Black Nationalism": Martin Delany Part Five: Soldiers "Those d-d black hatted fellows": The Iron Brigade of the West Lee's Shock Troops: Hood's Texas Brigade "What is to be done with the prisoners?": Union and Confederate Prisons Days of Infamy and Disgrace: The New York City Draft Riots The Evolution of the Union Cavalry Part Six: Home Front "The Last Thought of a Dying Father": The Northern Home Front "Bread or Blood!": The Southern Home Front during the Civil War "Pounding on the Rock": African American Families in the Civil War North "I Wanted to Be My Own General": Guerilla Warfare and the Homefront On Her Own: The Texas Home Front during the Civil War Part Seven: Symbols "The Speechless Agony of the Fettered Slave": The Symbolism of the Antislavery Movement "The Little Woman Who Made the Great War": Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin "If you want my flag, you'll have to take it over my dead body": National and Regimental Flags during the Civil War Setting the Beat for War: Popular Music in the North and the South Part Eight: Technology The Great Locomotive Chaise: Railroads and Military Strategy A Scientific Foundation for Medical Care: The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion "A curious marine monster": Ironclads and Riverine Warfare The Silk Dress Balloon: Aeronautics in the Civil War Part Nine: Emancipation Freedom's Fort: The Beginnings of Emancipation An Abolition War: The Emancipation Proclamation Troubled Refuge: Contraband Camps A New Birth of Freedom: Thirteenth Amendment Help Me Find My People: Reconstructing Black Families Part Ten: Legacy "I Won't Be Reconstructed": Southerners and Confederate Defeat Memorializing the Dead: Race, Heritage, and the Lost Cause Reconciliation and Reunion: Blue and Gray Reunions in the Post-Civil War Era The Black Confederate Story: Civil War History and Memory in the Age of the Internet Stone Mountain: Confederate Monuments in the Twenty-First Century Afterword Index Bibliography About the Author
