Lays out blueprint for the book by outlining methodological approaches, evidence base, and historiographical interventions (including ‘dark turn’ in Civil War scholarship) of a study on suicide and suffering during and after the Civil War in the American South. Identifies evidentiary challenges including poor record keeping, attempts to hide suicides, elusiveness of cause or motivation, and gender bias in lethal suicides. Case studies emphasize experiences of individuals, transcending well-trodden theological and cultural discourse about suicide. Examines impact of war traumas like PTSD on soldiers and veterans, and on their wives and families. Racialized ideas about suicide and depression shaped southerners’ understanding of suffering, held by whites to be a marker of civilized peoples.
Laura Edwards, A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, £50.00 hardback, £19.99 paperback). Pp. 212. isbn 978 1 1070 0879 3, 978 1 1074 0134 1. - Martin Ruef, Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014, £24.95 hardback, £19.95 paperback). Pp. 285. isbn 978 0 6911 6277 5, 978 0 6911 7359 7.