Book Reviews

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 464-466
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brown University ◽  
Army Soldiers ◽  
The U.S

Kaivan Munshi of Brown University reviews “Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War” by Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Explores the effect of peers on people's behavior, drawing upon the life histories of white and black Union Army Soldiers from the American Civil War. Discusses loyalty and sacrifice; why the U.S. Civil War; building the armies; heroes and cowards; prisoner-of-war camp survivors; the homecoming of….”

scholarly journals A Soldier’s Faith: The Civil War Experiences and Reflections of William Porcher DuBose

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-187
Author(s):  
Robert B. Slocum
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Military Chaplain ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation

AbstractThe noted Episcopal theologian William Porcher DuBose was a seminarian when the American Civil War began. He was torn between continuing his studies for ordination and joining the Confederate Army. He felt duty bound to defend his homeland, and he served heroically, wounded in combat, and taken as a prisoner of war. Troubled by the senselessness and inhumanity of war, he was eventually ordained and served as a military chaplain. He devoted himself to faith and ministry when he realized his country and culture were lost. DuBose vividly presents his views on war and faith in his wartime correspondence with his fiancée and later wife Anne Barnwell Perroneau, and other writings. His experiences of loss and poverty were the basis for his theology of the cross and his understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life, and he subsequently dedicated himself to faith, peace, and reconciliation.

Union and Confederate Views on Guncotton

Vulcan ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Yoel Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Black Powder ◽  
Modes Of Action ◽  
Course Of Action

This essay investigates why guncotton was not commonly used by both sides of the American Civil War, despite it being a more powerful explosive than the standard explosive (gunpowder/black powder). The question hitherto has not been fully answered; it is proposed that both sides did realize its superiority yet chose different modes of action. The Union army tested the material in America, but chose the British course of action, to wait until the material, with its known instability, was improved. The Confederate navy was willing to take the risk and looked in mid-1864 for large amounts in Europe for use in certain types of sea and river mines (“torpedoes”). Large quantities did arrive, but were too late to be used. The types of torpedoes to be employed with guncotton are not known but it is estimated that the material was intended for those types where gunpowder limited their effectiveness.

“Benefit of the Doubt”: African-American Civil War Veterans and Pensions

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry M. Logue ◽  
Peter Blanck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Pension System ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Union Army ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Pension Income ◽  
Two Stages

Laws that provided pensions for Union army veterans were putatively color-blind, but whites and African Americans experienced the pension system differently. Black veterans were less likely to apply for pensions during the program's early years. Yet, no matter when they applied, they encountered two stages of bias, first from examining physicians and then, far more systematically, from Pension Bureau reviewers. The evidence suggests that pension income reduced mortality among African-American veterans, underscoring the tangible results of justice denied.

Comrades and Campfires

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-54
Author(s):  
Phoebe S.K. Young
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Union Army ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Army Soldiers ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Ideal

During and after the Civil War, Union army soldiers and veterans attempted to make sense of their military camping experiences, which could exemplify generational camaraderie, political organization, and national belonging. This chapter follows the career of John Mead Gould, a soldier from Portland, Maine who kept an extensive diary and published a camping manual in 1877. It also discusses the role of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization that organized reunions in the form of annual encampments as part of a campaign to lobby the government for veterans’ pensions. Its form of camping put forward the veteran as a new exemplar of the ideal citizen for a modern commercial age. Veterans claimed a meaningful place in a world where the nation’s social and economic underpinnings were in flux and understandings of citizenship, manhood, work, and success were shifting under their feet.

scholarly journals Dealing with the Dead and Wounded: Field Medicine and the American Civil War

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Marc Thivierge
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
American Medicine ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Medical Infrastructure ◽  
Fundamental Shift

An analysis of the developments of field medicine during the American Civil War (1861-1865), focusing mainly on the Union Army. Disease was the largest cause of death during the war and had a more profound effects on its outcome that many of the battles themselves, representing more than two thirds of all deaths over the course of the war. This essay examines the watershed moment in American medicine that the Civil War represented and how changes in medicine were brought about and enacted, paying close attention to the development of medical infrastructure, competency, and efficiency, both during and after the war and how these factors would lead to a fundamental shift in medicine.

Bloody Engagements

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Kelso
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Founding Fathers

This book presents an edited edition of a Union soldier's remarkable memoir, offering a rare perspective on guerrilla warfare and on the larger meanings of the American Civil War. While tales of Confederate guerilla-outlaws abound, there are few scholarly accounts of the Union men who battled them. This Civil War memoir presents a first-hand account of an ordinary man's extraordinary battlefield experiences along with his evolving interpretation of what the bloody struggle meant. A former Methodist preacher and Missouri schoolteacher, John Russell Kelso served as a Union Army foot soldier, cavalry officer, guerilla fighter, and spy. Initially shaped by a belief in the Founding Fathers' republic and a disdain for the slave-holding aristocracy, Kelso became driven by revenge after pro-Southern neighbors stole his property, burned down his house, and drove his family and friends from their homes. Interweaving Kelso's compelling voice with insightful commentary, this fascinating work charts the transformation of an everyday citizen into a man the Union hailed as a hero and Confederate sympathizers called a monster.

Gentlemanly Price-Fixing and Its Limits: Collusion and Competition in the U.S. Explosives Industry during the Civil War Era

2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Agency Problems ◽  
Black Powder ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Commercial Markets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

During the Civil War era, when the U.S. explosives industry was already dominated by a handful of firms, the leading manufacturers of black powder tried repeatedly–with mixed success–to fix prices in commercial and military markets. Their surviving correspondence reveals some of the dynamics of oligopolistic collusion and competition. In commercial markets, price-fixing by leading explosives makers was undermined not only by competition from small powder manufacturers but also by rivalry among their own selling agents. The same agency problems that made price-fixing more difficult, however, may have actually made it easier for manufacturers to sustain the social foundations of cooperation by allowing them to blame the failures of their agreements on forces outside their control. Maintaining cooperative relations over the long run proved useful to manufacturers in wartime military markets, in which price agreements were easier to sustain. But during the Civil War, the leading powder producers found that even successful collusion in the military supply business did not guarantee high profits, because government bureaus could prove to be demanding consumers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document