A Divide to Heal the Union

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Drake
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Unity ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Continental Divide ◽  
Geographic Feature ◽  
Civil War Memory ◽  
History Of ◽  
North And South

This article traces the process by which people in the United States embraced the Continental Divide as a geographic feature of North America in the late 1860s. Building on recent work in environmental history, Civil War memory, geography, and the history of nationalism, the essay explains how accurate mapping alone did not reveal the Continental Divide. Instead, the divide’s conceptualization also depended on Americans’ history of thinking about the Rockies as a political boundary, southern secession, and the building of the transcontinental railroad. Many Americans found in that railroad’s construction solace for a nation recovering from the Civil War, and they cast themselves as conquering nature to unite the nation. Railroad boosters and passengers consecrated the Continental Divide as a symbol of national unity and an icon of obstacles overcome. In a nation trying to overcome its sectional division between North and South, aspirations for reunification formed a foundation for emphasizing the continent’s most prominent feature that separates East and West.

scholarly journals Neo-Confederates take their stand: Southern Agrarians and the Civil War

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niall Munro
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Allen Tate ◽  
Temporal Shape ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Civil War Memory

Ninety years ago, a group of twelve Southern intellectuals published I’ll Take My Stand, a manifesto dedicated to reviving Southern values and ideals in direct opposition to Northern industrialism and philosophy. Ever since 1930, the Southern Agrarians have been frequently presented as critics of modern life, but this kind of focus overshadows another way in which they were described in those early days: as neo-Confederates. The Agrarians’ ongoing and wide-ranging engagement with the Civil War ‐ especially in the work of Allen Tate and Donald Davidson ‐ was, I argue, hugely significant for the planning and writing of the manifesto. Examining the ways in which these writers used the war also shows how they sought to retard modernist progress, embrace failure as an element of Lost Cause ideology, and distort the temporal shape of Civil War memory. Furthermore, I show here how bound up in the manifesto and related writing by its contributors is a commitment to white supremacy and violence ‐ a kind of fanatical dedication that speaks to events in the United States today.

Presidents and the Dissolution of the Union

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Personal Strengths ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
American Leader ◽  
Policy Vision

The United States witnessed an unprecedented failure of its political system in the mid-nineteenth century, resulting in a disastrous civil war that claimed the lives of an estimated 750,000 Americans. This book assesses the personal strengths and weaknesses of presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama. The book evaluates the leadership styles of the Civil War-era presidents. The book looks at the presidential qualities of James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. For each president, the book provides a concise history of the man's life and presidency, and evaluates him in the areas of public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. The book sheds light on why Buchanan is justly ranked as perhaps the worst president in the nation's history, how Pierce helped set the stage for the collapse of the Union and the bloodiest war America had ever experienced, and why Lincoln is still considered the consummate American leader to this day. The book reveals what enabled some of these presidents, like Lincoln and Polk, to meet the challenges of their times—and what caused others to fail.

A History of the United States Since the Civil War, in Five Volumes: 1868-1872.

1923 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 312
Author(s):  
Benjamin B. Kendrick ◽  
Ellis Paxon Oberholtzer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of

From the history of American journalism.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tat'yana Alent'eva
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Editorial Staff ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
North Americans ◽  
American Journalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
New York Tribune

The monograph examines the period in the history of the United States immediately preceding the Civil War of 1861-1865. The problem that is at the center of the author's attention is the public opinion of Americans on the most important domestic political issues. The paper analyzes the influence of the newspaper "New York Tribune" on the formation of views, opinions and preferences of Americans. For the first time in Russian American studies, a thorough analysis of the leading periodical of the pre-war period is given, the composition of the editorial staff and the views of journalists are described in detail. Special attention is paid to the founder and publisher of "Tribune" Horace Greeley. The monograph examines both socio-economic problems and the party-political struggle. The most important compromise measures, the Civil War in Kansas, the presidential elections of 1856 and 1860 are evaluated through the prism of the comments of the New York Tribune and at the same time through the perception of its readers. As a result, the monograph creates a multicolored palette of opinions of North Americans, their perception of the situation in the country on the eve of the Civil War. This allows us to expand and deepen our understanding of the causes of the second North American revolution. For professionals, students, and anyone interested in the problems of history.

Education for Sovereign People

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Peggy Cooper Davis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The People ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
History Of

In chapter 6, Peggy Cooper Davis notes that in a democratic republic, the people are sovereign and must be free and educated to exercise that sovereignty. She contends that the history of chattel slavery’s denial of human sovereignty in the United States, slavery’s overthrow in the Civil War, and the Constitution’s reconstruction to restore human sovereignty provide a basis for recognizing that the personal rights protected by the United States Constitution, as amended on the demise of slavery, include a fundamental right to education that is adequate to enable every person to participate meaningfully as one among equal and sovereign people.

Graffiti Heritage: Civil War Memory in Virginia

2012 ◽  
pp. 139-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Moreau ◽  
Derek H. Alderman
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Civil War Memory

The Red Flag of Emancipation

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Civil War Memory ◽  
The World ◽  
Red Flag ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Socialist Party Of America

This chapter considers the production of Civil War memory among Gilded Age socialists and anarchists. These radicals and revolutionaries built on the redistributionist claims of abolitionists and freedpeople, and exceeded those of trade unionists, by challenging not only the legitimacy of slave property or plantations but also the mechanisms of production and property rights. Late nineteenth-century socialists came to see themselves as a postscript to abolitionism, and their “red memory” operated through anarchist networks, militias, and workers’ parties. Most sought an end to partisan debates over loyalty and section, which hindered working-class organization, and used Civil War memory to espouse internationalism, prefiguring the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World.

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