Civil War and Reconstruction

In this book Shaw speaks for himself with equal eloquence through nearly two hundred letters he wrote to his family and friends during the Civil War. The portrait that emerges is of a man more divided and complex-though no less heroic-than the Shaw depicted in the celebrated film Glory. A previous selection of Shaw's correspondence was privately published by his family in 1864. For this volume, Russell Duncan has restored many passages omitted from the earlier edition and has provided detailed explanatory notes to the letters. In addition he has written a lengthy biographical essay that places the young colonel and his regiment in historical context.

The book includes major historical documents, such as the Gettysburg Address, as well as more personalized accounts of the war and of the popular culture of the times found in diaries, advertisements, and magazine and newspaper articles. Throughout, the readings are supplemented by introductions, period illustrations, sidebar information, and vocabularies.

In 1860, Ohio was among the most influential states in the nation. As the third-most-populous state and the largest in the middle west, it embraced those elements that were in concert—but also at odds—in American society during the Civil War era. Ohio’s War uses documents from that vibrant and tumultuous time to reveal how Ohio’s soldiers and civilians experienced the Civil War. It examines Ohio’s role in the sectional crises of the 1850s, its contribution to the Union war effort, and the war’s impact on the state itself. In doing so, it provides insights into the war’s meaning for northern society. Ohio’s War introduces some of those soldiers who left their farms, shops, and forges to fight for the Union. It documents the stories of Ohio’s women, who sustained households, organized relief efforts, and supported political candidates. It conveys the struggles and successes of free blacks and former slaves who claimed freedom in Ohio and the distinct wartime experiences of its immigrants. It also includes the voices of Ohioans who differed over emancipation, freedom of speech, the writ of habeas corpus, the draft, and the war’s legacy for American society.

Allen examines the contexts of the US Supreme Court in the years leading to the 1857 decision at an intellectual as well as political level, a world that was deeply mired in the futile effort to be all things to all factions, ranging from slave-holders to states' rights advocates, federalists, economic developers expecting a new corporate order, and the remains of the Jacksonian democratic enthusiasts.

Contents: Zachary Taylor (1849-1850) and Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) -- Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) -- James Buchanan (1857-1861) -- Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) -- Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) -- Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877).

Voices of Emancipation seeks to recover the lives and words of former slaves in vivid detail, mining the case files of the U.S. Pension Bureau, which administered a huge pension system for Union veterans and their survivors in the decades following the Civil War. The files contain an invaluable, first-hand perspective of slavery, emancipation, black military service, and freedom. Moreover, as Pension Bureau examiners began interviewing black Union veterans and their families shortly after the Civil War, the files are arguably among the earliest sources of ex-slaves reflecting on their lives, occurring decades before better-known WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s took place.

First-person accounts provide chronological coverage of the Civil War from May 1861 to May 1864.