"What's So Civil 'Bout War, Anyway?"

March 23, 2006 7:55 AM

I'm researching the American Civil War and the Reconstruction.

I'm especially interested in everyday life, so first person accounts, almanacs, image galleries, and similar on-line archives would be very helpful. I'd also like to know what was going on in other countries, both in North American and elsewhere, at that time, and the effect the war had on them (Economically, politically, etc.)
Any weird anecdotes or throw-away factoids that you have would also be great!

More specifically, I'm also looking for an archived school primer that was making the internet rounds a few months back. Titled "A Confederate Child's Schoolbook," or something like that, it was published in 1863. It could very well have been posted here, but so far has eluded my Yahoo Fu.

posted by Alvy Ampersand to society & culture (13 comments total)

I just heard something about this the other day. No idea if it's any good: The Southern Journey of a Civil War Marine : The Illustrated Note-Book of Henry O. Gusley.

I also recommend the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division.
posted by miniape at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2006

Everyday life during the Civil War?

The Valley of The Shadow project at the University of Virginia goes into exhaustive documentary detail about everyday life in two communities, one northern and the other southern. It's been the pet project of a professor for ten years, and it's a hell of a resource.
posted by killdevil at 8:28 AM on March 23, 2006

You can browse the Library of Congress American Memory Collection by topic and time period. It has a ton of images and first-person accounts.
posted by gnat at 8:32 AM on March 23, 2006

Documenting the American South is a huge online archive of primary sources. Mary Boykin Chesnut's A Diary from Dixie is often used by historians for a glimpses of daily southern life during the war, though she is from the upper class and is not typical. (She is also atypical of her class-but that is another story...)

The basic textbook for the Civil War is James Mcpherson's 's Battle Cry of Freedom. The closest equivalent for Reconstruction is Eric Foner's Reconstruction.

Be careful. There is a lot of bullshit written about the Civil War, and even more so for Reconstruction.
posted by LarryC at 8:36 AM on March 23, 2006

Ken Burns' The Civil War
posted by kirkaracha at 8:56 AM on March 23, 2006

Definitely take a look at Leon Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long. Very readable history of the Reconstruction era and the development of Jim Crow. He uses lots of primary source material so at the very least the bibliography could give you some idea of where to look. I haven't read his other books but he does a great job of organizing enormous amounts of info and putting it in context.

On preview: LarryC's right. Stick with academic and institutional sources as much as possible. This is one case where "mainstream" is not a pejorative. (You'll still find lots of debate, just not spittle-flecked supremacist rants.)
posted by vetiver at 9:01 AM on March 23, 2006

Ken Burns' The Civil War uses these two ordinary soldiers' diaries to follow them through the war:

• Sam Watkins' Co. Aytch : A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War
• All for the Union : The Civil War Diary & Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes

posted by kirkaracha at 9:03 AM on March 23, 2006

Ambrose Bierce wrote some civil war stuff.
posted by hortense at 9:27 AM on March 23, 2006

For a strongly libertarian account of the Civil War and the periods before and after, I recommend Jeff Hummel's Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War; his extensive annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter will point you in all sorts of interesting directions.

You might find good material in A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Southern Families at War : Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, and Sarah Morgan Dawson's A Confederate Girl's Diary (that last is conveniently online).
posted by languagehat at 9:37 AM on March 23, 2006

Shelby Foote's trilogy The Civil War: A Narrative is a good narrative history, with maybe a slight Southern bias.

The University of North Carolina's Documenting the American South "provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to Southern history, literature, and culture." Their Confederate Education page and a list of Confederate textbooks; both list The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks (library search).

They also have a Home Life page with diaries and personal correspondence and an extensive collection of First-Person Narratives of the American South.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:51 AM on March 23, 2006

Awesome, thank you all very much!

I found the kid's book I was looking for too:

"Abraham Lincoln was a weak man, and the South believed he would allow laws to be made, which would deprive them of their rights. So the Southern States seceded, and elected Jefferson Davis for their president. This so enraged President Lincoln that he declared war, and has exhausted nearly all the strength of the nation, in a vain attempt to whip the South back into the Union".
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:11 AM on March 23, 2006

Also: Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War, and In The Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863, by Edward L. Ayers (the latter "built upon the experiences of people in two counties—Franklin County, Pennsylvania... and Augusta County, Virginia" and related to the Valley of the Shadow project, which itself is well worth your time).
posted by languagehat at 11:43 AM on March 23, 2006

Nineteenth-Century American Children and What They Read
posted by caddis at 11:54 AM on March 23, 2006