Civil War By David Blight Summary

Nina Silber’s historical analysis in The Romance of Reunion, takes an in depth look at the groundwork that was behind the reconstruction of the nation after the Civil War. While most historians refer to the political agenda behind fixing the segregated nation, Silber takes a moderately different approach and focuses more on reunification, rather than reconstruction. Her argument is made very clear throughout the book and through the use of numerous illustrations that were developed during this time period, Silber created an approach to the situation that generally focused on the opposing views of gender roles within the North and the South.

Historians have often described the reconciliation between northerners and southerners after the Civil War as a process of selective forgetting. The shared Union and Confederate experience of courage-under-fire quickly supplanted the root causes of the war and the longstanding sectional acrimony between North and South in the public memory. As Michael Kammen suggested in his 1991 book Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture historical meaning is imbued with concern for the present. For many Americans, North and South in the late nineteenth-century, “present” concerns were economic progress and stability. Sectional discord and enmity stood in the way of rebuilding the nation, and prosperity required letting bygones-be-bygones. New narratives sutured from selected historical memories were crafted to expedite the national healing process and to appeal to the sentiments of northerners who romanticized the bucolic Old South and its aristocratic order. Although nostalgia for a pre-industrial past played its part in fostering reunion, Reiko Hillyer, in Designing Dixie: Tourism, Memory, and Urban Space, argues that it was the mutual economic interests of northern capitalists and southern boosters that were central to reconciliation, and shaping the development of the New South.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand”- Abraham Lincoln. Civil wars are bloody times in a nation’s history when its citizens fight against each other for reform or other change in the nation. The American and the Russian Civil Wars are known to be some of the bloodiest wars in each country’s history and having some of the bloodiest or the largest battles in the world. The books I read were The American Civil War: A Military History by John Keegan and The Russian Civil War by Evan Mawdsley. John Keegan was a senior lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy and a professor of history at Vassar College. Evan Mawdsley is a professor of Modern History at Glasgow University and has written numerous books on Russian history.

“A colleague at a California university recently remarked to me that I would be forced to choose between becoming a ‘popular historian’ or a ‘historian’s historian.’ He strongly hinted that I was in danger of becoming the former,” wrote James M. McPherson in 1995.  “Why couldn’t I be both?” McPherson responded. “Surely it is possible to say something of value to fellow professionals while at the same time engaging a wider audience.” McPherson is indeed both.  In a career that has spanned four decades and garnered many of the historical profession’s top accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize, two Lincoln Prizes, the NEH’s Jefferson Lectureship in the Humanities, and a term as the president of the American Historical Association, James M. McPherson is one of the nation’s foremost historians of the American Civil War era. In all of his writings, McPherson has consistently sought to bridge the dichotomy that has divided historians writing about the Civil War: on the one hand, those historians who have focused on the “causes and results of the war,” and on the other, what Walt Whitman called “the real war,” the experiences of soldiers in battle and civilians on the home front. Through skillful narrative in a broad-ranging oeuvre of essays and books, McPherson has succeeded in telling both stories, combining social, political, and military history to reach a broad scholarly and popular audience, emphasizing all the while that the Civil War constituted a “second American

Guard 3.15-5.15 and then another half hour 10.15-10.45. Went back to billet at about 11 o’clock to act as guard to Relief Guard of the DLI [Durham Light Infantry]. After being relieved went with another chap and had a couple of boiled eggs and coffee then got kit together and went with George for a tass[e] de café. Paraded at 4.45 moved to trenches at 5pm. Got told off with 6 others including George for delving [?] trench, had to go through sewer. Got jolly wet as usual.

The Civil War, known by many as one of the most tumultuous times in our

Blair, shapes the foundation which this nation's future's path is moving towards keeping a firm hold on Ex slaves with emancipationist. Healing the nations and reuniting the union after the Civil War not putting it into the injustice against African-Americans Fualed the reconciliation. Yet, why did the union allow this war to confide over slavery and gaining equal rights for all men, to only be not enforce with the reunion of the south. Blight, glances into the remembrance of the civil wars experience for both sides and how the idea of reuniting the United States northern and southern would need to heal at the same time while integrating reconciliation between these two groups to only demoralize the major conflict of the civil war.

After the war had occurred, many whites were focusing on healing their broken families, and bringing the American family back together (referring to the North and South), instead of focusing on what the future held for African Americans. Many whites wordlessly agreed that “healing from the war was simply not the same proposition as doing justice to the four million emancipated slaves and their descendants.” Therefore the Civil War in memory right after the time of the war was devoted to healing the broken families and divided brothers, and the slavery that had started the war was overlooked in most people’s minds. Also in memory, “Old and New South were romanticized and welcomed back to a new nationalism, and in which devotion alone made everyone right, and no one truly wrong in the remembered Civil War,” to reunite the North with the South. The North decided that they would forgive, and that they would claim no one was “truly wrong” so that the South would not feel alienated or disrespected, which changed how the war was remembered. While centering in on welcoming the South and trying to eradicate hard feelings, the race and slavery issues were forgotten from memory. Perhaps people were worried that discussion of those issues would have detracted from reconciliation, so therefore they focused all their energies on one problem so as to give it their fullest attention. Within this nationalism and idealization of

The information on the on the internet is always vast and a book can’t compete with it. Similarly, the information on Civil War on the internet and in book is both different and same. It is different because there is considerable amount of information on the internet that can’t be contained in one chapter of the book; and it is same, because all the facts are same. Along with the standard information, I came across many interesting things like some maps, pictures, and blogs about Civil War. But I would like to share this collection of interesting animated maps which covers everything about the Civil War. From map before civil war to map after civil war, cotton boom in south, population of slaves in different states/ territories, railroad network,

For all the disputes that exist within America regarding how to understand the Civil War, the majority of citizens will agree that the conflict was decidedly tragic. The combatants who perished fighting against their former countrymen are mourned, as America's most destructive internal conflict is remembered as a period of needless bloodshed. Nevertheless, this notion represents one final misconception about the war, which obscures its immense benefit to the country and its people. Admittedly, it is not difficult to understand why the conflict is viewed as a tragedy – there can never be anything inherently positive about the demise of six hundred thousand people. However, as horrible as those five years of battle were, the outcome was the abolishment

Today, I get to go home. I get to see the beautiful smile on my wife’s face, my daughter’s constant proving of her brainpower to my son’s brawn that makes me laugh around our dinner table. That has been something i’ve been dreaming about - The thing I missed most of all - my family and community to able to embrace it once again is an extremely thrilling to be recognized as a “hero” but will they even remember my help. I joined this war for them; my family and community - to protect them but I was turned away at the board office - the first time. The look that on that white military officer’s face as he stared deeply back at my black one in disgust as he spit the words that stunned me out of his mouth “Its a white man’s war” like I already

Blight’s work provides another addition to the exiting Civil War historiography by exposing the after effects of the conflict upon the memory of American people in attempt to persuade readers. He shows this transformation by way of the personal stories from African Americans, particularly Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker Washington, white reconciliationist and racial extremists. Furthermore, he exposes how the press by way of newspapers and media manipulation, coupled with literature and short films manipulated the war’s causes and outcome to reflect a struggle between two ideals to build a nation. Overall, Blight’s contribution is an interesting and engaging, yet distressing account of the aftermath of the war and its impact

I hope all is well with you and your family through these trying times. It's been a while since I've been able to write, our lives have been in complete turmoil. The battles were so horrible, the soldiers desperately wounded. My son Louis was sent into battle this past May as a soldier in the Calvary Corps. He fought bravely at Cemetery Ridge but in the third day of fighting he was wounded. The Lord showed him mercy and he was taken to Seminary Ridge. The doctors were unable to save his leg. He is struggling to learn to walk with a prosthetic made of wood and metal. The battles here in Gettysburg brought such devastation. I've heard over 50,000 were killed including a local women killed while baking bread in her kitchen.

All I can hear is 2 guys screaming at the top of their lungs saying “shut up the hell up and, put your fucking head in your bag!” while riding in a truck that smelled like dog crap. After about 20 minutes of riding in that not saying single word because everybody was scared out of their mind, well at least I know I was. After the bus had stopped I started to get off then filed in to groups on the sides of the company buildings. They told everybody to open their bags and dump everything out while one of the drill sergeants pulled out a paper with a list of items on it. If 1 person out of the whole company was missing anything on that list we all got punished for it so you can understand me being at everybody’s throat

The attempt of reconstruction after the civil war was put in shambles by terrorism and violence led by whites. The ratifying of “formed for the white, not the black man” boiled in the South. Police would brutally beat black Americans. The black American’s rights and their well being were targeted by society. (The case for Reparations 2015) The government provided limited help as they took a blind eye only to focus on the economy instead of the conditions that were happening in the south (Painter 151). We can still see how police and government still lean one-sided in today’s age. In this current event, in particular, they spoke of taking legal actions for the hate crime but no further actions were actually put into place. We can see how