Mr. Farquhar In John Bierce's A View From The Bridge

Ira Berlin (author of many thousands gone) starts this book off (in the prologue) by recalling a dispute some years ago over “who freed the slaves?” in the Civil War South. He was interviewed on Washington's public radio station about the meaning of “The Emancipation Proclamation”. He also addressed other familiar themes of the great document origin’s nature of the Civil War changing, the growing Black labor and the union's army’s dependence on it, the Evermore intensifying opposition to slavery in the North, and the interaction of military necessity an abolitionist idealism. He rehearsed the long established debate over the role of Abraham Lincoln, the radicals in Congress, abolitionists in the North, the Union army in the field, and slaves on the slaves on the plantations of the South in the destruction of slavery and in the authorship of legal freedom. During this debate he restated his position that “slaves played a critical role in securing their own freedom”.

Peyton Farquhar is a wealthy, proud southern man. Farquhar had wish to enroll in the military but was unable too due to causes that are unknown. He was then later fooled by a union scout impersonating a confederate soldier. This union scout tricked Farquhar into believing he could stop the northerners from advancing into southern territory. Farquhar was convinced by this scout that the only way to stop the northerners from going into southern territory was to destroy the railroad bridge at Owl Creek. While Farquhar is attempting

Analyzing how Parchman reflects the intertwined themes of reform and race, we must look back into the history of the state, to see what caused the instability that led to reform and the role that citizens played. The Civil War is just ending and the South lost not only did they lose the battle , but they also lost their family members, homes, land and most of all for some they lost their slaves. During the war Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in territories that opposed the Union. Oshinsky paints a beautiful picture of the scenes that had unfolded when he wrote that, “Few could escape the consequences of this war. Mississippi was bankrupt. Its commerce and transportation had collapsed. The railroads and levees lay in ruins. Local governments barely functioned.” (p.12) The world that many white southerners had come to know was now destroyed. Being placed under these conditions, outraged many white southerners. Adding fuel to the fire, the fact of knowing that former slaves were now equal to even the poorest of whites, did not set well. The author states that, "this hatred had many sources. The ex-slave had become a scapegoat for the South’s humiliating defeat. John F.H. Claiborne, Mississippi’s most prominent historian, blamed him for causing the war and for helping the North to prevail.” ( Oshinsky, 1996, p. 14) Carl Schdrz, a reformer from the North, became very concerned about how blacks would be treated, with rising sense of

Many slaves on the plantation had been drafted by the confederates to fight everyone of them have not been heard from since. One day nathaniel came by to talk to me when I was picking cotton when he announced that he had just been drafted to fight. I had never seen Nathaniel in so much despair. He was was so sad because he had to fight against his own freedom.”

The author begins by providing a vivid description of the Shelton Laurel region and its inhabitants prior to the Civil War. The residents of Shelton Laurel fervently valued kinship, personal justice, individualism, and isolationism, and possessed a fierce devotion to their land and heritage. The inhabitants of Shelton Laurel were also deeply suspicious of mountain slaveholders and upper class urban residents, who possessed ties to the disruptive world “outside the mountains and to the slave-dominated southern economy” (59). Consequently, when the secession crisis began, the majority of rural mountaineers threw their unwavering support behind the Union. Paludan deduces that mountain Unionism was the culmination of numerous factors, including “class hostility, rural suspicions of more urban places, and a feeling that the wealthy and influential slave owners were threatening hard-working common people” (61). Thus, loyalties in the community of Shelton Laurel and the surrounding Appalachian area remained bitterly divided by a plethora of issues throughout the Civil

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

With the eruption of the Civil War came one of the biggest tribulations and trials that this country has ever faced, but as we understand the motives of one of the greatest Presidents in American History we can see that the Civil War was inevitable. From his original intentions of merely preserving the Union and holding the country together, to permanently abolishing slavery we can observe why prevailing in the struggle of the Civil War is one of Lincoln’s defining legacies. Thus, as the civil war draws to a close, an old tumultuous era has ended, and a new more prosperous era has

For decades, many southerners perceived their lifestyle as a grand aristocracy who owned thousands of acres and treated their slaves well. Unsurprisingly, Douglass conveys

Second of all, when the Grey-clad soldier rode to your house giving you the idea that you should burn the bridge he was a Federalist dressed as a Southern Soldier. It says in the text, “An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which

In “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, the story of a man by the name of Peyton Farquhar whose unlawful actions landed him in a heap of trouble is told. The story is split into three sections which goes back in forth between the past, the present and Farquhar’s falsation of both. By taking the approach of using symbols throughout the story, Bierce gave the opportunity for the reader to feel like they are apart of the story as well as leaving them with a shocker in the very end. Since the story goes back in forth between reality and illusion, the reader may get a bit confused while reading but you get

In April of 1861, the Civil War broke out in America, a war that was heavily based on the difference of opinion about slavery. The article Land of Contradiction by Justin Martin shows the experience of a traveling undercover journalist, Frederick Law Olmsted, who writes about the South, as he encounters new people and observes different lifestyles. Readers are able to see the South’s way of living through the use of slaves, but through the eyes of a Northerner. This helps with the understanding of the mindset of the Northerners when opposed to the South, which are the root feelings for the start of the war. As Olmsted was undercover, he was able to get up and close with the Southerners, revealing many secrets about the South that suggest why Southerners acted the way they did prior to the war, and why their economic status declined after the war. Through this article, one may understand the different views that were present during the civil war about the South’s harsh treatment of slaves, creating the understanding of the issue

Following the Civil War came a period of regrowth and rebuilding known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction can be broken into different sections and types, one of which is Congressional, or Radical, Reconstruction. There are many scholarly debates about Congressional Reconstruction and its failures, successes, and its overall logistics. Another common debate concerning the Reconstruction period is its purpose and what the intentions of its instigators were. This paper will be discussing an article written by Frederick Douglass entitled Reconstruction. In this article Douglass discusses the Congressional session taking place in 1866. He calls upon the Congressmen to undo the "blunders" of the previous

The romanticized version of the Civil War creates a picture of the North versus the South with the North imposing on the South. However, after reading “The Making of a Confederate” by William L. Barney, one can see that subdivisions existed before the war was declared. The documents analyzed by Barney primarily focus on the experiences of Walter Lenoir, a southern confederate and a member of the planter elite. His experiences tell a vivid story of a passionate and strongly opinioned participant of the Civil War as well as demonstrate a noticeably different view involving his reasoning when choosing a side. Between analyzing this fantastic piece of literature and other resourceful documents from “Voices of Freedom” by Eric Foner, one

The Confederates demanded immediate evacuation of the fort. However, they promised safe transport out of Charleston for Anderson and his men, who would be permitted to carry their weapons and personal property and to salute the Stars and Stripes, which, the Confederates acknowledged, “You have upheld so long...under the most trying circumstances.” Anderson thanked them for such “fair, manly, and courteous terms.” Yet he stated, “It is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligation to my Government, prevent my compliance.” Anderson added grimly that he would be starved out in a few days—if the Confederate cannonthat ringed the harbor didn’t batter him to pieces first. As the envoys departed and the sound of their oars faded away across the gunmetal-gray water, Anderson knew that civil war was probably only hours away.

"When the war closed the river and after two hectic weeks in the Confederate Army, he went to Nevada with his brother, an abolitionist whom President Lincoln had appointed secretary to the territorial governor. And so, while the Civil War raged in the East, Samuel Clemens found himself searching the Wet for silver, and, soon his father, dreaming of a fortune (American Writers 193).