“To arms! Your Country calls!” was that slogan that echoed through the streets of every American city in the spring of 1861. On April 12, Confederate forces fired shots against the Union held Fort Sumter. Seven states declared secession from the Union before the battle, and four more seceded after. The American Civil War had begun, and the urge to fight swept over the divided country’s young men like wildfire. From all walks of life, men “charged by emotional oratory” (Robertson Jr. 20), joined ranks to live the romanticized life of a soldier, and assumed the war would be over in 90 days or less. However, what most found, if not an early death, was that the war would drag on for four years. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands “citizen soldiers” met their country's call to defend their way of life, typically in state volunteer militias, and this required organization in the federal army to ensure efficient distribution of manpower. …show more content…
There is a common misconception that the Civil War was fought between “the northern blue and the southern grey”, when, in reality, uniforms in the Federal Army ranged from grey, blue, green, to even bright red. Each regiment, many were state militias, varied largely in appearance because of esprit-de-corps and location from which men volunteered. To preserve individuality and maintain pride in units, enlisted infantry uniforms from II Corps, Army of the Potomac, were, at times, vastly different in aesthetics and construction, while others utilized “standard” federal uniforms, depending on material availability and
War has always existed. Although the purpose of war varies, the outcome is the same; many lives are changed and ruined. War is often used to gain power, resources, and land, but it disregards the lives of those fighting the fight. Martin Luther King stated, “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” In three selections, “Medevac Missions,” “A Journey Taken with my Son,” and “At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center,” readers come to understand the truths of wars’ impact on the lives of those surrounding the soldier. Their friends change, their physical and psychological states change, but the hardest truth is adjusting to life back at home. Soldiers experience many life changes during active
To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who
In this historical text, Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War, Emmy Werner retells the events of the Civil War through the eyes of children who are male, female, black, and white. Werner worked to sift through the reactions and experiences of the young men and women who were involved in the Civil War. Each chapter articulates a different portion of the battle and the events during the Civil War. Chapter two, five, six, eight, and nine capture the eye-witness accounts from young soldiers and young women who lived through the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Gettysburg, the siege of Vicksburg, the burning of Atlanta, and Sherman’s march to the sea. Chapter three, four, seven, and ten depict the responses the young children had at Andersonville, during the bread riots, the triumph at Washington D.C., and the voices of the former slaves of the south. Werner thrived to increase the knowledge on the involvement of children within the Civil War. Werner’s historical picture was to present the realities children faced on and off the field of battle. Werner’s argument focused on children’s perspective of the Civil War. She supports her claim by providing diary, letter, and journal excerpts from one hundred and twenty children ages four to sixteen, by being focused on their subjective experiences of the hardships they endured and how they managed to cope with them drawing, where appropriate, parallels to the experiences of children in contemporary civil strife.
In order to look into the lives of the U.S. citizens during the Civil War I decided to look into the first week from April 12, 1861 to April 18, 1861 of the New York Times. I looked into this week of articles to see how the New York Times covered the outbreak of the war and the people’s response to it. Some of the main war events covered were: call for Union to relinquish command of Fort Sumter and first shots of the war, reaction to the surrender of Fort Sumter, Lincoln’s Proclamation to add seventy-five thousand volunteers to the war efforts, possible attacks on Fort Pickens, and the Confederate reaction to Lincoln’s Proclamation. During this week, the north was obviously nervous and scared yet felt they would win as well as confused as to why the war was happening at all.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War exposes a different perspective of the Civil War that is sparsely discussed and challenges the reader to broaden their views and beliefs of the war. Author, Drew Gilpin Faust, conducted nine chapters, or the new and transformed ars moriendi, primarily focusing on the past and present of the Civil War and its soldiers.
Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War tackles a subject that is not widely written about: the ways of death of the American Civil War generation. She demonstrates how the unprecedented carnage, both military and civilian, caused by the Civil War forever changed American assumptions of death and dying, and how the nation and its people struggled to come to terms with death on an unimaginable scale. The war created a veritable “republic of suffering” and Faust vividly portrays the United States’ ordeal, transformation, and
What they fought for is an analysis of a collection of nearly a thousand personal letters and journals entries written by the soldiers who fought America’s famous Civil War. This book seeks to define the ideology of what the soldiers understood they were fighting for, and their comprehension of the outcome of their service .Although counter arguments agree that most soldiers could not give a solid explanation of why they fought for, nor the real Constitutional issues that were at stake; the thoughts the soldiers recorded show that they fought for more than just masculine identity; they highly valued being at home safe with their loved ones, at any cost. This book gives an inside perception of the Civil War, and a
Drawing on statistics of Confederate and Union losses as well as personal accounts from southerners, the two authors expertly craft their book while fully utilizing both primary and secondary sourcing to back up their
The American Civil War was a military conflict between the United States of America (the Union), and 11 secessionist Southern states, organized as the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). It was the culmination of four decades of intense sectional conflict and it reflected deep-seated economic, social, and political differences between the North and the South. Many books have been written on this “first modern war” describing how over 620,000 men were killed. Jeff Shaara goes deeper and explores the personal conflicts of four historical figures, two from the South and two from North: General Lee, General Jackson, Colonel Chamberlain, and Hancock.
During the cold war, the Confederate soldiers endured a lot of hardships. The course of the Civil War had taken its toll of the Southern soldiers, who were facing rough times both at home and at the front. A major characteristic of the war in the South was the lack of adequate clothing and food, and poor pay or lack thereof. The soldiers had to brave all these wants and still seek to stay motivated to the course to which they had enlisted. Naturally, such hardships would drive any man to the brink of helplessness and hopelessness. Furthermore, there were reports of internal divisions within the ranks of the Confederacy. The hardships, trials, and deaths of fellow soldiers were among the reasons that made the soldiers be hugely driven out
Not every man who 's fought in a war planned on doing so. In fact, not all of them even want to. It 's rare to find enough people voluntarily willing to lay down their lives for their country, so more often than not militaries used what we would call “citizen soldiers.” Citizen soldiers are exactly what they sound like, regular citizens taken from society and turned into people capable of serving in the military. Although it may seem obvious when plainly written out, citizen soldiers had vastly different experiences compared to career soldiers, and Stephen Ambrose attempted to pin down that specific experience in his book Citizen Soldier. Ambrose uses oral interviews from World War II veterans and other materials to explain the experiences of the common American soldier who served in WWII between D-Day and the eventual surrender of the German forces. However, when examining his book, it 's important to ask how successful Ambrose was in painting an accurate picture of this kind of soldier 's life during his service. Is the information he uses specific to the men who served in Europe, or can it also be linked back to the soldiers in the Pacific? This paper will evaluate his work by comparing it to oral interviews from WWII veterans both from the same areas that Ambrose 's veterans serve in and in locations not included in his work.
This chapter “Transforming Fire the Civil War 1861-1865” covers one of the bloodiest war in Joined States history that made major political, money related, and social change for the North and South. Both the North and South expected that the Normal War would end quickly; in the meantime, as the exchange of the military engagements of the underlying two years appears, both were stirred up.
The Civil War of America has been discussed as the first modern war of the new industrial age. Army’s of such a large size had yet to meet head on, face to face in the battle field with weapons of such mass destruction and deadly force. America had not yet seen casualties of this magnitude to
Modern culture holds soldiers to a high standard of emotional fortitude. They are expected to emerge from war triumphantly and confidently, but this notion is far from reality. Septimus Warren Smith is a shell shocked veteran, suffering from post-war “thunder-claps of fear,” who criticizes the apathy of modernist society. He is incapable of communicating his troubles to those who are enthralled with modern culture (87). Lucrezia notes that “the English are so silent,” however this silence is not defined as the absence of speech, it refers to the absence of substance (88).
What is our purpose in life? How should we be living? How does war change that? In 1861 through 1865, a war divided the United States, and it claimed more American lives than any other war has taken: the Civil War. The north and south became distinctly different entities in a bloody battle (“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Historical Context”). 26 years later, Ambrose Bierce wrote a short story by the title of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” It is a story that explores the nature of war in order to give the audience advice on how life should be led. Using the narrative approach, readers can explore Bierce’s take on the human experience and how the life and untimely death of Peyton Farquhar reflects Bierce’s lessons on life.