The Divided Family in Civil War AmericaUniv of North Carolina Press, 2009 M11 4 - 336 páginas The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting "brother against brother." The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America's bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America. In hundreds of border state households, brothers--and sisters--really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale--something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life. |
Contenido
| 13 | |
| 35 | |
3 Brothers and Sisters | 63 |
4 Border Crossing and the Treason of Family Ties | 91 |
5 Border Dramas and the Divided Family in the Popular Imagination | 123 |
6 Reconciliations Lived and Imagined | 153 |
7 Reconciliation and Emancipation | 191 |
Epilogue | 209 |
A Note on Numbers and Sources | 215 |
Notes | 217 |
Bibliography | 279 |
Index | 309 |
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Términos y frases comunes
Abraham Lincoln African Americans April August authority battle border border-state Breckinridge brother Brutus Buckner Cabell Charles Wesley Civil Clay Davenport Clay Family Confederacy Confederate women conflict Crittenden Daily Missouri Democrat daughter Davis December disloyalty divided families enemy family members family’s February fiction Fort Delaware friends Harper’s Weekly Henry Henry Stone husband ibid January John Joseph Halsey Josie Underwood Kentucky letters Lincoln lives Louisville Daily Journal March marriage married Martha Mary Ellet military Missouri Statesman Mordecai mother Nashville Daily Press newspaper North Northern November October officials one’s political postwar Prentice prison rebel reconciliation relationship Republican reunion romance Samuel Halsey secession seduction September siblings sister slavery slaves son’s sons South Southern story Syphax Tennessee Todd Todd White Union and Confederate Union army Union fathers Union soldiers Unionist Untitled Virginia wartime wife wife’s Willard William William C. P. Breckinridge woman writers wrote
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Página 110 - PS—It is my express desire that the contents of this letter, or any part of it, will not be placed in such a situation as to be published in any newspaper.' " Gentlemen with funds will pay their own postage; those without funds, their letters will be paid at Fort Hamilton. /
Página 114 - Several Rebel mails have been taken in the last few weeks, and I find that a large number of women have been actively concerned both in secret correspondence and collecting and distributing Rebel letters. I have for some time been thinking of arresting them, but the embarrassment is in knowing what to do with them. Many of them are wives and daughters of officers in the Rebel service. These women are wealthy and wield a great...
Página 207 - We hold that freedom is the natural right of all men, which they themselves have no more right to give or barter away, than they have to sell their honor, their wives, or their children. We claim to be men belonging to the great human family, descended from one great God, who is the common Father of all, and who bestowed on all races and tribes the priceless right of freedom.