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Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era
Number of Followers: 1  Open Access journalISSN (Print) 2165-3666 - ISSN (Online) 2165-3658 Published by Gettysburg College  [2 journals]
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- Pittsburgh's Explosive Mystery: A New Holistic Study of the Allegheny
Arsenal Tragedy
Authors: Ethan J. Wagner
Abstract: This research critically examines the issues surrounding the worst civilian disaster of the American Civil War, occurring on September 17, 1862 in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here, seventy-eight teenage girls perished as the Allegheny Arsenal munitions laboratory exploded. Investigations in the disaster’s aftermath, and more recent analysis, have remained largely hesitant in placing chief blame as to its cause. Furthermore, for an event that would seem so significant, its story has inadequately been told. Given that the national spotlight was elsewhere at the time, as the Battle of Antietam was fought on the same day, existing literature has tended to focus almost exclusively on the events unfolding on the battlefield. However, a careful consideration presents the necessary prelude to the arsenal explosions, eyewitness testimony, and the aftermath, to ultimately consider what might have caused the disaster, who should be blamed, and critical background that has been previously overlooked.
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:01:22 PDT
- Heaven Hung In Black: Grant’s Reputation and the Mistakes at Cold
Harbor
Authors: Samantha J. Kramer
Abstract: This article examines Ulysses S. Grant’s command of the Union army after receiving his commission as Lieutenant-General through analyzing his decisions both before and during the bloody battle of Cold Harbor. By examining the various factors leading to his tactical decisions, including the ever-looming threat of the upcoming presidential election, the article questions whether or not his reputation as a butcher of his own men is truly deserved. That he made mistakes is undeniable, but the mess of Cold Harbor was not solely his fault. Through the use of a variety of biographies and personal journals and memoirs, the article points out the perfect storm of mistakes both on Grant’s part and that of his commanders, the pressure being faced from higher up in the chain of command, the horrible weather and conditions of the army, and the fact that Lee simply took advantage of every opportunity he was presented with.
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:01:17 PDT
- "Good Neighbourhood": Canada and the United States' Contentious
Relationship During the Civil War
Authors: Michael R. D. Connolly
Abstract: For the majority of the Civil War, Canadians were divided in their loyalties to the Union and to the South. However, in 1864, after years of sending agents and conspirators into Canada, the South became bolder in their affairs north of the border. These efforts culminated into two attacks, planned and executed from Canada by the South: The seizing of the Philo Parsons on Lake Erie on September 19, 1864; and the raid on St. Albans, Vermont, a month later, on October 19, 1864. These two attacks forced Canada and Great Britain to reassess their neutrality and, under pressure from the Union, Canada had to adopt more stringent neutrality laws. Canada also lost its nearly unfettered access to the much-needed American market when the Union cancelled the Reciprocity Treaty in early 1865.
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:01:12 PDT
- Analyzing the Interpretation of the Civil War in Bluegrass Music
Authors: Carter W. Claiborne
Abstract: While the Civil War has long fit well thematically within the existing bluegrass idiom, the way that bluegrass has approached the war over time has changed greatly. Despite bluegrass largely originating from areas with little enthusiasm for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and the genre not emphasizing partisan aspects of the war for several decades, several cultural changes culminated in the late 1960s to turn the genre on a heavily pro-Confederate tilt, with numerous songs in the early- to-mid 1970s glorifying the Confederate States of America and its leaders, while also emphasizing Lost Cause arguments. To see how this unexpected bias arrived in the music, this paper first investigates the way that proto bluegrass genres honored the Civil War, and then traces the impact of the popular folk music movement before finally looking at popular political movements and their impact on the topic.
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:01:07 PDT
- Letter from the Editors
Authors: Christopher T. Lough et al.
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:01:02 PDT
- Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era 2021
PubDate: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:00:54 PDT
- “When This Cruel War Is Over”: The Blurring of the Confederate
Battlefront and Homefront During the Civil War
Authors: Sophie Hammond
Abstract: The line dividing the Confederate battlefront and homefront was always extremely blurred, and this blurring, though initially a source of strength, contributed significantly to the South losing the Civil War. While fighting the war, the Confederacy faced a terrible handicap which the Union did not: the vast majority of the war's battles happened on its own soil. At first, this situation galvanized Southerners. But as the war dragged on, concern for their families as well as the very real costs of war—Confederate soldiers were nearly three times as likely to die as Union soldiers—encouraged a total of around 103,000 Confederates to desert. And the Yankee waging of total war intensified the effects of the divisive Southern class structure and of the collapse of Confederate patriotism, compounding the dejection of the South. This paper explores Confederate psychological suffering at home—as told through letters, songs, memoirs, and Union military court records—in order to understand the demoralizing effects of total war and how they led to Union victory.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:57:27 PDT
- Frances Peter: A Loyal Woman of Kentucky
Authors: Erica Uszak
Abstract: Frances Peter, a young epileptic woman, supported the Union in her divided town of Lexington, Kentucky. Although her family owned several slaves, she came to support the federal government’s emancipation policy and clearly distinguished her middle class Unionist family from the elite secessionist Southerners. She fiercely attacked the secessionist women in her community, criticizing them as hypocritical and unchristian. She took a more sympathetic tone in her view of Confederate troops, believing them to be uneducated, lower class men who had been duped by wealthy Southern politicians. Nevertheless, she condemned both groups for turning their backs on the Constitution, as she assumed an air of moral superiority in affirming her loyalty to the Union.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:57:17 PDT
- The Unspoken Demands of Slavery: The Exploitation of Female Slaves in the
Memphis Slave Trade
Authors: Sarah W. Eiland
Abstract: In the antebellum South, exploitation and mistreatment characterized the plight of the female slave. In Memphis, the story remained unchanged. The abusive and exploitative nature of the Memphis slave trade emerges through high prices for particular female slaves, the growth of the mulatto population, and the existence of mulatto children from certain prominent local figures. The survival of slavery depended upon the ability of the domestic slave population to sustain itself through the female slave population. This view of bondswomen as natural breeders and the accessibility of enslaved females in an urban setting, subjected them to sexual violence and exploitation. Higher average prices for young female slaves capable of having children, and higher prices for women with conventionally attractive qualities show that the price paid for a bondswoman can be used to infer the motives for buying her. Prominent men, including Nathan Bedford Forrest, left behind evidence of their exploitation of the women they owned in the children that resulted from the relationships. In Memphis between 1850 and 1860, in the most populous ward of the city, there was a 27% rise in the percent of the population considered Mulatto. A rise in the population of slaves of mixed race is the physical evidence of sexual relations occurring between slave women and the white men who owned them.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:57:08 PDT
- Robert Smalls and the Steamship Planter: Turning the Tides for the Union
Military in the Civil War
Authors: William K. Donaldson
Abstract: This paper addresses the accomplishments of the slave Robert Smalls and his absconding with the valuable Confederate steamship, the Planter, from the Charleston, South Carolina harbor in the early morning hours of May 13th, 1862. Smalls went on to become a pilot and eventual captain of ships for the Union contributing substantially to the Civil War effort. After the war, Smalls became a Congressman. Through his contributions, Robert Smalls left an indelible mark on the history of the United States.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:56:58 PDT
- "Some Personal Coloring." Examining the Falsehoods of Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain at Gettysburg
Authors: Hans G. Myers
Abstract: An examination of the myths of the Battle of Gettysburg relating to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on Little Round Top. Examines the roots of several misconceptions relating to the fighting on Little Round Top on July 2, 1863.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:56:49 PDT
- Letter from the Editors
Authors: Cameron T. Sauers et al.
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:56:40 PDT
- Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era 2020
PubDate: Tue, 07 Jul 2020 10:56:23 PDT
- Letter from the Editors
PubDate: Tue, 21 May 2019 16:22:55 PDT
- Cohen, Joanna. Luxurious Citizens: The Politics Of Consumption In
Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2017.
Authors: Jacob Bruggerman
Abstract: To what extent should consumption reflect local and national interests' Joanna Cohen has written an excellent book at the intersection of intellectual, economic, and cultural history about how this question was asked and understood in the period extending from the American War for Independence to the post-bellum era. She demonstrates how citizens in the early republic struggled to understand the consumer’s place in the constellation of America’s national interest, asking questions such as, “’Who [should have] access to foreign goods'’ and “Who should shop and how[']” (52). Although the Constitution roughly framed the relationship between the American government and consumers, it did not codify what it meant to be a consumer, leaving the American citizen-consumer subject to debate and the throes of a changing political economy. So, what did it mean to be a citizen-consumer [Excerpt]
PubDate: Fri, 10 May 2019 04:07:06 PDT
- Ghosts of the Revolution: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and the Legacy
of the Founding Generation
Authors: Amelia F. Wald
Abstract: For the wartime generation, the Civil War in many ways represented a recapitulation of the American Revolution. Both the Union and Confederate civilian populations viewed themselves as the true successors of the Founding Generation. Throughout the Antebellum years and the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis frequently invoked the Founders and their legacy. The two future executives did so in order to both justify their own political ideologies as well as inspire their respective civilian populations. Their sense of ownership over the legacy of the Founders reflected one of the uniquely American conflicts of the Civil War Era.
PubDate: Fri, 10 May 2019 04:06:59 PDT
- “Mulatto, Indian, Or What”: The Racialization Of Chinese Soldiers And
The American Civil War
Authors: Angela He
Abstract: About fifty Chinese men are known to have fought in the American Civil War. “'Mulatto, Indian, or What': The Racialization of Chinese Soldiers and the American Civil War" seeks to study how Chinese in the eastern portion of the United States were viewed and racialized by mainstream American society, before the Chinese Exclusion Act and rise of the "Yellow Peril" myth. Between 1860 and 1870, "Chinese" was added as a racial category on the U.S. federal census, but prior to 1870 such men could be fitted into the existing categories of "black," "white," or "mulatto." The author aims to look at the participation of the Chinese who served as soldiers in the Civil War, and how their experiences reflected the liminal space Chinese occupied in a society predominantly built upon a black-white racial hierarchy.The paper thus asks the question: why were some Chinese soldiers treated as white and able to enlist in white regiments, while others were enrolled in colored regiments' In the first section of the text, the author examines the case of John Tommy, a Chinese soldier who died at Gettysburg. He is noted for being Chinese, and puzzling those around him as they tried to fit him into their preconceived notions of racial categories in America. In comparison, Joseph Pierce, another Chinese soldier, is treated as if he is white, in part due to his own upbringing in America and his association with a prominent local family. Pierce's case is mirrored to an extent by Christopher Bunker in the Confederacy, who, although of Chinese descent, harbors strong Confederate loyalty due to his family's status as slaveholders and plantation owners. Yet Chinese men were not always treated as white elites, as seen in the case with Charles Marshall, whose position as a personal attendant put him in closer proximity with other African American menservants.Socioeconomic class and background thus server to define Chinese soldiers in a society where there was no set racial category to define them. This essay aims to set the groundwork for future inquiries as to why some Chinese men, particularly soldiers, were able to later naturalize as American citizens and vote, despite the Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly stating only white people could become citizens.
PubDate: Fri, 10 May 2019 04:06:49 PDT
- A Cause Lost, a Story Being Written: Explaining Black and White
Commemorative Difference in the Postbellum South
Authors: Bailey M. Covington
Abstract: This paper addresses the disparate commemorative modes and purposes employed by black and white Southerners following the Civil War, in their competing efforts to control the cultural narrative of the war’s legacy. I attempt to explain commemorative difference in the post-war era by evaluating the historical and rhetorical implications of the white Confederate monument, in contrast with the black freedom celebration. The goal of this research is to understand why monuments to the Confederacy proliferate in the South, while similar commemorative markers of the prominent role of slavery in the Civil War are all but nonexistent. I conclude that, while a white supremacist system denied black Southerners the economic and political capital to commission monuments, black Southerners organized public commemorative celebrations not only because they were denied monuments but because celebration and oration presented themselves as powerful strategies to advance black interests. White Southerners favored monuments as a commemorative form because, in the face of a culturally devastating loss, they sought to establish permanent testaments to a pre-war cultural landscape; however, the initial victory of emancipation, with its promise of not only freedom but equality, led black Southerners to seek communion about the past as a tool for understanding and shaping their future, and so celebration and oration became important strategies for consolidating historical narratives and collective imaginations about the place of blacks in a new America.
PubDate: Fri, 10 May 2019 04:06:41 PDT
