Catherine Clinton

Celebrated for her courageous exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. But just who was this remarkable woman? To John Brown, leader of the Harpers Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tubman. For the many slaves she led north to freedom, she was Moses. To the slaveholders who sought her capture, she was a thief and a trickster. To abolitionists, she was a prophet. Now, in a biography widely praised for its impeccable research and its compelling narrative, Harriet Tubman is revealed for the first time as a singular and complex character, a woman who defied simple categorization.

The Road to Freedom

Harriet Tubman

Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut

An unrivalled account of the American Civil War from the Confederate perspective. Documenting the period between 1861 and 1865, Mary Chesnut's Diaryis widely considered to be one of the most compelling personal narratives of the Civil War. As the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and the wife of an aide to the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, Chesnut was well acquainted with the Confederacy's prominent players and-from the very first shots in Charleston, South Carolina-diligently recorded her impressions of the conflict's most significant moments. Written with urgency and surprising nuance, Mary Chesnut's Diaryis an epic rich with commentary on race, status, and power within a nation divided. 'A great epic drama of our greatest national tragedy.' - William Styron Introduction by CATHERINE CLINTON

Mary Chesnut's Diary

a life

Mrs. Lincoln

Nell Irvin Painter

W. Fitzhugh Brundage

Karen L. Cox

Gary W. Gallagher

Nine killed in Charleston church shooting. White supremacists demonstrate in Charlottesville. Monuments decommissioned in New Orleans and Chapel Hill. The headlines keep coming, and the debate rolls on. How should we contend with our troubled history as a nation? What is the best way forward? This first book in UGA Press’s History in the Headlines series offers a rich discussion between four leading scholars who have studied the history of Confederate memory and memorialization. Through this dialogue, we see how historians explore contentious topics and provide historical context for students and the broader public. Confederate Statues and Memorialization artfully engages the past and its influence on present racial and social tensions in an accessible format for students and interested general readers. Following the conversation, the book includes a “Top Ten” set of essays and articles that everyone should read to flesh out their understanding of this contentious, sometimes violent topic. The book closes with an extended list of recommended reading, offering readers specific suggestions for pursuing other voices and points of view.

Confederate Statues and Memorialization

G. J. Barker-Benfield

Until recently a "womanless" American history was the norm. But without a history of women we neglect gender dynamics, sex roles, and family relations--the very fundamentals of human interaction. Here 24 short essays locate the histories of women--from Pocahontas to Betty Friedan--and men together by period and provide a sense of their continuities through the whole gallery of the American past. 26 photos.

From Settlement to the Present

Portraits of American Women

Examines the place of women in the daily life of the Southern plantations before the Civil War and analyzes the women's relationship with slaves and their masters

Woman's World in the Old South

The Plantation Mistress

Showcases the life and career of the British stage star turned Georgia plantation mistress, chronicling her empassioned abolitionist writings and turbulent personal life.

Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars

This pioneering study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers the first serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, Clinton sets before us in vivid detail the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master. "The Plantation Mistress challenges and reinterprets a host of issues related to the Old South. The result is a book that forces us to rethink some of our basic assumptions about two peculiar institutions -- the slave plantation and the nineteenth-century family. It approaches a familiar subject from a new angle, and as a result, permanently alters our understanding of the Old South and women's place in it.

Nina Silber

This collection addresses how gender scholarship has changed interpretations of the Civil War. It examines the study of masculinity and war, and deals with issues of health, treason, religion, domesticity, and slavery as they affected Northern and Southern men and women during the Civil War era.

Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War

Battle Scars

A collection of poems by African-American writers, including Lucy Terry, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Alice Walker.

Three Centuries of African-American Poetry

I, Too, Sing America

Recounts the story of Fanny Kemble and her two daughters, one of whom lived with her mother in the North, while the other remained with their father in the South.

Civil War Stories

Abraham Lincoln is the most revered president in American history, but the woman at the center of his life—his wife, Mary—has remained a historical enigma. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America. Authoritative and utterly engrossing, Mrs. Lincoln is the long-awaited portrait of the woman who so richly contributed to Lincoln's life and legacy.

A Life

In July 1863, a significantbattle in the Civil War was fought. Sergeant William H. Carney, an officer of the newly formed Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment -- comprised entirely of African Americans -- led his soldiers over the ramparts of Fort Wagner, where Union soldiers charged the Confederates. As the soldiers fought, they gained strength from the stars and stripes of the American flag, Old Glory. It was Carney's vow to never let Old Glory touch the ground, and despite several gunshot wounds, he was able to rescue the flag from the fallen bearer. Carney held the flag high as a symbol that his regiment would never submit to the Confederacy. The battle of Fort Wagner decimated the Fifty-fourth Regiment, but Carney's heroism that night inspired all who survived. Catherine Clinton's historically precise text paired with Shane Evans's rich illustrations creates a remarkable account of one of the most memorable battles in Civil War history.

Hold the Flag High

Over a decade ago, the publication of Divided Houses ushered in a new field of scholarship on gender and the Civil War. Following in its wake, Battle Scars showcases insights from award-winning historians as well as emerging scholars. This volume depicts the ways in which gender, race, nationalism, religion, literary culture, sexual mores, and even epidemiology underwent radical transformations from when Americans went to war in 1861 through Reconstruction. Examining the interplay among such phenomena as racial stereotypes, sexual violence, trauma, and notions of masculinity, Battle Scars represents the best new scholarship on men and women in the North and South and highlights how lives were transformed by this era of tumultuous change.

No American needs to be told that the Civil War brought the United States to a critical juncture in its history. The war changed forever the face of the nation, the nature of American politics, the status of African-Americans, and the daily lives of millions of people. Yet few of us understand how the war transformed gender roles and attitudes toward sexuality among American citizens. Divided Houses is the first book to address this sorely neglected topic, showing how the themes of gender, class, race, and sexuality interacted to forge the beginnings of a new society. In this unique volume, historians Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber bring together a wide spectrum of critical viewpoints--all written by eminent scholars--to show how gender became a prism through which the political tensions of antebellum America were filtered and focused. For example, Divided Houses demonstrates that the abolitionist movement was strongly allied with nineteenth-century feminism, and shows how the ensuing debates over sectionalism and, eventually, secession, were often couched in terms of gender. Northerners and Southerners alike frequently ridiculed each other as "effeminate": slaveowners were characterized by Yankees as idle and useless aristocrats, enfeebled by their "peculiar institution"; northerners were belittled as money-grubbers who lacked the masculine courage of their southern counterparts. Through the course of the book, many fascinating subjects are explored, such as the new "manly" responsibilities both black and white men had thrust upon them as soldiers; the effect of the war on Southern women's daily actions on the homefront; the essential part Northern women played as nurses and spies; the war's impact on marriage and divorce; women's roles in the guerilla fighting; even the wartime dialogue on interracial sex. There is also a rare look at how gender affected the experience of freedom for African-American children, a discussion of how Harriet Beecher Stowe attempted to distract both her readers and herself from the ravages of war through the writing of romantic fiction, and a consideration of the changing relations between black men and a white society which, during the war, at last forced to confront their manhood. In addition, an incisive introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson helps place these various subjects in an overall historical context. Nowhere else are such topics considered in a single, accessible volume. Divided Houses sheds new light on the entire Civil War experience--from its causes to its legacy--and shows how gender shaped both the actions and attitudes of those who participated in this watershed event in the history of America.

Catherine Clinton

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