Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front

by James Marten

Overview

The author of an acclaimed account of the lives of children in the Civil War, Marten here provides a more comprehensive introduction to the civilian history of the Civil War. Concise, vividly written chapters describe the home front through the lives of individuals and the histories of events and institutions in the North and South. The stories are organized around five broad themes: the Northern home front, the Southern home front, children, African Americans, and the war's aftermath. The case studies feature voices of the famous, like Edmund Riffin and Booker T. Washington, but more often they offer the testimony of ordinary men, women, and children. A superb blend of traditional narrative, case studies, and individual stories, Civil War America is a valuable resource for students and their teachers seeking to understand the many ways in which the Civil War was truly a people's war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823227945
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2007
Series:	The North's Civil War
Edition description:	1
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

JAMES C. MARTEN is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Marquette University. Among his books are The Children's Civil War, Children and War: A Historical Anthology, and Children in Colonial America.

Editorial Reviews

The genius of this book is its mix of documents, biographies and narrative analysis of home fronts which show the individuality of people of all ages, races, conditions, and loyalties responding to war in unique ways.——Randall M. Miller, St. John's University

From the Publisher

Well-written, interesting case studies that focus on the lives of individuals North and South...to illustrate how the war seeped into all aspects of American life...a fine survey

Journal of Military History

Marten not only tells a great story, but also illuminates the experience of a broad range of people during the Civil War and its aftermath.

University of Tennesse, Knoxville - Stephen V. Ash

The genius of this book is its mix of documents, biographies and narrative analysis of home fronts which show the individuality of people of all ages, races, conditions, and loyalties responding to war in unique ways.

St. John's University - Randall M. Miller

The Civil War's bloody engagements are commemorated through preserved battlefields, but no such monuments remind Americans of what those on the home front endured during the four long years of war. Here, Marten (history, Marquette Univ.), author of The Children's Civil War-the first scholarly treatment of the war's youngest participants and observers-engagingly retells the wartime stories of civilians dealing with the traumatic changes set in motion by the conflict. Made up of 27 topically arranged essays divided into sections on the North and the South, children, African Americans, and the aftermath of the war, this useful reference work draws from an extensive selection of both primary sources (e.g., diaries, letters, memoirs, and magazine articles) and secondary sources and includes bibliographic entries and a bibliographic essay. Offering a rare glimpse of the impact of the war on children, it provides a useful overview but less about specific locations than community studies such as J. Matthew Gallman's The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.-Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Adult/High School-Marten offers a view of the war through the eyes of diverse noncombatants. Four parts of this five-part work each deal with Southerners, Northerners, children, and African Americans. Using both primary and secondary sources, the author shows how daily life and contemporary attitudes differed dramatically depending on one's gender, locale, or race. Part five, "Aftermaths," includes descriptions of the postwar lives of veterans, orphans, and ex-slaves, and concludes with a chapter on the Civil War stories by Ambrose Bierce. Readers will find Marten's overarching theme of change-both immediate and long-range-revelatory and instructional. Some transformations, such as the postwar status of African Americans, are obvious, but the author also makes less-evident connections, e.g., that the creation of Union veterans' homes was an outgrowth of society's awakening sense of collective responsibility, and that the united effort Northerners expended to win the war led subsequent generations to accept "at least a modicum of government-controlled reform." Marten also traces a shift in the written word, noting that children's literature evolved from lecturing sentiment to action and adventure; on the journalism front, reporters became war correspondents, and more periodicals disregarded sensationalism in favor of news. Inexplicably, most of the photographs and reproductions are undated; perhaps the dates are unknown. However, this is a minor quibble about a useful book that combines competent research with the distinct advantage of having a variety of home-front experiences and attitudes presented in a single volume.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal