Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War (Civil War America)

309 Pages·2009·5.13 MB·English

by  Joan Waugh

Wars within a War
Civil War America
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Gary W. Gallagher,EDITOR
WARS WITHIN A WAR
Controversy and Confl ict over the
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AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
EDITED BY
Joan Waugh & Gary W. Gallagher
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
Chapel Hill
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Rebecca Evans
Set in MT Walbaum and MT Latin
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
The University of North Carolina Press has been a
member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wars within a war : controversy and conflict over the American Civil War /
edited by Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher.
p. cm. — (Civil War America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8078-3275-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1.United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. 2.United States—
History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Influence. 3.Social conflict—United States—History—
19th century. 4.Social conflict—Southern States—History—19th century. 5.United
States—Social conditions—To 1865. 6.United States—Social conditions—1865–
1918. 7.Confederate States of America—Social conditions. 8.Southern States—
Social conditions—19th century. 9.War and society—United States—History—19th
century. 10.War and society—Southern States—History—19th century.
I.Waugh, Joan. II.Gallagher, Gary W.
E468.9.W29 2009
973.7'1—dc22
2008050487
cloth 13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of
MARY L. ARBOIT
(1918–2007)
and
PHILIP JAMES CALLAHAN
(1949–2007)
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(cid:4) CONTENTS (cid:5)
Introduction
JOAN WAUGH AND GARY W. GALLAGHER
ix
Women Numerous and Armed
Gender and the Politics of Subsistence in the Civil War South
STEPHANIE McCURRY
1
Friend or Foe
Treason and the Second Confiscation Act
WILLIAM BLAIR
27
My Enemies Are Crushed
McClellan and Lincoln
JAMES M. McPHERSON
52
Profile in Leadership
Generalship and Resistance in Robert E. Lee’s First Month
in Command of the Army of Northern Virginia
JOSEPH T. GLATTHAAR
68
In Your Hands That Musket Means Liberty
African American Soldiers and the Battle of Olustee
J. MATTHEW GALLMAN
87
With Malice toward Both
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in Caricature
HAROLD HOLZER
109
Walt Whitman’s Real Wars
STEPHEN CUSHMAN
137
Hollywood Has It Both Ways
The Rise, Fall, and Reappearance of the
Lost Cause in American Film
GARY W. GALLAGHER
157
Battle over the Bodies
Burying and Reburying the Civil War Dead, 1865–1871
DREW GILPIN FAUST
184
Not a Veteran in the Poorhouse
Civil War Pensions and Soldiers’ Homes
JAMES MARTEN
202
William T. Sherman in Postwar Georgia’s
Collective Memory, 1864–1914
CAROL REARDON
223
The Nation’s Greatest Hero
Should Rest in the Nation’s Greatest City
JOAN WAUGH
249
Contributors
279
Index
281
(cid:4) INTRODUCTION (cid:5)
The Civil War saw the United States and the Confederacy create huge
armies that waged some of the bloodiest and most famous battles in Ameri-
can history. The governments headed by Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson
Davis sought to make the most of their respective human and material
resources and strove to achieve national unity. Yet on February 28, 1863,
Harper’s Weekly offered its readers a vivid portrayal of northern political
dissent. The cartoon depicts a beleaguered yet defiant Columbia, her shield
emblazoned with “UNION,” determined to slay three copperhead snakes
threatening the U.S. war effort. Three months later, a cartoon in Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper showed southern women concerned with
shortages of bread and other food rioting in Richmond’s streets. Armed
with clubs and pistols, the women strike belligerent poses in front of a
store’s smashed windows. Such acknowledgments of political and social
conflict would not have surprised anyone at the time because both the
United States and the Confederacy experienced internal dissent through-
out most of the war. Union victory ensured reunion and emancipation, but
heated disagreements over the war’s meaning and memory remained bit-
ter in the immediate aftermath of the war and have continued in various
forms to the present day.
Civil War dissent sometimes has been obscured amid popular concep-
tions of the conflict as a tragic but ultimately triumphant testing of the na-
tion. Celebratory views accurately capture the degrees to which the people
of both sides sacrificed in the course of a struggle that exacted a terrible
human and material toll. Bruce Catton’s “Centennial History of the Civil
War” and Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative, two beautifully writ-
ten and widely read trilogies published between 1958 and 1974, exemplify
this tradition, as does Ken Burn’s immensely influential PBS documentary,
titled The Civil War and first aired in 1990. Yet any account of the war