Diary of a Yankee Engineer is a poignant firsthand account of a soldier's experiences during the Civil War. Westervelt's words, intended not for the history books but for the education of his young son, present an authentic and humble vision of military life and of the North's struggle in the Civil War.

On September 8, 1962, John H. Westervelt enlisted as a private into the 1st New York Volunteer Engineer Corps. That same year, he shipped out of New York on the "Star of the South" to South Carolina to fight for the North in the Civil War. The following April, he began a journal for his 13-year-old son Frazee so that his child could know of his experiences in the war. Sixty-two years later, John Westervelt's journal - 68 entries written on tattered, yellow pages, a record of "such things as may come under [his] personal observation" - was found in the trash outside his former home now West Farms. In early 1995, his drawings, meant to accompany the written journal, were discovered in the West Point Special Collections Archives. The two have been reunited in Diary of a Yankee Engineer. Westervelt's words, intended not for the history books but for the education of his young son, present a more humble vision of military life and of the North's struggle in the Civil War, than the often told sagas of glory. The journal gives us a rare look at the soldier's life of relentless tedium, the fatiguing fight of brother against brother - of pestilence and illness, giving us a "truer, if not beautiful" picture of war. This is the story of an ordinary man in an extraordinary time - a man who merely lived as he though right and who died in consequence. Anita Palladino's introduction provides us with a brief history of the man and the events of his life. By salvaging John Westervelt's journal and reuniting its text with its art, Ms. Palladino has unearthed a rare, firsthand look at the men behind the war of Rebellion.

“Outstanding essays” exploring how educated Northerners viewed, and discussed, the Civil War (Michael B. Ballard, Civil War News). With contributions from multiple historians, this volume addresses the role intellectuals played in framing the Civil War and implementing their vision of a victorious Union. Broadly defining “intellectuals” to encompass doctors, lawyers, sketch artists, college professors, health reformers, and religious leaders, the essays address how these thinkers disseminated their ideas, sometimes using commercial or popular venues and organizations to implement what they believed. To what extent did educated Americans believe that the Civil War exposed the failure of old ideas? Did the Civil War promote new strains of authoritarianism in northern intellectual life, or reinforce democratic individualism? How did it affect northerners’ conception of nationalism and their understanding of their relationship to the state? These essays explore myriad topics, including: *How antebellum ideas about the environment and the body influenced conceptions of democratic health *How leaders of the Irish American community reconciled their support of the United States and the Republican Party with their allegiances to Ireland and their fellow Irish immigrants *How intellectual leaders of the northern African American community explained secession, civil war, and emancipation *The influence of southern ideals on northern intellectuals *Wartime and postwar views from college and university campuses—and the ideological acrobatics that professors at Midwestern universities had to perform in order to keep their students from leaving the classroom *How northern sketch artists helped influence the changing perceptions of African American soldiers over the course of the war Collectively, So Conceived and So Dedicated offers an in-depth look at this part of the nation’s intellectual history—and suggests that antebellum modes of thinking remained vital and tenacious well after the Civil War.

In the borderland between freedom and slavery, Gettysburg remains among the most legendary Civil War landmarks. A century and a half after the great battle, Cemetery Hill, the Seminary and its ridge, and the Peach Orchard remain powerful memories for their embodiment of the small-town North and their ability to touch themes vital to nineteenth-century religion. During this period, three patterns became particularly prominent: refinement, diversity, and war. In Gettysburg Religion, author Steve Longenecker explores the religious history of antebellum and Civil War–era Gettysburg, shedding light on the remarkable diversity of American religion and the intricate ways it interacted with the broader culture. Longenecker argues that Gettysburg religion revealed much about larger American society and about how trends in the Border North mirrored national developments. In many ways, Gettysburg and its surrounding Border North religion belonged to the future and signaled a coming pattern for modern America.

In these 16 essays, Lincoln scholars offer fresh perspectives and revealing new research on the life and times of America’s greatest president. Ubiquitous and enigmatic, the historical Lincoln, the literary Lincoln, even the cinematic Lincoln have all proved both fascinating and irresistible. Though some 16,000 books have been written about him, there is always more to say, new aspects of his life to consider, new facets of his persona to explore. Exploring Lincoln offers a selection of sixteen enlightening and entertaining papers presented at the Lincoln Forum symposia over the past three years. Shining new light on particular aspects of Lincoln’s life and his tragically abbreviated presidency—from his work on the campaign trail to his fraught relationship with General McClellan to Mary Lincoln’s mental health—Exploring Lincoln presents a compelling snapshot of current Lincoln scholarship and a fascinating window into understanding America’s greatest president.

This groundbreaking Civil War history illuminates the unique development of antislavery sentiment in the border region of south central Pennsylvania. During the antebellum decades every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through south central Pennsylvania, where they faced both significant opportunities and substantial risks. While the hundreds of fugitives traveling through Adams, Franklin, and Cumberland counties were aided by an effective Underground Railroad, they also faced slave catchers and informers. In On the Edge of Freedom, historian David G. Smith traces the victories of antislavery activists in south central Pennsylvania, including the achievement of a strong personal liberty law and the aggressive prosecution of kidnappers who seized African Americans as fugitives. He also documents how their success provoked Southern retaliation and the passage of a strengthened Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Smith explores the fugitive slave issue through fifty years of sectional conflict, war, and reconstruction in south central Pennsylvania and provocatively questions what was gained by emphasizing fugitive protection over immediate abolition and full equality. Smith argues that after the war, social and demographic changes in southern Pennsylvania worked against African Americans’ achieving equal opportunity. Although local literature portrayed this area as a vanguard of the Underground Railroad, African Americans still lived “on the edge of freedom.” Winner of the Hortense Simmons Prize

In this rich collection, a leading historian argues that in order to fully understand the Civil War, we need to grasp the relationship between American national identity and the values of Northern society. Northerners shaped nationalism into an ideology to justify and sustain a war against the South. Parish explores politics and religion as sinews that connected Northerners to the Union cause.

Embroiled in the Civil War, northerners wrote and spoke with frequency about the subject of loyalty. The word was common in newspaper articles, political pamphlets, and speeches, appeared on flags, broadsides, and prints, was written into diaries and letters and the stationary they appeared on, and even found its way into sermons. Its ubiquity suggests that loyalty was an important concept...but what did it mean to those who used it? Contested Loyalty examines the significance of loyalty across fault lines of gender, social class, and education, race and ethnicity, and political or religious affiliation. These differing vantage points reveal the complicated ways in which loyalties were defined, prioritized, acted upon, and related. While most of the scholarly work on Civil War Era nationalism has focused on southern identity and Confederate nationhood, the essays in Contested Loyalty examine the variable, fluid constructions of these concepts in the north. Essays explore the limitations and incomplete nature of national loyalty and how disparate groups struggled to control its meaning. The authors move beyond the narrow partisan debate over Democratic dissent to examine other challenges to and competing interpretations of national loyalty. Today’s leading and emerging scholars examine loyalty through: the frame of politics at the state and national level; the viewpoints of college educated men as well as the women they courted; the attitudes of northern Protestant churches on issues of patriotism and loyalty; working class men and women in military industries; how employers could use the language of loyalty to take away the rights of workers; and the meaning of loyalty in contexts of race and ethnicity. The Union cause was a powerful ideology committing millions of citizens, in the ranks and at home, to a long and bloody war. But loyalty to the Union cause imperfectly explains how citizens reacted to the traumas of war or the ways in which conflicting loyalties played out in everyday life. The essays in this collection point us down the path of greater understanding.

This book examines Lincoln's leadership by assessing his decision-making process and patterns in shaping military strategy, political affairs, and religious interests during the Civil War. In doing so, it shows how Lincoln defined the presidency in wartime, played the role of party chief, and pointed the moral compass of the nation.