Holzer (vice president of communications, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) has produced a complete account of the creation by Prang, a printer known as the "father of the Christmas card," of a series of chromolithographs of Civil War scenes. Holzer's lengthy introduction describes in detail the process involved in creating the prints, setting the project in the larger context of Prang's print business in late 19th-century Boston. The extensive texts that originally accompanied the prints are included, along with good- quality color reproductions of the prints. c. Book News Inc.

Focusing on the popular prints used by the Northern side of the American Civil War, this book examines the importance of graphic arts in rallying support for the Union during the war and in shaping the national memory after the war.

More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war--why it was fought, what was won, what was lost--not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, Gary W. Gallagher guides readers through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how these stories have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents of their times.

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.

Collects and comments on President Abraham Lincoln's thoughts on violent conflict, a subject that consumed him during his presidency as he presided over the Civil War.

Based on an extensive collection of letters written from the home front and the battlefront, Family War Stories offers fresh insights into how the reciprocal nature of family correspondence can shape a family’s understanding of the war. Family War Stories examines the contribution of the Densmore family to the Northern Civil War effort. It extends the boundaries of research in two directions. First, by describing how members of this white family from Minnesota were mobilized to fight a family war on the home front and the battlefront, and second, by exploring how the war challenged the family’s abolitionist beliefs and racial attitudes. Family War Stories argues that the totality of the family’s Civil War experience was intricately shaped by the dynamics of family life and the reciprocal nature of family correspondence. Further, it argues that the serving sons’ understanding of the war was shaped by their direct military experiences in the army camps and battlefields and how their loved ones at home interpreted these experiences. With two sons serving as officers in the United States Colored Troops’ regiments fighting in the Mississippi Valley, the Densmore family was heavily involved in destroying slavery. Family War Stories analyses how the sons’ military experiences tested the family’s abolitionist ideology and its commitment to white racial superiority. It also explains how the family sought to accommodate the presence of a refugee from slavery working in the family kitchen. In some ways, the presence of this worker in the household posed an even greater range of challenges to the family’s racial beliefs than the sons’ military service. By examining one family’s deep involvement in the war against slavery, Wilson analyses how the Civil War posed particular challenges to Northerners committed to abolitionism and white supremacy.

The Civil War tore America apart. The ensuing era of Reconstruction sewed it back together. In this vivid look at the popular culture of the era, Browne and Kreiser examine how Americans coped with the trials and tribulations of this cataclysmic period. Narrative essays examine the lives of everyday Americans—young and old, Northern and Southern, soldier and civilian—along with the major traditions and trends in every facet of the time's popular culture. Dime novels, illustrated newspapers, iceboxes, patriotic hymns and rebel rhythms, minstrel shows, and professional baseball teams were just some of the cultural phenomena that thrived during this period. Readers will benefit from the chapter bibliographies, a timeline, a cost comparison, and suggestions for further reading. This latest addition to Greenwood's ^IAmerican Popular Culture Through History^R series is an invaluable contribution to the study of American popular culture.

Edited by Gary Gallagher and Elizabeth Varon, two of the most prominent nineteenth-century American historians in the nation, New Perspectives on the Union War provides a more nuanced understanding of what “Union” meant in the Civil War North by exploring how various groups of northerners conceived of the term. The essays in this volume demonstrate that while there was a broad consensus that the war was fought, or should be fought, for the cause of Union, there was bitter disagreement over how to define that cause—debate not only between political camps but also within them. The chapters touch on economics, politics, culture, military affairs, ethnicity, and questions relating to just war. Contributors: Michael T. Caires, Frank Cirillo, D.H. Dilbeck, Jack Furniss, Jesse George-Nichol, William B. Kurtz, Peter C. Luebke, and Tamika Nunley

“Concise, engaging . . . [A] superb study of the US Catholic community in the Civil War era.” —Civil War Book Review Anti-Catholicism has had a long presence in American history. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, many Catholic Americans considered it a chance to prove their patriotism once and for all. Exploring how Catholics sought to use their participation in the war to counteract religious and political nativism in the United States, Excommunicated from the Union reveals that while the war was an alienating experience for many of the 200,000 Catholics who served, they still strove to construct a positive memory of their experiences—in order to show that their religion was no barrier to their being loyal American citizens. “[A] masterful interrogation of the fusion of faith, national crisis, and ethnic identity at a critical moment in American history. This is a notable and welcome contribution to Catholic, Civil War, and immigrant history.”? Journal of Southern History

“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.