Examining humor in depictions of the Civil War from the war years to the present, this review covers a wide range of literature, film and television in historical context. Wartime humor served as a form of propaganda to render the enemy and their cause laughable, but also to help people cope with the human costs of the conflict. After the war many authors and, later, movie and television producers employed humor to shape its legacy, perpetuating myths and stereotypes that became ingrained in American memory. Giving attention to the stories behind the stories, the author focuses on what people laughed at, who they laughed with and what it reveals about their view of events.

"The unit surrendered at Harpers Ferry in 1862, served out its parole in Chicago, and was convicted and banished to SC. Later absolved, they fought at Olustee, the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Cold Harbor, The Battle of the Crater, and Fort Fisher, and witnessed the liberation of slaves and captured Union soldiers. Appendices provide a chronology and regimental roster"--Provided by publisher.

Tells the story of two correspondents for the New York Tribune who escaped the Confederacy's most notorious prison after being captured at the Battle of Vicksburg and relied on secret signals and covert sympathizers to travel back to Union territory.

In this compilation are included: forms of speech now obsolete or provincial in England which survive in the U.S.; words and phrases of distinctly American origin; nouns which indicate quadrupeds, birds, trees, articles of food, etc. that are distinctly American; names of persons, classes of persons, and of places; words which have assumed new meanings; words and phrases with earlier American examples than in English writers.

The acclaimed author of The Blood of Heaven shares “a vivid portrait of 1862 New Orleans” as Union soldiers take over in this panoramic Civil War novel (Ron Charles, Washington Post). The largest city in the ill-starred confederacy has fallen under the soon-to-be-infamous General Benjamin “the Beast” Butler. And when twelve-year-old Joseph Woolsack disappears from his home, he draws his mother, Elise—a mixed-race woman passing for white—into a dark new world. Joseph grapples with his father’s legacy of violence and his own growing sentiment for Cuban exile Marina Fandal, the only survivor of a shipwreck that claimed the lives of her parents. Meanwhile, Elise struggles to keep hold of her sanity, her son and her own precarious station. But she soon encounters a troubling figure from her past, a man who is deeply mired in the intrigue surrounding the city’s occupation. Alternating between the perspectives of five characters, Secessia weaves a tapestry of ravenous greed and malformed love, of slavery and desperation, set within the baroque melting-pot that is New Orleans. A Gothic tableaux vivant of epic scope and intimate horror, Secessia is the netherworld reflection of the conflict between north and south.

Recent scholarship on slavery has explored the lives of enslaved people beyond the watchful eye of their masters. Building on this work and the study of space, social relations, gender, and power in the Old South, Stephanie Camp examines the everyday containment and movement of enslaved men and, especially, enslaved women. In her investigation of the movement of bodies, objects, and information, Camp extends our recognition of slave resistance into new arenas and reveals an important and hidden culture of opposition. Camp discusses the multiple dimensions to acts of resistance that might otherwise appear to be little more than fits of temper. She brings new depth to our understanding of the lives of enslaved women, whose bodies and homes were inevitably political arenas. Through Camp's insight, truancy becomes an act of pursuing personal privacy. Illegal parties ("frolics") become an expression of bodily freedom. And bondwomen who acquired printed abolitionist materials and posted them on the walls of their slave cabins (even if they could not read them) become the subtle agitators who inspire more overt acts. The culture of opposition created by enslaved women's acts of everyday resistance helped foment and sustain the more visible resistance of men in their individual acts of running away and in the collective action of slave revolts. Ultimately, Camp argues, the Civil War years saw revolutionary change that had been in the making for decades.

"This book is useful to historians of the Civil War who wish to draw on it for an authoritative account of this campaign, and Civil War buffs will want it in their libraries". -- James M. McPherson Princeton University

The story of Greene county, Georgia, and its unified farm program. cf. Foreword.