The Civil War Generation

Front Cover
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 - 371 pages
Americans in the middle decades of the nineteenth century were a people with boundless energy capable of heroic deeds, monumental achievements, and tragic errors. In The Civil War Generation, his newest volume in The Representative Americans series, noted scholar Norman K. Risjord uses biographical sketches to create a composite portrait of the United States during and immediately after the Civil War. Risjord begins his study with Stephen A. Douglas and Frederick Douglass, who provide two different viewpoints on the events leading to the conflict, while Harriet Tubman represents a form of social activism during the same years. Profiles of Stonewall Jackson and William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as infantryman James Anderson, give the reader an insightful view of the men fighting the war. Risjord then leads the reader inside both the Northern and Southern governments as well as the Reconstruction Era through the eyes of people such as William H. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens. Looking at the postwar period, Risjord examines the social and economic changes the conflict wrought, describing the lives of Clara Barton and Cornelius Vanderbilt. As the nation's eyes turned westward, the tragic tale of Crazy Horse unfolds, as well as the chronicle of two of the first scientists to explore the new land. Masterfully written and eminently readable, The Civil War Generation brings to life one of our nation's most turbulent decades and will be of great value to students of the Civil War.

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Contents

Stephen A Douglas The Struggle to Prevent a Needless? War
3
Frederick Douglass The Case for a Just War
29
Harriet Tubman Moses to Her People
57
The Warriors
77
Stonewall Jackson Christian Soldier
79
James Anderson Infantryman in Blue
109
William Tecumseh Sherman War Is Hell
129
Wartime Politics
157
Thaddeus Stevens Avenging Idealist
207
Robert Smalls From Slavery to Congress
235
On the Perimeter of War
259
Clara Barton The Medical War
261
Cornelius Vanderbilt Capitalists at War
283
Crazy Horse A Way of Life Gone Forever
307
John Wesley Powell and Clarence King Charting the Virgin West
335
Index
361

William H Seward The Politician as Statesman
159
Judah P Benjamin Inside the Confederacy
187
About the Author
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Page 1 - Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.
Page 1 - I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in...

About the author (2002)

Norman K. Risjord is emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he taught for over three decades. He is the author of Jefferson's America, 1760-1815 and general editor of the American Profiles series.

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