Section 2: Battlefields
Click on the tabs below to view the content for each section.
Documents
Emily Dickinson, various poems (1860–1863)
George Moses Horton, from Naked Genius (1865):
– “The Dying Soldier’s Message”
– “Execution of Private Henry Anderson”
– “The Spectator of the Battle of Belmont”
Walt Whitman, from Drum-Taps (1865), “Camps of Green”
Herman Melville, from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866):
Sam R. Watkins, from Co. Aytch (1882), Chapter 8: “Chattanooga”
Walt Whitman, from Specimen Days (1882):
– “The Weather. – Does It Sympathize with These Times?”
– “Two Brothers, One South, One North”
Helen Hunt Jackson, from Sonnets and Lyrics (1886), “Songs of Battle”
Ambrose Bierce, from Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891):
Ambrose Bierce, from Can Such Things Be? (1893):
Ambrose Bierce, from Bits of Autobiography (1909), “On a Mountain”
Stephen Crane, from The Little Regiment (1896)
Jack London, from The Night-Born (1913), “War”
Author Biographies
Images
Discussion Questions
- How would you characterize the “argument” of either Herman Melville’s “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight with the Merrimac” or “The March into Virginia”?
- Compare Melville’s treatment of the battle of Shiloh to that of Sam Watkins in Co. Aytch. What is at issue, or at stake, in their differing approaches to the same subject?
- Herman Melville, Lucy Larcom, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all wrote poems about the famous sea-battle involving the Montior and the Merrimack. Why does that event appear to have captured their imaginations, and what is significant in their respective artistic responses to it?
- Can you discern any tensions or inconsistencies between Lincoln’s views as articulated in his “Meditation on the Divine Will” or his “Reply to Eliza P. Gurney,” and those expressed in the Gettysburg Address? In what ways, if any, does his understanding of the war seem to have evolved in the interim?
- How would you describe the narrative or psychological movement of Whitman’s “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”?
- Does it matter whether Loreta Velazquez’s The Woman in Battle is factually accurate or not? How does it affect our understanding of the narrative? In what ways does Velazquez heighten her own authority and in what ways does she undermine? What is at stake in the whole question of authenticity?
- What does Federico Cavada’s portrayal of Libby Prison reveal about the nature of the Civil War? What was most surprising or compelling for you in his account?
- Should we consider Silas Weir Mitchell’s “The Case of George Dedlow” a satire in any way? If so, what is being satirized?
Selected Bibliography
Bacon, Benjamin W. Sinews of War: How Technology, Industry, and Transportation Won the Civil War. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1997.
Bearss, Edwin C. Fields of Honor: Pivotal Battles of the Civil War. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2006.
Bearss, Edwin C., and Parker Hills. Receding Tide: Vicksburg and Gettysburg: The Campaigns That Changed the Civil War. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2010.
Blair, Jayne E. The Essential Civil War: A Handbook to the Battles, Armies, Navies and Commanders. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006.
Blanton, De Anne and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.
Bleser, Carol K. R., and Lesley J. Gordon. Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Castel, Albert, with Brooks D. Simpson. Victors in Blue: How Union Generals Fought the Confederates, Battled Each Other, and Won the Civil War. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 2011.
Coddington, Ronald S. Faces of the Confederacy: An Album of Southern Soldiers and Their Stories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Costa, Dora L., and Matthew E. Kahn. Heroes & Cowards: The Social Face of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Creighton, Margaret S. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Daniel, Larry J. Shiloh: The Battle that Changed the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Dougherty, Kevin. Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Dreese, Michael A. Torn Families: Death and Kinship at the Battle of Gettysburg. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2007.
Farina, William. Ulysses S. Grant, 1861–1864: His Rise from Obscurity to Military Greatness. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2007.
Faust, Drew G. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Foote, Lorien. The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Manhood, Honor, and Violence in the Union Army. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
Gillispie, James M. Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2008.
Gramm, Kent, ed. Battle: The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Hall, Richard. Patriots in Disguise: Women Warriors of the Civil War. New York: Paragon, 1993.
Hall, Richard. Women on the Civil War Battlefront. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006.
Hess, Earl J. Trench Warfare Under Grant & Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Hess, Earl J. The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997.
Hewitt, Lawrence L, and Arthur W. Bergeron. Confederate Generals in the Western Theater. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010.
Holzer, Harold, James M. McPherson, James I. Robertson, Stephen W. Sears, and Craig L. Symonds. Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. New York: Modern Library, 2011.
Hsieh, Wayne W. West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Kagan, Norman, Stephen G. Hyslop, and Harris J. Andrews. Atlas of the Civil War: A Comprehensive Guide to the Tactics and Terrain of Battle. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009.
Keegan, John. The American Civil War: A Military History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
LaFantasie, Glenn W. Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Leonard, Elizabeth D. All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies. New York. W. W. Norton, 1999.
Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1987.
Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.
Makely, Wesley, and David R. Bush. I Fear I Shall Never Leave This Island: Life in a Civil War Prison. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011.
Manning, Chandra. What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Marvel, William. The Great Task Remaining: The Third Year of Lincoln’s War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Mountcastle, Clay. Punitive War: Confederate Guerrillas and Union Reprisals. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009.
Noe, Kenneth W. Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army After 1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Nosworthy, Brent. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003.
Pickenpaugh, Roger. Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009.
Pierson, Michael D. Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Ramold, Steven J. Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010.
Roberts, William H. Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Rolfs, David. No Peace for the Wicked: Northern Protestant Soldiers and the American Civil War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009.
Sheehan-Dean, Aaron C., ed. The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
Silverstone, Paul H. Civil War Navies, 1855–1883. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Spruill, Matt. Summer Thunder: A Battlefield Guide to the Artillery at Gettysburg. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010.
Starr, Stephen Z. Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
Stoker, Donald J. The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Sutherland, Daniel E. A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Sword, Wiley. Courage Under Fire: Profiles in Bravery from the Battlefields of the Civil War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
Symonds, Craig L. Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Wert, Jeffry D. A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee’s Triumph, 1862–1863. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Wert, Jeffry D. The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Wiley, Bell I. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 2008.
—The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.
Williams, T. H. Lincoln and His Generals. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.
Woodworth, Steven E. Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.