Making and Remaking Pennsylvania’s Civil War
William A Pencak editor William A Blair editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pennsylvania State University Press
Published:15th Jul '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£28.95(9780271020792)
For many people, Pennsylvania's contribution to the Civil War goes little beyond the battle of Gettysburg. The North in general has received far less attention than the Confederacy in the historiography of the Civil War—a weakness in the literature that this book will help address. The essays in this volume reconsider the impact of the Civil War on Pennsylvania and the way its memory remains alive even today.
Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War contains a wealth of new information about Pennsylvania during the war years. For instance, perhaps as many as 2,000 Pennsylvanians defected to the Confederacy to fight for the Southern cause. And during the advance of Lee's army in 1863, residents of the Gettysburg area gained a reputation throughout North and South as a stingy people who wanted to make money from the war rather than sacrifice for the Union. But the state displayed loyalty as well and commitment to the cause of freedom. Pittsburgh served as the site for one of the first public monuments in the country dedicated to African Americans. Women of the Commonwealth also contributed mightily through organizing sanitary fairs or helping in ways that belied their roles as keepers of the domestic world. And readers will learn from an African American soldier's letters how blacks helped win their own liberation.
As a whole, the ten essays contained in Making and Remaking Pennsylvania's Civil War include courage on the battlefield but reflect the current trends to understand the motivations of soldiers and the impact of war on civilians, rather than focusing solely on battles or leadership. The essays also employ interdisciplinary techniques, as well as raise gender and racial questions. They incorporate a more expansive time frame than the four years of the conflict, by looking at not only the making of the war—but also its remaking—or how a public revisits the past to suit contemporary needs.
“A valuable contribution to the literature on the American Civil War. I know of no volume that contains as many key insights into Pennsylvania’s role in the war.”
—J. Matthew Gallman, Gettysburg College
“This work fills a void in the historiography of the state of Pennsylvania in the Civil War. The essays are superbly researched and nicely written. Many very nicely reproduced illustrations add to the attractiveness of the book. You don’t have to be a Pennsylvanian to find this book of interest. I can highly recommend this work to fill a void in the history of the country’s greatest conflict.”
—Michael A. Cavanaugh Civil War News
ISBN: 9780271058429
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm
Weight: 522g
352 pages