An Environmental History of the Civil War

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 146965539X
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis An Environmental History of the Civil War by : Judkin Browning

Download or read book An Environmental History of the Civil War written by Judkin Browning and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war's significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks. In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War's outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.

The Blue, the Gray, and the Green

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Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820347159
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis The Blue, the Gray, and the Green by : Brian Allen Drake

Download or read book The Blue, the Gray, and the Green written by Brian Allen Drake and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unusual collection of Civil War essays as seen through the lens of noted environmental scholars, this book's provocative historical commentary explores how nature--disease, climate, flora and fauna, etc.--affected the war and how the war shaped Americans' perceptions, understanding, and use of nature.

Unredeemed Land

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190865172
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Unredeemed Land by : Erin Stewart Mauldin

Download or read book Unredeemed Land written by Erin Stewart Mauldin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How did the Civil War and the emancipation of the South's four million slaves reconfigure the natural landscape and the farming economy dependent upon it? An important reconsideration of the Civil War's role in southern history, Unredeemed Land uncovers the environmental constraints that shaped the rural South's transition to capitalism during the late nineteenth century. Dixie's 'King Cotton' required extensive land use techniques, fresh soil, and slave-based agriculture in order to remain profitable. But wartime destruction and the rise of the contract labor system closed off those possibilities and necessitated increasingly intensive cultivation in ways that worked against the environment. The resulting disconnect between farmers' use of the land and what the natural environment could support went hand-in-hand with the economic dislocation of freedpeople, poor farmers, and sharecroppers. Drawing on extensive archival and governmental sources as well as scholarship in the natural sciences, Erin Mauldin demonstrates how the Civil War and emancipation accelerated ongoing ecological change in ways that hastened the postbellum collapse of the region's subsistence economy, encouraged the expansion of cotton production, and ultimately kept cotton farmers trapped in a cycle of debt and tenancy. The first environmental history to bridge the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods, this work will appeal to anyone who is interested in the landscape of the South or the legacies of the Civil War"--

War Upon the Land

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Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820343838
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis War Upon the Land by : Lisa M. Brady

Download or read book War Upon the Land written by Lisa M. Brady and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilized society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attempting to divert the Mississippi River, the Union aimed to assert mastery over nature by attacking the most potent aspect of southern identity and power--agriculture. Brady focuses on the siege of Vicksburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, and events along the Mississippi River to examine this strategy and its devastating physical and psychological impact. Before the war, many Americans believed in the idea that nature must be conquered and subdued. Brady shows how this perception changed during the war, leading to a wider acceptance of wilderness. Connecting environmental trauma with the onset of American preservation, Brady pays particular attention to how these new ideas of wilderness can be seen in the creation of national battlefield memorial parks as unaltered spaces. Deftly combining environmental and military history with cultural studies, War upon the Land elucidates an intriguing, largely unexplored side of the nation's greatest conflict.

Flora and Fauna of the Civil War

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807137995
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Flora and Fauna of the Civil War by : Kelby Ouchley

Download or read book Flora and Fauna of the Civil War written by Kelby Ouchley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War, humans impacted plants and animals on an unprecedented scale as soldiers on both sides waged the most environmentally destructive war ever on American soil. In Flora and Fauna of the Civil War, Kelby Ouchley blends traditional and natural history to create a unique text that explores both the impact of the Civil War on the surrounding environment and the reciprocal influence of plants and animals on the war effort. After discussing the physical setting of the war and exploring humans' attitudes toward nature during the Civil War period, Ouchley presents the flora and fauna by individual species or closely related group in the words of the participants themselves. Collectively, no better sources exist to reveal human attitudes toward the environment in the Civil War era.

Nature's Civil War

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469610760
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature's Civil War by : Kathryn Shively Meier

Download or read book Nature's Civil War written by Kathryn Shively Meier and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Shenandoah Valley and Peninsula Campaigns of 1862, Union and Confederate soldiers faced unfamiliar and harsh environmental conditions--strange terrain, tainted water, swarms of flies and mosquitoes, interminable rain and snow storms, and oppressive

Natural Enemy, Natural Ally

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Natural Enemy, Natural Ally by : Richard P. Tucker

Download or read book Natural Enemy, Natural Ally written by Richard P. Tucker and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributors to this volume explore the dynamic between war and the physical environment from a variety of provocative viewpoints. The subjects of their essays range from conflicts in colonial India and South Africa to the U.S. Civil War and twentieth-century wars in Japan, Finland, and the Pacific Islands. Among the topics explored are: - the ways in which landscape can influence military strategies - why the decisive battle of the American Civil War was fought - the impact of war and peace on timber resources - the spread of pests and disease in wartime.

The Republic of Nature

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295804149
Total Pages : 601 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis The Republic of Nature by : Mark Fiege

Download or read book The Republic of Nature written by Mark Fiege and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light. Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education. By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience. For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/

War Stuff

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108351980
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis War Stuff by : Joan E. Cashin

Download or read book War Stuff written by Joan E. Cashin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this path-breaking work on the American Civil War, Joan E. Cashin explores the struggle between armies and civilians over the human and material resources necessary to wage war. This war 'stuff' included the skills of white Southern civilians, as well as such material resources as food, timber, and housing. At first, civilians were willing to help Confederate or Union forces, but the war took such a toll that all civilians, regardless of politics, began focusing on their own survival. Both armies took whatever they needed from human beings and the material world, which eventually destroyed the region's ability to wage war. In this fierce contest between civilians and armies, the civilian population lost. Cashin draws on a wide range of documents, as well as the perspectives of environmental history and material culture studies. This book provides an entirely new perspective on the war era.

Environmental History and the American South

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Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820332801
Total Pages : 502 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Environmental History and the American South by : Paul Sutter

Download or read book Environmental History and the American South written by Paul Sutter and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader gathers fifteen of the most important essays written in the field of southern environmental history over the past decade. Ideal for course use, the volume provides a convenient entrée into the recent literature on the region as it indicates the variety of directions in which the field is growing. As coeditor Paul S. Sutter writes in his introduction, “recent trends in environmental historiography--a renewed emphasis on agricultural landscapes and their hybridity, attention to the social and racial histories of environmental thought and practice, and connections between health and the environment among them--have made the South newly attractive terrain. This volume suggests, then, that southern environmental history has not only arrived but also that it may prove an important space for the growth of the larger environmental history enterprise.” The writings, which range in setting from the Texas plains to the Carolina Lowcountry, address a multiplicity of topics, such as husbandry practices in the Chesapeake colonies and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. The contributors’ varied disciplinary perspectives--including agricultural history, geography, the history of science, the history of technology, military history, colonial American history, urban and regional planning history, and ethnohistory--also point to the field’s vitality. Conveying the breadth, diversity, and liveliness of this maturing area of study, Environmental History and the American South affirms the critical importance of human-environmental interactions to the history and culture of the region. Contributors: Virginia DeJohn Anderson William Boyd Lisa Brady Joshua Blu Buhs Judith Carney James Taylor Carson Craig E. Colten S. Max Edelson Jack Temple Kirby Ralph H. Lutts Eileen Maura McGurty Ted Steinberg Mart Stewart Claire Strom Paul Sutter Harry Watson Albert G. Way

A Field on Fire

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Publisher : University Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817320016
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis A Field on Fire by : Mark D. Hersey

Download or read book A Field on Fire written by Mark D. Hersey and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A frank and engaging exploration of the burgeoning academic field of environmental history Inspired by the pioneering work of preeminent environmental historian Donald Worster, the contributors to A Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History reflect on the past and future of this discipline. Featuring wide-ranging essays by leading environmental historians from the United States, Europe, and China, the collection challenges scholars to rethink some of their orthodoxies, inviting them to approach familiar stories from new angles, to integrate new methodologies, and to think creatively about the questions this field is well positioned to answer. Worster’s groundbreaking research serves as the organizational framework for the collection. Editors Mark D. Hersey and Ted Steinberg have arranged the book into three sections corresponding to the primary concerns of Worster’s influential scholarship: the problem of natural limits, the transnational nature of environmental issues, and the question of method. Under the heading “Facing Limits,” five essays explore the inherent tensions between democracy, technology, capitalism, and the environment. The “Crossing Borders” section underscores the ways in which environmental history moves easily across national and disciplinary boundaries. Finally, “Doing Environmental History” invokes Worster’s work as an essayist by offering self-conscious reflections about the practice and purpose of environmental history. The essays aim to provoke a discussion on the future of the field, pointing to untapped and underdeveloped avenues ripe for further exploration. A forward thinker like Worster presents bold challenges to a new generation of environmental historians on everything from capitalism and the Anthropocene to war and wilderness. This engaging volume includes a very special afterword by one of Worster’s oldest friends, the eminent intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers, who has known Worster for close to fifty years.

American Environmental History

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Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781981731732
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (317 download)

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Book Synopsis American Environmental History by : Dan Allosso

Download or read book American Environmental History written by Dan Allosso and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expanded, new and improved American Environmental History textbook for everyone! After years of teaching Environmental History at a major East Coast University without a textbook, Dr. Dan Allosso decided to take matters into his own hands. The result, American Environmental History, is a concise, comprehensive survey covering the material from Dan's undergraduate course. What do people say about the class and the text? "This was my first semester and this course has created an incredible first impression. If all of the courses are this good, I am going to really enjoy my time here. The course has completely changed the way I look at the world." (Student in 2014 class) "One of the few classes I'm really sad is ending, the subject matter is fascinating and Dan is a great guide to it. His approach should be required of all students as it teaches an appreciation for a newer and better way of living." (Student in 2014 class) "Allosso's lectures are fantastic. The best I have ever had. So impressed. The material is always extremely interesting and well-presented." (Student in 2015 class) "It is just a perfect course that I think should be mandatory if we want to save our planet and live responsibly." (Student in 2015 class) "A rare gem for an IB ESS teacher or any social studies teacher looking for an 11th or 12th grade supplementary text that aims to provide an historical context for the environmental reality in America today. Highly recommended." (District Curriculum Coordinator, 2016) "I was so impressed with this material that I am using it as a supplement for a course I teach at my college." (History and Environmental Studies Professor, 2017) Beginning in prehistory and concluding in the present, American Environmental History explores the ways the environment has affected the choices that became our history, and how our choices have affected the environment. The dynamic relationship between people and the world around them is missing from mainstream history. Putting the environment back into history helps us make sense of the past and the present, which will help guide us toward a better future. More information and Dan's blog are available at environmentalhistory.us

The Ecology of War in China

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107071569
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ecology of War in China by : Micah S. Muscolino

Download or read book The Ecology of War in China written by Micah S. Muscolino and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interplay between war and the environment in Henan Province, a hotly contested frontline territory that endured massive environmental destruction and human disruption during the conflict between China and Japan that raged during World War II. In a desperate attempt to block Japan's military advance, Chinese Nationalist armies under Chiang Kai-shek broke the Yellow River's dikes in Henan in June 1938, resulting in devastating floods that persisted until after the war's end. Greater catastrophe struck Henan in 1942-1943, when famine took some two million lives and displaced millions more. Focusing on these war-induced disasters and their aftermath, this book conceptualizes the ecology of war in terms of energy flows through and between militaries, societies, and environments. Ultimately, Micah Muscolino argues that efforts to procure and exploit nature's energy in various forms shaped the choices of generals, the fates of communities, and the trajectory of environmental change in North China.

An Agrarian Republic

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 146961992X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis An Agrarian Republic by : Adam Wesley Dean

Download or read book An Agrarian Republic written by Adam Wesley Dean and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-02-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The familiar story of the Civil War tells of a predominately agricultural South pitted against a rapidly industrializing North. However, Adam Wesley Dean argues that the Republican Party's political ideology was fundamentally agrarian. Believing that small farms owned by families for generations led to a model society, Republicans supported a northern agricultural ideal in opposition to southern plantation agriculture, which destroyed the land's productivity, required constant western expansion, and produced an elite landed gentry hostile to the Union. Dean shows how agrarian republicanism shaped the debate over slavery's expansion, spurred the creation of the Department of Agriculture and the passage of the Homestead Act, and laid the foundation for the development of the earliest nature parks. Spanning the long nineteenth century, Dean's study analyzes the changing debate over land development as it transitioned from focusing on the creation of a virtuous and orderly citizenry to being seen primarily as a "civilizing" mission. By showing Republicans as men and women with backgrounds in small farming, Dean unveils new connections between seemingly separate historical events, linking this era's views of natural and manmade environments with interpretations of slavery and land policy.

Searching for Black Confederates

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469653273
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Searching for Black Confederates by : Kevin M. Levin

Download or read book Searching for Black Confederates written by Kevin M. Levin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

The Howling Storm

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080717419X
Total Pages : 687 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis The Howling Storm by : Kenneth W. Noe

Download or read book The Howling Storm written by Kenneth W. Noe and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Lincoln Prize! Traditional histories of the Civil War describe the conflict as a war between North and South. Kenneth W. Noe suggests it should instead be understood as a war between the North, the South, and the weather. In The Howling Storm, Noe retells the history of the conflagration with a focus on the ways in which weather and climate shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns. He further contends that events such as floods and droughts affecting the Confederate home front constricted soldiers’ food supply, lowered morale, and undercut the government’s efforts to boost nationalist sentiment. By contrast, the superior equipment and open supply lines enjoyed by Union soldiers enabled them to cope successfully with the South’s extreme conditions and, ultimately, secure victory in 1865. Climate conditions during the war proved unusual, as irregular phenomena such as El Niño, La Niña, and similar oscillations in the Atlantic Ocean disrupted weather patterns across southern states. Taking into account these meteorological events, Noe rethinks conventional explanations of battlefield victories and losses, compelling historians to reconsider long-held conclusions about the war. Unlike past studies that fault inflation, taxation, and logistical problems for the Confederate defeat, his work considers how soldiers and civilians dealt with floods and droughts that beset areas of the South in 1862, 1863, and 1864. In doing so, he addresses the foundational causes that forced Richmond to make difficult and sometimes disastrous decisions when prioritizing the feeding of the home front or the front lines. The Howling Storm stands as the first comprehensive examination of weather and climate during the Civil War. Its approach, coverage, and conclusions are certain to reshape the field of Civil War studies.

Scars on the Land

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780197564226
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (642 download)

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Book Synopsis Scars on the Land by : David Silkenat

Download or read book Scars on the Land written by David Silkenat and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom. Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash. Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.