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Iron Confederacies
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Book Synopsis Iron Confederacies by : Scott Reynolds Nelson
Download or read book Iron Confederacies written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson. Iron Confederacies uses the history of southern railways to explore linkages among the themes of states' rights, racial violence, labor strife, and big business in the nineteenth-century South. By 1868, Ku Klux Klan leaders had begun mobilizing white resentment against rapid economic change by asserting that railroad consolidation led to political corruption and black economic success. As Nelson notes, some of the Klan's most violent activity was concentrated along the Richmond-Atlanta rail corridor. But conflicts over railroads were eventually resolved, he argues, in agreements between northern railroad barons and Klan leaders that allowed white terrorism against black voters while surrendering states' control over the southern economy.
Book Synopsis Private Confederacies by : James J. Broomall
Download or read book Private Confederacies written by James J. Broomall and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction shape the masculinity of white Confederate veterans? As James J. Broomall shows, the crisis of the war forced a reconfiguration of the emotional worlds of the men who took up arms for the South. Raised in an antebellum culture that demanded restraint and shaped white men to embrace self-reliant masculinity, Confederate soldiers lived and fought within military units where they experienced the traumatic strain of combat and its privations together--all the while being separated from suffering families. Military service provoked changes that escalated with the end of slavery and the Confederacy's military defeat. Returning to civilian life, Southern veterans questioned themselves as never before, sometimes suffering from terrible self-doubt. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, Broomall argues that the crisis of defeat ultimately necessitated new forms of expression between veterans and among men and women. On the one hand, war led men to express levels of emotionality and vulnerability previously assumed the domain of women. On the other hand, these men also embraced a virulent, martial masculinity that they wielded during Reconstruction and beyond to suppress freed peoples and restore white rule through paramilitary organizations and the Ku Klux Klan.
Book Synopsis Steel Drivin' Man by : Scott Reynolds Nelson
Download or read book Steel Drivin' Man written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ballad "John Henry" is the most recorded folk song in American history and John Henry--the mighty railroad man who could blast through rock faster than a steam drill--is a towering figure in our culture. In Steel Drivin' Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts the true story of the man behind the iconic American hero, telling the poignant tale of a young Virginia convict who died working on one of the most dangerous enterprises of the time, the first rail route through the Appalachian Mountains. Using census data, penitentiary reports, and railroad company reports, Nelson reveals how John Henry, victimized by Virginia's notorious Black Codes, was shipped to the infamous Richmond Penitentiary to become prisoner number 497, and was forced to labor on the mile-long Lewis Tunnel for the C&O railroad. Equally important, Nelson masterfully captures the life of the ballad of John Henry, tracing the song's evolution from the first printed score by blues legend W. C. Handy, to Carl Sandburg's use of the ballad to become the first "folk singer," to the upbeat version by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Attractively illustrated with numerous images, Steel Drivin' Man offers a marvelous portrait of a beloved folk song--and a true American legend.
Download or read book The Iron Way written by William G. Thomas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How railroads both united and divided us: “Integrates military and social history…a must-read for students, scholars and enthusiasts alike.”—Civil War Monitor Beginning with Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads, the Confederate South, slavery, and the Civil War era, based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before. The Iron Way revises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict. Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes, Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Union’s victory, he shows that they were also essential to the formation of “the South” as a unified region. He discusses the many—and sometimes unexpected—effects of railroad expansion, and proposes that America’s great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nation’s vision of itself. “In this provocative and deeply researched book, William G. Thomas follows the railroad into virtually every aspect of Civil War history, showing how it influenced everything from slavery’s antebellum expansion to emancipation and segregation—from guerrilla warfare to grand strategy. At every step, Thomas challenges old assumptions and finds new connections on this much-traveled historical landscape."—T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Book Synopsis Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818–2018 by : Michael Gagnon
Download or read book Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818–2018 written by Michael Gagnon and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gwinnett County’s two hundred years, the area has been western, southern, rural, suburban, and now increasingly urban. Its stories include the displacement of Native peoples, white settlement, legal battles over Indian Removal, slavery and cotton, the Civil War and the Lost Cause, New South railroad and town development, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, business development and finance in a national economy, a Populist uprising and Black outmigration, the entrance of women into the political arena, the evolution of cotton culture, the development of modern infrastructure, and the transformation from rural to suburban to a multicultural urbanizing place. Gwinnett, as its chamber of commerce likes to say, has it all. However, Gwinnett has yet to be the focus of a major historical exploration—until now. Through a compilation of essays written by professional historians with expertise in a diverse array of eras and fields, Michael Gagnon and Matthew Hild’s collection finally tells these stories in a systematic way—avoiding the pitfalls of nonprofessional local histories that tend to ignore issues of race, class, or gender. While not claiming to be comprehensive, this book provides general readers and scholars alike with a glimpse at Gwinnett through the ages.
Book Synopsis Reconstructing Appalachia by : Andrew L. Slap
Download or read book Reconstructing Appalachia written by Andrew L. Slap and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Excellent, readable, and absorbing history . . . gives us a better understanding of this compelling aspect of the Civil War.” —Library Journal Families, communities, and the nation itself were irretrievably altered by the Civil War and the subsequent societal transformations of the nineteenth century. The repercussions of the war incited a broad range of unique problems in Appalachia, including political dynamics, racial prejudices, and the regional economy. This anthology of essays reveals life in Appalachia after the ravages of the Civil War, an unexplored area that has left a void in historical literature. Addressing a gap in the chronicles of our nation, this vital collection explores little-known aspects of history with a particular focus on the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. Acclaimed scholars John C. Inscoe, Gordon B. McKinney, and Ken Fones-Wolf are joined by up-and-comers like Mary Ella Engel, Anne E. Marshall, and Kyle Osborn in a unique volume investigating postwar Appalachia with clarity and precision. Featuring a broad geographic focus, the compelling essays cover postwar events in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. This approach provides an intimate portrait of Appalachia as a diverse collection of communities where the values of place and family are of crucial importance. Highlighting a wide array of topics including racial reconciliation, tension between former Unionists and Confederates, the evolution of post—Civil War memory, and altered perceptions of race, gender, and economic status, Reconstructing Appalachia is a timely and essential study of a region rich in heritage and tradition. “Outstanding.” —North Carolina Historical Review
Book Synopsis The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia by : Charles W. Hartley
Download or read book The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia written by Charles W. Hartley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thousands of years, the geography of Eurasia has facilitated travel, conquest and colonization by various groups, from the Huns in ancient times to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the past century. This book brings together archaeological investigations of Eurasian regimes and revolutions ranging from the Bronze Age to the modern day, from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in the west to the Mongolian steppe and the Korean Peninsula in the east. The authors examine a wide-ranging series of archaeological studies in order to better understand the role of politics in the history and prehistory of the region. This book re-evaluates the significance of power, authority and ideology in the emergence and transformation of ancient and modern societies in this vast continent.
Book Synopsis A Man of Bad Reputation by : Drew A. Swanson
Download or read book A Man of Bad Reputation written by Drew A. Swanson and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina. In recounting Stephens's murder, the subsequent investigation and court proceedings, and the long-delayed confessions that revealed what actually happened at the courthouse in 1870, Drew A. Swanson tells a story of race, politics, and social power shaped by violence and profit. The struggle for dominance in Reconstruction-era rural North Carolina, Swanson argues, was an economic and ecological transformation. Arson, beating, and murder became tools to control people and landscapes, and the ramifications of this violence continued long afterward. The failure to prosecute anyone for decades after John Stephens's assassination left behind a vacuum, as each side shaped its own memory of Stephens and his murder. The malleability of and contested storytelling around Stephens's legacy presents a window into the struggle to control the future of the South.
Book Synopsis Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry by : Bruce W. Eelman
Download or read book Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry written by Bruce W. Eelman and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Entrepreneurs in the Southern Upcountry, Bruce W. Eelman follows the evolution of an entrepreneurial culture in a nineteenth-century southern community outside the plantation belt. Counter to the view that the Civil War and Reconstruction alone brought social and economic revolution to the South, Eelman finds that antebellum Spartanburg businessmen advocated a comprehensive vision for modernizing their region. Although their plans were forward looking, they still supported slavery and racial segregation. By the 1840s, Spartanburg merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and other professionals were looking to capitalize on the area’s natural resources by promoting iron and textile mills and a network of rail lines. Recognizing that cultural change had to accompany material change, these businessmen also worked to reshape legal and educational institutions. Their prewar success was limited, largely due to lowcountry planters’ political power. However, their modernizing spirit would serve as an important foundation for postwar development. Although the Civil War brought unprecedented trauma to the Spartanburg community, the modernizing merchants, industrialists, and lawyers strengthened their political and social clout in the aftermath. As a result, much of the modernizing blueprint of the 1850s was realized in the 1870s. Eelman finds that Spartanburg’s modernizers slowed legal and educational reform only when its implementation seemed likely to empower African Americans.
Book Synopsis Brotherhoods of Color by : Eric ARNESEN
Download or read book Brotherhoods of Color written by Eric ARNESEN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution--the story of African Americans on the railroad. African Americans have been a part of the railroad from its inception, but today they are largely remembered as Pullman porters and track layers. The real history is far richer, a tale of endless struggle, perseverance, and partial victory. In a sweeping narrative, Arnesen re-creates the heroic efforts by black locomotive firemen, brakemen, porters, dining car waiters, and redcaps to fight a pervasive system of racism and job discrimination fostered by their employers, white co-workers, and the unions that legally represented them even while barring them from membership. Decades before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, black railroaders forged their own brand of civil rights activism, organizing their own associations, challenging white trade unions, and pursuing legal redress through state and federal courts. In recapturing black railroaders' voices, aspirations, and challenges, Arnesen helps to recast the history of black protest and American labor in the twentieth century. Table of Contents: Prologue 1. Race in the First Century of American Railroading 2. Promise and Failure in the World War I Era 3. The Black Wedge of Civil Rights Unionism 4. Independent Black Unionism in Depression and War 5. The Rise of the Red Caps 6. The Politics of Fair Employment 7. The Politics of Fair Representation 8. Black Railroaders in the Modern Era Conclusion Notes Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: In this superbly written monograph, Arnesen...shows how African American railroad workers combined civil rights and labor union activism in their struggles for racial equality in the workplace...Throughout, black locomotive firemen, porters, yardmen, and other railroaders speak eloquently about the work they performed and their confrontations with racist treatment...This history of the 'aristocrats' of the African American working class is highly recommended. --Charles L. Lumpkins, Library Journal Reviews of this book: Arnesen provides a fascinating look at U.S. labor and commerce in the arena of the railroads, so much a part of romantic notions about the growth of the nation. The focus of the book is the troubled history of the railroads in the exploitation of black workers from slavery until the civil rights movement, with an insightful analysis of the broader racial integration brought about by labor activism. --Vanessa Bush, Booklist Reviews of this book: [An] exhaustive and illuminating work of scholarship. --Publishers Weekly Reviews of this book: Arnesen tells a story that should be of interest to a variety of readers, including those who are avid students of this country's railroads. He knows his stuff, and furthermore, reminds us of how dependent American railroads were on the backbreaking labor of racial and ethnic groups whose civil and political status were precarious at best: Irish, Chinese, Mexicans and Italians, as well as African-Americans. But Arnesen's most powerful and provocative argument is that the nature of discrimination not only led black railroad workers to pursue the path of independent unionism, it also propelled them into the larger struggle for civil rights. --Steven Hahn, Chicago Tribune
Book Synopsis Confederate Cities by : Andrew L. Slap
Download or read book Confederate Cities written by Andrew L. Slap and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we talk about the Civil War, we often describe it in terms of battles that took place in small towns or in the countryside: Antietam, Gettysburg, Bull Run, and, most tellingly, the Battle of the Wilderness. One reason this picture has persisted is that few urban historians have studied the war, even though cities hosted, enabled, and shaped Southern society as much as they did in the North. Confederate Cities, edited by Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers, shifts the focus from the agrarian economy that undergirded the South to the cities that served as its political and administrative hubs. The contributors use the lens of the city to examine now-familiar Civil War–era themes, including the scope of the war, secession, gender, emancipation, and war’s destruction. This more integrative approach dramatically revises our understanding of slavery’s relationship to capitalist economics and cultural modernity. By enabling a more holistic reading of the South, the book speaks to contemporary Civil War scholars and students alike—not least in providing fresh perspectives on a well-studied war.
Download or read book Vital Rails written by H. David Stone and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning more than one hundred miles across rice fields, salt marshes, and seven rivers and creeks, the Charleston & Savannah Railroad was designed to revolutionize the economy of South Carolina's lowcountry by linking key port cities. This history of the railroad records the story of the C&S and of the men who managed it during wartime.
Book Synopsis The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by : Edward L. Ayers
Download or read book The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America written by Edward L. Ayers and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Lincoln Prize A landmark Civil War history told from a fresh, deeply researched ground-level perspective. At the crux of America’s history stand two astounding events: the immediate and complete destruction of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world, followed by a political reconstruction in which new constitutions established the fundamental rights of citizens for formerly enslaved people. Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable. In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War. From the same vantage point occupied by his unforgettable characters, Ayers captures the strategic savvy of Lee and his local lieutenants, and the clear vision of equal rights animating black troops from Pennsylvania. We see the war itself become a scourge to the Valley, its pitched battles punctuating a cycle of vicious attack and reprisal in which armies burned whole towns for retribution. In the weeks and months after emancipation, from the streets of Staunton, Virginia, we see black and white residents testing the limits of freedom as political leaders negotiate the terms of readmission to the Union. With analysis as powerful as its narrative, here is a landmark history of the Civil War.
Book Synopsis Engines of Redemption by : R. Scott Huffard Jr.
Download or read book Engines of Redemption written by R. Scott Huffard Jr. and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-10-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction shattered the plantation economy of the Old South, white southerners turned to the railroad to reconstruct capitalism in the region. Examining the rapid growth, systemization, and consolidation of the southern railroad network, R. Scott Huffard Jr. demonstrates how economic and political elites used the symbolic power of the railroad to proclaim a New South had risen. The railroad was more than just an economic engine of growth; it was a powerful symbol of capitalism's advance. However, as the railroad spread across the region, it also introduced new dangers and anxieties. White southerners came to fear the railroad would speed an upending of the racial order, epidemics of yellow fever, train wrecks, violent robberies, and domination by corporate monopolies. To complete the reconstruction of capitalism, railroad corporations and their allies had to sever the negative aspects of railroading from capitalism's powers and deny the railroad's transformative powers to black southerners. This study of the New South's experience with the growing railroad network provides valuable insights into the history of capitalism--how it evolves, expands, and overcomes resistance.
Download or read book Age of Betrayal written by Jack Beatty and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Age of Betrayal is a brilliant reconsideration of America's first Gilded Age, when war-born dreams of freedom and democracy died of their impossibility. Focusing on the alliance between government and railroads forged by bribes and campaign contributions, Jack Beatty details the corruption of American political culture that, in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes, transformed “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” into “a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.” A passionate, gripping, scandalous and sorrowing history of the triumph of wealth over commonwealth.
Book Synopsis A People at War by : Scott Reynolds Nelson
Download or read book A People at War written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless numbers of common soldiers and civilians, even as it brought freedom to millions. This book shows how average Americans coped with despair as well as hope during this vast upheaval. A People at War brings to life the full humanity of the war's participants, from women behind their plows to their husbands in army camps; from refugees from slavery to their former masters; from Mayflower descendants to freshly recruited Irish sailors. We discover how people confronted their own feelings about the war itself, and how they coped with emotional challenges (uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, guilt, betrayal, grief) as well as physical ones (displacement, poverty, illness, disfigurement). The book explores the violence beyond the battlefield, illuminating the sharp-edged conflicts of neighbor against neighbor, whether in guerilla warfare or urban riots. The authors travel as far west as China and as far east as Europe, taking us inside soldiers' tents, prisoner-of-war camps, plantations, tenements, churches, Indian reservations, and even the cargo holds of ships. They stress the war years, but also cast an eye at the tumultuous decades that preceded and followed the battlefield confrontations. An engrossing account of ordinary people caught up in life-shattering circumstances, A People at War captures how the Civil War rocked the lives of rich and poor, black and white, parents and children--and how all these Americans pushed generals and presidents to make the conflict a people's war.
Book Synopsis The Racial Railroad by : Julia H. Lee
Download or read book The Racial Railroad written by Julia H. Lee and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Racial Railroad argues the train has been a persistent and crucial site for racial meaning-making in American culture for the past 150 years. This book examines the complex intertwining of race and railroad in literary works, films, visual media, and songs from a variety of cultural traditions in order to highlight the surprisingly central role that the railroad has played - and continues to play - in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Despite the fact that the train has often been an instrument of violence and exclusion, this book shows that it is also ingrained in the imaginings of racialized communities, often appearing as a sign of resistance. The significance of this book is threefold. First, it is the only book that I'm aware of that examines the train multivalently: as a technology, as a mode of transportation, as a space that blurs the line between public and private, as a form of labor, and as a sign. Second, it takes a multiracial approach to cultural narratives concerning the railroad and racial identity, which bolsters my claim about the pervasiveness of the railroad in narratives of race. It signifies across all racial groups. The meaning of that signification may be radically different depending upon the community's own history, but it nevertheless means something. Finally, The Racial Railroad reveals the importance of place in discussions of race and racism. Focusing on the experiences of racialized bodies in relation to the train - which both creates and destroys places - secures a presence for those marginalized subjects. These authors use the train to reveal how race defines the spatial logics of the nation even as their bodies are often deliberately hidden or obscured from public view"--
