A disgraced officer and an enlisted man forge an unlikely friendship through the desperate river battles waged along the Mississippi between Union forces and outnumbered Confederate defenders. Following their surrender, the two friends along with the other defeated Rebels are incarcerated in Northern prisoner of war camps where new challenges await them. Only one will survive. Based upon ten years of historical research, Long Road Home explores the trials and travails of George Spears and his friend, Eli Forrest. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1004/thumbnail.jpg

Excerpt: Despite the great success of the Civil War epic Glory, the story of the black troops during and after the War is not well known. This lack of exposure to popular familiarity is especially true of the Buffalo Soldiers who served on the frontier in the late 19th century, chiefly but not exclusively in the Indian Wars.

This thesis considers the experiences that motivated the creation of an 1863 painting by American artist Eastman Johnson entitled The Lord is My Shepherd. An examination of the painting—which depicts a black man reading a Bible—reveals multiple artistic, social, political, and spiritual influences. Created in the midst of the American Civil War, the painting's inspiration derived from Johnson's New England childhood, training in Europe, encounters with the Transcendentalist movement, and his abolitionist views. As a result, The Lord is My Shepherd is a culminating work in Johnson's oeuvre that was prompted by years of experience and observations in an age of rampant racism and civil war. It is also argued that The Lord is My Shepherd has diaristic qualities in that Johnson explored significant social and political issues of the day such as slavery through his work. Before now, this painting has been considered a relatively minor work within Johnson's oeuvre. This thesis seeks to change that perception and raise awareness of the contextual significance of The Lord is My Shepherd.

Review of Myra Inman: A Diary of the Civil War in East Tennessee. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2000.

As a border state, Kentucky occupied a unique position in the early days of the Civil War. Her neutral stance was observed by the belligerents for the first five months of the conflict, but in September 1861, troops entered the state. Confederate armies under the leadership of Brigadier Generals Humphrey Marshall and Feliz Zollicoffer sought to drive the Federal forces from eastern Kentucky. Through a series of skirmishes, however, the Southern armies were repelled and placed on the defensive. Later defeats at Logan’s Cross Roads and Middle Creek in early January 1862 cleared eastern Kentucky of Confederate forces. For the next several months, the Confederates regrouped out of the state and planned a major offensive to deliver Kentucky to the Confederacy. Under the guidance of Generals Braxto Bragg and E. Kirby Smith, the fateful invasion took shape in August 1862. But by then, possibly the best chance for a Confederate Kentucky had already passed.

On September 95, 1861, Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith reported to his new command at the Department of East Tennessee. It was a troubled command; Kirby Smith's insufficient army was pressed from the north by Brigadier General George Buell. of the Morgan, and from the west by Major General Don Carlos To save his command from certain defeat at the hands superior Union armies, Kirby Smith was able to convince General Braxton Bragg to move his army by rail to East Tennessee. Through a series of political maneuvers, Kirby Smith obtained a portion of Bragg's army and entered Kentucky on August 14, 1862. Bragg, with the remainder of his army, was to follow. The plan was for the two Confederate armies to bring an indecisive Kentucky into the Confederacy, obtain Kentucky recruits, and combine to defeat Buell (who was of course obligated to defend Kentucky against the invading armies). At the same time, Major Generals Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn were to move eastward from West Tennessee and capture Nashville--the South would be free of Union forces. Kirby Smith moved rapidly northward, defeating a small Union force at Richmond Kentucky on August 30. He continued on to capture Lexington and Frankfort on September 2 and 3. Bragg--with Buell closely behind--marched toward Bowling Green, and on to Munfordville, turning eastward off the Louisville road to Bardstown. Buell marched into Louisville on September 30 unopposed. Not expecting Buell to leave Louisville for several weeks, Kirby Smith and Bragg delayed concentration to carry on the necessary administrative duties of occupying the state. But Buell was able to coordinate his forces and move out of Louisville in only three days. Buell's plan called for a feint to be sent toward Kirby Smith at Lexington to keep the two Confederate armies divided. The main Union army was to move in three parts, toward Bardstown. The plan was successful; the Confederate commanders were confused by the feint and remained divided. The Confederate main force at Bardstown retreated before the three pronged Union attack, taking a stand at Perryville on October 9. During the battle Bragg's army was able to push back a portion of the Union force, but-- finding that they were severely outnumbered—the Confederates left the battlefield the next day. Kirby Smith remained in and around Frankfort, unable to coordinate his army with Bragg's. Finding that Price and Van Dorn had been defeated at Corinth Mississippi, out of provisions, and unable to recruit, Bragg and Kirby Smith decided to abandon Kentucky. The two armies retreated from the state, arriving in East Tennessee the last of October.

The present work is intended as a survey of events and conditions in Tennessee during the decade from 1860 to 1870 when the entire nation was torn by sectional strife, racial antagonism, and economic and social disorder. The writer can make no pretension of having made a comprehensive or exhaustive study of the sources. That would involve a paper far beyond the scope of the present study. At best I have only scratched the surface; merely opened avenues for future study.

During the Civil War, musical fluidity led to an outpouring of songs written about the conflict. With every popular song came at least one set of alternate lyrics known as contrafacta. In this thesis, I analyze Northern anthem “The Battle Cry of Freedom,”and Southern anthems “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and “Dixie” and their contrafacta. Through the lens of contrafacta, I analyze how the North and the South understood the terms “liberty” and “freedom.”

American Mnemonic: Racial Identity in Women’s Life Writing of the Civil War takes up three American women's autobiographies: Emilie Davis’s pocket diaries (1863-65), Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House (1868), and Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches (1863). Chapter one is devoted to literary review and methodology. Chapter two, "the all-absorbing topic': Belonging and Isolation in Emilie Davis’s Diaries," explores the everyday record of Emilie Davis in the context of Philadelphia’s free black community during the war. Davis’s position as a working-class free woman offers a fresh perspective on the much-discussed “elite” black community in which she participated. Chapter three, “'The Past is Dear': Nostalgia and Geotemporal Distance in Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes,” explores Keckley’s memories of the South as she narrates them from her position as an upwardly mobile free black woman in Washington, D.C. My analysis illuminates the effect of shifting subject positions (e.g., from slave to free) on the process of self-narration, a process that I argue ultimately recasts Keckley in a more abolitionist light. Finally, chapter four, “'A Forward Movement': Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches and the Racialized Temporality of Progress,” argues that Alcott uses the geotemporal conditions of the war hospital to gain social mobility. This forward movement for Alcott leads her to cast black characters in a regressive light, revealing the racial hierarchy of progress. All of these authors express their experiences of time in unique ways, but in each case, the temporal cultural shifts catalyzed by the Civil War impact how they process their racial identities, and the genre of autobiography offers an intimate view of that process.

For the past century and a half historians have conducted more research on the Civil War and Reconstruction than most other subjects. Except for minor mentions and one biography on the governor, the Restored Government of Virginia has been left out of the historiography. The earliest historians or political commentators believed the Restored Government to be a small and ineffectual government that failed to achieve any broad level of support from its constituents. Furthermore, the early works suggested that the governments’ true purpose was to see that western Virginia was separated from Virginia, not to seek the return of Virginia to the Union. While there has been slight variation over the years, historians generally continue to accept this narrative. Through the use of both federal documents and the Restored Governments various publications, this thesis seeks to demonstrate the legality behind the governments’ formation as well as explain how and why the government went from successfully restoring Virginia to being relegated to the dustbin of history. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection