Journalism in the Civil War Era


Book Description

"Bulla and Borchard have significantly expanded our understanding of the press, its impact, and its many roles during the Civil War. They shed light on politics, commerce, technology, public opinion, and censorship. Their book reminds us why the press matters most when a nation's fundamental freedoms are at stake."---Michael S. Sweeney, Author, The Military and the Press --Book Jacket.




Words at War


Book Description

Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism analyzes the various ways in which the nation's newspaper editors, reporters, and war correspondents covered the biggest story of their lives during the Civil War, and in doing so, they reflected and shaped the responses of their readers. The four sections of the book, "Fighting Words," "Confederates and Copperheads," "The Union Forever," and "Continuing Conflict" trace the evolving role of the press in the antebellum, wartime, and postwar periods.




The Western Press in the Crucible of the American Civil War


Book Description

Mary M. Cronin, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, and Bill Huntzicker: Introduction: Land. Lots of Land. And Newspapers, Too: Westward Migration and the Creation of Western Journalism - Debra Reddin van Tuyll: By the Numbers: Facts and Figures of Western Editors and Their Newspapers - Mary M. Cronin: “Give Us the War News!”: News Gathering, Distribution, and Audiences - Glen Feighery and David J. Vergobbi: Press Roles and Functions: Community Building in the West - Erika J. Pribanic- Smith: No 'Cliques or Factions': Politics, Partisanship and the Press in the West - Crompton Burton: “Stirring Times”: The Coming of the American Civil War in the Western Press - Mary M. Cronin: Acts of Disloyalty: Legal and Extralegal Restrictions on the Far Western Press in Wartime - Hubert van Tuyll: A Distant and Bloody Mirror: The Western Press and the Fighting - Jennifer E. Moore: From Sea to Shining Sea: Domestic and International News from the Plains to the Ocean - Katrina Quinn: “Words are Not Sufficient”: The Western Press Reports the End of the War and the Death of Lincoln - Mary M. Cronin and Debra Reddin van Tuyll: Epilogue: In the Final Analysis: A Region of High- Risk Opportunity - Index.




The Imagined Civil War


Book Description

In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces. Fahs mines these rich but long-neglected resources to recover the diversity of the war's political and social meanings. Instead of narrowly portraying the Civil War as a clash between two great, white armies, popular literature offered a wide range of representations of the conflict and helped shape new modes of imagining the relationships of diverse individuals to the nation. Works that explored the war's devastating impact on white women's lives, for example, proclaimed the importance of their experiences on the home front, while popular writings that celebrated black manhood and heroism in the wake of emancipation helped readers begin to envision new roles for blacks in American life. Recovering a lost world of popular literature, The Imagined Civil War adds immeasurably to our understanding of American life and letters at a pivotal point in our history.




Blue & Gray in Black & White


Book Description

Blue & Gray in Black & White is account of the techniques, tactics, and personalities of the news-gathering industry during the American Civil War. This cataclysmic event accelerated the transformation of the content of newspapers from pallid literature and opinion to robust, partisan reporting of vital events, real and imagined. The written record, however, is only part of the story. Much of the impact of Civil War journalism derives from its illustrations, and twenty-two examples of these are reproduced here. Harris also follows the war's most famous artists, including Winslow Homer, as they and their reporter brethren braved the dangers of the battlefield to capture some of our most memorable images of war.




Marketing the Blue and Gray


Book Description

Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr.’s Marketing the Blue and Gray analyzes newspaper advertising during the American Civil War. Newspapers circulated widely between 1861 and 1865, and merchants took full advantage of this readership. They marketed everything from war bonds to biographies of military and political leaders; from patent medicines that promised to cure almost any battlefield wound to “secession cloaks” and “Fort Sumter” cockades. Union and Confederate advertisers pitched shopping as its own form of patriotism, one of the more enduring legacies of the nation’s largest and bloodiest war. However, unlike important-sounding headlines and editorials, advertisements have received only passing notice from historians. As the first full-length analysis of Union and Confederate newspaper advertising, Kreiser’s study sheds light on this often overlooked aspect of Civil War media. Kreiser argues that the marketing strategies of the time show how commercialization and patriotism became increasingly intertwined as Union and Confederate war aims evolved. Yankees and Rebels believed that buying decisions were an important expression of their civic pride, from “Union forever” groceries to “States Rights” sewing machines. He suggests that the notices helped to expand American democracy by allowing their diverse readership to participate in almost every aspect of the Civil War. As potential customers, free blacks and white women perused announcements for war-themed biographies, images, and other material wares that helped to define the meaning of the fighting. Advertisements also helped readers to become more savvy consumers and, ultimately, citizens, by offering them choices. White men and, in the Union after 1863, black men might volunteer for military service after reading a recruitment notice; or they might instead respond to the kind of notice for “draft insurance” that flooded newspapers after the Union and Confederate governments resorted to conscription to help fill the ranks. Marketing the Blue and Gray demonstrates how, through their sometimes-messy choices, advertising pages offered readers the opportunity to participate—or not—in the war effort.




Why the Civil War Came


Book Description

In the early morning of April 12, 1861, Captain George S. James ordered the bombardment of Fort Sumter, beginning a war that would last four years and claim many lives. This book brings together a collection of voices to help explain the commencement of Am.




American Civil Wars


Book Description

American Civil Wars takes readers beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the U.S. Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings—all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate how the United States' sectional strife was caught up in a larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future. These struggles were all part of a vast web, connecting not just Washington and Richmond but also Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Rio de Janeiro and--on the other side of the Atlantic--London, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. This volume breaks new ground by charting a hemispheric upheaval and expanding Civil War scholarship into the realms of transnational and imperial history. American Civil Wars creates new connections between the uprisings and civil wars in and outside of American borders and places the United States within a global context of other nations. Contributors: Matt D. Childs, University of South Carolina Anne Eller, Yale University Richard Huzzey, University of Liverpool Howard Jones, University of Alabama Patrick J. Kelly, University of Texas at San Antonio Rafael de Bivar Marquese, University of Sao Paulo Erika Pani, College of Mexico Hilda Sabato, University of Buenos Aires Steve Sainlaude, University of Paris IV Sorbonne Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Tufts University Jay Sexton, University of Oxford




The Inner Civil War


Book Description

'The Inner Civil War', first published more than twenty-five years ago, is a classic that has influenced historians' views of the Civil War and American intellectual change in the nineteenth century. This edition includes a new preface in which the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of the work and updates its interpretations.




Lincoln and the Power of the Press


Book Description

Examines Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the press, arguing that he used such intimidation and manipulation techniques as closing down dissenting newspapers, pampering favoring newspaper men, and physically moving official telegraph lines.