617 books match the query 'Civil War Period (1850-1877)' and 14 start with g
Frank R. Freemon
University of Illinois Press, 1998

Laura F. Edwards
University of Illinois Press, 1997
Peter Cozzens
University of Illinois Press, 2000
David H. Slay
University of Alabama Press, 2011
Zachary Stuart Garrison
Southern Illinois University Press, 2020
Mark K. Christ
University of Arkansas Press, 2002
Mads Daugbjerg
University of Massachusetts Press, 2027
Tracing how the Civil War continues to shape the landscapes, politics, and culture of today
Every year, thousands of Americans don Civil War uniforms and restage the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil. In Gettysburg, Time and Again, Mads Daugbjerg explores how the Civil War continues to inhabit the present. Bringing together reenactors, National Park Service rangers, ghost hunters, tourists, and local residents, this study examines how Americans across social and political divides engage the past through the landscapes, institutions, and everyday practices of public history.
At once historically grounded and urgently contemporary, this book speaks directly to current struggles over the meaning of America and its values. Rather than treating time and history as abstract concepts, Daugbjerg approaches them as lived, material forces produced through commemorative landscapes, interpretive labor, and the relentless restaging of 1863 for contemporary audiences. Studying reenactment illuminates not only a distinctive cultural practice but also the broader processes through which the past is continuously reshaped, repeated, and felt in the present. He argues that present-day American unrest can be understood, in part, as a conflict over how the past is curated. He further suggests that Americans today often occupy profoundly different temporal worlds.
Daugbjerg traces these tensions through landscapes, material culture, tourism infrastructures, and social life at Gettysburg. Challenging the commonsense notion of history as linear progression, Gettysburg, Time and Again reveals repetition as a defining feature of American historical experience. By offering a finely grained anthropology of the “present past,” Daugbjerg shows how history’s afterlives remain powerfully out of sync and why those temporal disjunctions matter now.
Kent Gramm. Photographs by Chris Heisey
Southern Illinois University Press, 2019
Jason Emerson
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012
University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools, 2013 edition
Book of the Year by the Illinois State historical Society, 2013
Although he was Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s oldest and last surviving son, the details of Robert T. Lincoln’s life are misunderstood by some and unknown to many others. Nearly half a century after the last biography about Abraham Lincoln’s son was published, historian and author Jason Emerson illuminates the life of this remarkable man and his achievements in Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln. Emerson, after nearly ten years of research, draws upon previously unavailable materials to offer the first truly definitive biography of the famous lawyer, businessman, and statesman who, much more than merely the son of America’s most famous president, made his own indelible mark on one of the most progressive and dynamic eras in United States history.
Born in a boardinghouse but passing his last days at ease on a lavish country estate, Robert Lincoln played many roles during his lifetime. As a president’s son, a Union soldier, an ambassador to Great Britain, and a U.S. secretary of war, Lincoln was indisputably a titan of his age. Much like his father, he became one of the nation’s most respected and influential men, building a successful law practice in the city of Chicago, serving shrewdly as president of the Pullman Car Company, and at one time even being considered as a candidate for the U.S. presidency.
Along the way he bore witness to some of the most dramatic moments in America’s history, including Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; the advent of the railroad, telephone, electrical, and automobile industries; the circumstances surrounding the assassinations of three presidents of the United States; and the momentous presidential election of 1912. Giant in the Shadows also reveals Robert T. Lincoln’s complex relationships with his famous parents and includes previously unpublished insights into their personalities. Emerson reveals new details about Robert’s role as his father’s confidant during the brutal years of the Civil War and his reaction to his father’s murder; his prosecution of the thieves who attempted to steal his father’s body in 1876 and the extraordinary measures he took to ensure it would never happen again; as well as details about the painful decision to have his mother committed to a mental facility. In addition Emerson explores the relationship between Robert and his children, and exposes the actual story of his stewardship of the Lincoln legacy—including what he and his wife really destroyed and what was preserved. Emerson also delves into the true reason Robert is not buried in the Lincoln tomb in Springfield but instead was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
Meticulously researched, full of never-before-seen photographs and new insight into historical events, Giant in the Shadows is the missing chapter of the Lincoln family story. Emerson’s riveting work is more than simply a biography; it is a tale of American achievement in the Gilded Age and the endurance of the Lincoln legacy.
Matthew E. Stanley
University of Illinois Press, 2021
An original consideration of meaning and memory, Grand Army of Labor reveals the complex ways workers drew on themes of emancipation and equality in the long battle for workers’ rights.
Michael B. Ballard
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013
After an overview of Grant’s early Civil War career from his first battle through the early stages of the attacks on Vicksburg, Ballard describes in detail how Grant conducted the siege, examining his military decisions, placement of troops, strategy and tactics, engineering objectives, and relationships with other officers. Grant’s worried obsession with a perceived danger of a rear attack by Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army, Ballard shows, affected his decision making, and shows how threats of Confederate action occupied more of Grant’s time than did the siege itself.
In addition, Ballard soundly dispels a false story about Grant’s alleged drinking binge early in the siege that has been taken as truthful by many historians, examines how racism in Grant’s army impacted the lives of freed black people and slaves in the Vicksburg area, and explores Grant’s strained relationship with John McClernand, a politically appointed general from Illinois. The book concludes with the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, the expulsion of Johnston and his army from the region, and demonstrates the impact of the siege on the outcome on the short and long-terms of Grant’s military career.
By analyzing Grant’s personality during the siege and how he dealt with myriad issues as both a general and an administrator, Grant at Vicksburg offers a revealing rendering of the legendary general.
Daniel E. Sutherland
University of Arkansas Press, 1999
James E. McGhee
University of Arkansas Press, 2010
Michael G. Laramie
Westholme Publishing, 2027