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[Introduction To] The Thin Light Of Freedom: The Civil War And Emancipation In The Heart Of America, Edward L. Ayers

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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. …

[Introduction To] America's War: Talking About The Civil War And Emancipation On Their 150th Anniversaries, Edward L. Ayers

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Edited by Edward L. Ayers, America’s War is an anthology of Civil War writing originally published between 1852 and 2008. Co-published by the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities, America’s War was created in support of a national reading and discussion program for libraries called “Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War.”

The selections in America’s War include works of historical fiction and interpretation, speeches, diaries, memoirs, biographies, and short stories. Together, these readings provide a glimpse of the vast sweep and profound breadth of Americans’ war among and against themselves, adding …

[Introduction To] America On The Eve Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers, Carolyn R. Martin

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The scholarship and public history the sixteen historians had created over their careers made this plan seem at least feasible. Their collective body of work embraces everything from politics to literature, from industrial slavery to African American art, from women's reform efforts to racial ideologies, from military history to the history of memory. Some of them worked at museums and libraries while others taught at universities and colleges across the nations. They belonged to no particular school of interpretation, and quite a few had never met one another.

The historians, whatever their backgrounds, shared a sense of responsibility for opening …

[Introduction To] Crucible Of The Civil War: Virginia From Secession To Commemoration, Edward L. Ayers, Gary W. Gallagher, Andrew J. Torget

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Crucible of the Civil War offers an illuminating portrait of the state’s wartime economic, political, and social institutions. Weighing in on contentious issues within established scholarship while also breaking ground in areas long neglected by scholars, the contributors examine such concerns as the war’s effect on slavery in the state, the wartime intersection of race and religion, and the development of Confederate social networks. They also shed light on topics long disputed by historians, such as Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union, the development of Confederate nationalism, and how Virginians chose to remember the war after its close.

[Introduction To] What Caused The Civil War? Reflections On The South And Southern History, Edward L. Ayers

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The Southern past has proven to be fertile ground for great works of history. Peculiarities of tragic proportions—a system of slavery flourishing in a land of freedom, secession and Civil War tearing at a federal Union, deep poverty persisting in a nation of fast-paced development—have fed the imaginations of some of our most accomplished historians.

Foremost in their ranks today is Edward L. Ayers, author of the award-winning and ongoing study of the Civil War in the heart of America, the Valley of the Shadow Project. In wide-ranging essays on the Civil War, the New South, and the twentieth-century South, …

[Introduction To] In The Presence Of Mine Enemies: Civil War In The Heart Of America, 1859-1863, Edward L. Ayers

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Winner of the Bancroft Prize: Through a gripping narrative based on massive new research, a leading historian reshapes our understanding of the Civil War.

Our standard Civil War histories tell a reassuring story of the triumph, in an inevitable conflict, of the dynamic, free-labor North over the traditional, slave-based South, vindicating the freedom principles built into the nation's foundations.

But at the time, on the borderlands of Pennsylvania and Virginia, no one expected war, and no one knew how it would turn out. The one certainty was that any war between the states would be fought in their fields and …

[Introduction To] Valley Of The Shadow: Two Communities In The American Civil War, Edward L. Ayers

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Two communities in America's Great Valley--Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County, Virginia--separated by only a few hundred miles, share much in their politics and ways of life. Yet they emerge on opposing sides of a war in which they zealously send their sons to fight and die. Here we see a Civil War that is not the inevitable conflict of rival societies, but a human drama, immediate, particular, engrossing.