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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
"Momentous Events In Small Places": The Coming Of The Civil War In Two American Communities, Edward L. Ayers
"Momentous Events In Small Places": The Coming Of The Civil War In Two American Communities, Edward L. Ayers
History Faculty Publications
Historians, professional and otherwise, have written thousands of regimental histories, county histories, and town histories of the Civil War years. These studies make the coming of the war concrete and compelling. Inspired by such accounts, it seemed to me that two local portrayals could be even better than one, that exploring communities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line as they each confronted the events from the late fifties to the late sixties might make both sides more comprehensible.
What Caused The Civil War?, Edward L. Ayers
What Caused The Civil War?, Edward L. Ayers
History Faculty Publications
The challenge of explaining the Civil War has led historians to seek clarity in two ways of thought. One school, the fundamentalists, emphasizes the intrinsic, inevitable conflict between slavery and free labor. The other, the revisionists, emphasizes discrete events and political structures rather than slavery itself. Both sides see crucial parts of the problem, but it has proved difficult to reconcile the perspectives because they approach the Civil War with different assumptions about what drives history.