History Commons^™

Saving Savannah: The City And The Civil War (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War by Jacqueline Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Black And On The Border, Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas Iii, Anne Sarah Rubin

History Faculty Publications

In an attempt to bring together aspects of the war that are often kept separate, this essay focuses on the region of the United States that is often ignored when explaining the onset of the Civil War: the border where the upper South met the lower North. This area--a third of the nation--went into the war with uncertainty but then gave itself over to the conflict, playing a crucial role start to finish as battlefield and supplier of soldiers, materiel, and leaders. Specifically, this essay looks at the border between Virginia and Pennsylvania, a region almost arbitrarily divided by the …

Generations Later: Has Once-Remote Promise Of Freedom Been Fulfilled?, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Emancipation began with a flickering promise, burned intensely for a few years during Reconstruction, and then smoldered for a century. Equality and justice have come into view for most African-Americans only in the past two generations. For many descendants of slavery, those essential rights of a free people are still hard to see.

Slavery, Economics And Constitutional Ideals, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

As we think about endings, however, it is also useful to think about beginnings. That is what President Abraham Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address, delivered just five weeks before the surrender at Appomattox and his own assassination soon thereafter. All knew, he said reflecting sadly and thoughtfully on how the Civil War came about, that slavery was, "somehow," the cause. In fact, "somehow," however, lay puzzles, contradictions, and questions. The connections between slavery and the Civil War have concerned Americans ever since the events at Appomattox.

Rethinking Slavery And Freedom (Book Reviews), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review essay of the following books:

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin.

Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War edited by Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland.

Worrying About The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

There is no animosity in any of these historical or practical interpretations of the Civil War. It is clear that the North fought for purposes entirely good--for Union and the end of slavery--but Confederate soldiers also win respect for their bravery, their devotion, and their struggle against long odds. They seem to have been playing historical roles for which they are not to blame. The reenactors, the books in stores, and the battlefield tours generally avoid talking about the cause of the war, focusing instead on the common bravery and hardships of soldiers North and South.

The Strange Career Of Thomas Jefferson: Race And Slavery In American Memory, Edward L. Ayers, Scot A. French

History Faculty Publications

Jefferson's life has come to symbolize America's struggle with racial inequality, his successes and failures mirroring those of his nation. The quest for a more honest and inclusive rendering of the American past has placed a heavy burden on Jefferson and his slaves. Generation after generation of Americans has sought some kind of moral symmetry at Monticello, some kind of reconciliation between slavery and freedom, black and white, past injustice and present compensation.

The World The Liberal Capitalists Made (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South by James Oakes. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Slavery and Freedom pursues its thesis with dogged energy. "Southerners took their definition of freedom from the liberal capitalist world which produced them and of which they remained a part," Oakes argues, "and this could only mean that southern slavery was defined as the denial of the assumptions of liberal capitalism."