The American Civil War: A Literary and Historical Anthology, 2nd Edition

Documents

Walt Whitman, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (1861)

Walt Whitman, from Drum-Taps (1865), “Drum-Taps”

Alexander Stephens, the “Cornerstone” Speech (full text) (March 21, 1861)

Author Biographies

Whitman, Walt

Stephens, Alexander

Images

Discussion Questions

1. Do you believe the South had the right to secede? Why or why not? How do we determine that? In what ways was Southern secession both alike and dissimilar to that of other political movements for independence, particularly that of the American colonies?
2. How would you describe the rhetoric of Lincoln’s first inaugural address? What interests is he trying to balance? How effectively does he do so? How much room for compromise is there in the speech? Where are his “red lines”?
3. How does the imagery of Herman Melville’s “The Portent” contribute to the meaning(s) of the poem?
4. How does the visual rhetoric in one of the images included in this section work to convey a particular political perspective?
5. In what sense does Henry Timrod’s “Ethnogenesis” transcend mere political propaganda to become real art?
6. To what extent, if any, does Harriet Martineau’s status as a cultural “outsider” limit her understanding of the war? Or, are there ways in which it might give her an improved perspective?
7. How convincing do you find the political rhetoric of either Jefferson Davis or Alexander Stephens? What are the characteristic moves and techniques of their speaking style?
8. Lincoln is often praised for the “literary” quality of his writing and oratory. Find a passage that strikes you as especially powerful or graceful, and try to explain how it achieves its effect.
9. How does Mary Chesnut’s diary illuminate the interplay between the private and public spheres? Does this interplay between the two suggest anything about the origins of the Civil War?
10. Apart from a desire to explain the origins of the war, what seems to be motivating Whitman in “Origins of Attempted Secession”?

Selected Bibliography

Ashworth, John. Slavery, Capitalism and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume I, Commerce and Compromise, 1820–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Ayers, Edward L. What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History.New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.

Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Why the Civil War Came. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Bowman, Shearer D. At the Precipice: Americans North and South During the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Calore, Paul. The Causes of the Civil War: The Political, Cultural, Economic, and Territorial Disputes between North and South. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co, 2008.

Clavin, Matthew J. Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

Egerton, Douglas R. Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Egnal, Marc. Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion: The Secessionists at Bay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Gallagher, Gary W. The Union War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Goodheart, Adam. 1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Harrold, Stanley. Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Hoffer, William James. The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: Wiley, 1978.

Holzer, Harold. Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Horwitz, Tony. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. New York: Henry Holt, 2011.

Huston, James. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Lankford, Nelson D. Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

Lightner, David L. Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Lockwood, John, and Charles Lockwood. The Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days That Shook the Union. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Loewen, James W., and Edward H. Sebesta, eds. The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause.” Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

McClintock, Russell. Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

McPherson, James M. What They Fought For, 1861–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Neely, Mark E. Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Onuf, Nicholas, and Peter S. Onuf. Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Potter, David M, and Don E. Fehrenbacher. The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848–1861. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011.

Ratner, Lorman A., and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr. Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Reid, Brian Holden. The Origins of the American Civil War. London: Longman, 1996.

Richards, Leonard L. The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Rugemer, Edward B. The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.

Schoen, Brian. The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Stewart, James B. Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008.

Thomas, Emory M. The Dogs of War, 1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Waugh, John C. One Man Great Enough: Abraham Lincoln’s Road to Civil War. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Woodworth, Steven E. Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.