Maryland Voices of the Civil War - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080188621X ISBN 13: 9780801886218

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Winner of the Founders Award from the American Civil War Museum, for Excellence in Scholarship on the Confederate Era. The most contentious event in our nation's history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms―Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens.
No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland―where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers―many previously unpublished―to portray the passions of a wide variety of people―merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, slave owners, civic leaders, and children―caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell tells the compelling story of how Maryland African Americans escaped from slavery and fought for the Union and their freedom alongside white soldiers and he reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland's Southern sympathies―while genuine―never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland.
Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.

About this title

From the Author:

Winner of the Founders Award from the American Civil War Museum, for Excellence in Scholarship on the Confederate Era. Excerpts from more than 1,000 original documents are grouped into themes, each organized chronologically. Documents are introduced with head notes describing the writer, the recipient, and/or a reference in the document. The result is a vivid portrait of how hundreds of Maryland civilians, in their own words, confronted the anxiety, fear and terror of the Civil War in their border slave state.

About the Author:

Charles W. Mitchell is the editor of "Maryland Voices of the Civil War," the story of the Maryland civilian experience during that war, winner of the 2009 Founders Award from the American Civil War Museum; and "Travels Through American History in the Mid-Atlantic: A Guide for All Ages," winner of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award in 2016 from the Society of American Travel Writers. Both titles are published by Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Mitchell has published widely on Civil War-era politics and slavery in Maryland and has discussed his work on Maryland Public Television and several local NPR radio programs. He has appeared at the Annapolis Book Festival and the Baltimore Book Festival and chairs the Publications Committee at the Maryland Historical Society, where he serves as a trustee. From 1995-2001, as a travel writer for the Baltimore Sun, Mitchell wrote about historical sites in the mid-Atlantic region, ranging from the colonial era through the Civil War.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 080188621X
• ISBN 13: 9780801886218
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 568
• Editor: Mitchell Charles W.