San Antonio College Library

An account of the people and events on the northern home front.

This history deals with the entire scope of the Civil War--from the months of unrest and hysteria that led to Fort Sumter through the Union victory.

Account of the civil rights movement in the south in the 60's. White volunteers joined black activists and worked together during the marches and demonstrations.

A century ago, political campaigns meant torchlight parades, spectacular pageants staged by opposing parties, and crowds of citizens attired in military dress or proudly displaying their crafts at well-attended rallies. The intense partisanship of presidential campaigns and party newspapers made political choice easy for people from all walks of life. In the late 1860s and 1870s, however, the rise of liberalism led to a rejection of partisanship by...

"During the Civil War, the United States Sanitary Commission attempted to replace female charity networks and traditions of voluntarism with a centralized organization to ensure that women's support for the war effort served an elite, liberal vision of nationhood. After years of debate over women's place in the democracy and status as citizens, soldier relief work offered women an occasion to demonstrate their patriotism and their rights to inclusion...

According to the 1860 census, nearly 350,000 native northerners resided in a southern state by the time of the Civil War. Although northern in birth and upbringing, many of these men and women identified with their adopted section once they moved south. In this innovative study, David Ross Zimring examines what motivated these Americans to change sections, support (or not) the Confederate cause, and, in many cases, rise to considerable influence in...

Tells the stories of former Confederates who moved North after the Civil War in hopes of rebuilding their lives and fortunes.

James D. Schmidt examines federal efforts to establish "free labor" in the South during and after the Civil War by exploring labor law in the antebellum North and South and its role in the development of a capitalist labor market. Identifying the emergence of conservative, moderate, and liberal stances on state intervention in the labor market, Schmidt develops three important case studies - wartime Reconstruction in Louisiana, the Thirteenth Amendment,...

This is the story of Lincoln's famous Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War, when it was under the command of the dashing General George B. McClellan. Clearly a man of destiny, McClellan quickly became obsessed with the idea -- and the country and his troops shared his view, for a time -- that he was divinely chosen as the instrument of the Republic's salvation. But he failed to understand either the President's problems with...

A Self-Evident Lie explores and underscores the fear and complex meaning of "slavery" to northerners before the Civil War. Many northerners asked: If slavery was the beneficent and paternalistic institution that southerners claimed, could it not be applied with equal morality to whites as well as blacks? Republicans repeatedly expressed concern that proslavery arguments were not inherently racial. Irrespective of race, anyone could fall victim to...