Introduction

The 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War triggered a predictable outpouring of literature on the fight and those who fought. It occasioned considerably less scrutiny of the other ways in which the war years left an imprint on American life. Yet the changes that took place between 1861 and 1865 in such fields as public education, transportation, civil rights, science and technology, farming and land use, commerce and industry, and the structure of government had a lasting effect on the nation’s future development, even if they were less compelling to contemporaries-and to most writers since-than the war itself.