ABSTRACT
Following the suggestion of the historian Peter Parish, these essays probe "the edges" of slavery and the sectional conflict. The authors seek to recover forgotten stories, exceptional cases and contested identities to reveal the forces that shaped America, in the era of "the Long Civil War," c.1830-1877. Offering an unparalleled scope, from the internal politics of southern households to trans-Atlantic propaganda battles, these essays address the fluidity and negotiability of racial and gendered identities, of criminal and transgressive behaviors, of contingent, shifting loyalties and of the hopes of freedom that found expression in refugee camps, court rooms and literary works.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|59 pages
Negotiating Perceptions of Slavery, Civil War and the Confederacy
chapter 1|16 pages
The Republic on Trial or Slavery Under Fire?
chapter 2|16 pages
Britain in the American Civil War
part II|63 pages
A Stable Society?
chapter 5|18 pages
Class, Color and Conflict
chapter 6|21 pages
Fashioning Whiteness
part III|57 pages
African American Experiences of Emancipation and Freedom Reconsidered