21H.205
The Civil War and the Emergence of Modern America, 1861-1890
Spring 2015
Topics
- General Histories of the War
- Historiography of the War
- Historiography of Technology
- The Political Scene
- The Battlefield
- Supply Bureaus and Logistics
- Transportation and Communication Networks
- Medicine and Public Health
- Why the North Won
- Why the Confederacy Lost
- Outcomes and Implications
Readings
- Nevins, Allan. The War for the Union . Vol. 4. Scribner’s, 1959.
- Catton, Bruce. This Hallowed Ground The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War . Doubleday, 1956. (An Older Classic.)
- Donald, David. Liberty and Union . D. C. Heath & Company, 1978. ISBN: 9780669011524.
- Mitchell, Reid. The American Civil War, 1861–1865 . Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780582319738.
- Maier, Pauline, et al. Chapter 16 in Inventing America: A History of the United States . 2nd ed. W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN: 9780393926750.
- A single chapter treatment that emphases the technological aspects of the war.
- Cooper, William, and James McPherson. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand . University of South Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781570032592.
- Pressly, Thomas J. Americans Interpret their Civil War . The Free Press, 1962.
- Hindle, Brooke. Technology in Early America: Needs; Opportunities for Study . Chapel Hill, 1966.
- Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals (The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln) . Simon & Schuster, 2005.
- Donald, David. Lincoln . Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN: 9780684808468.
- ———. Abraham Lincoln . Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780195374520.
- Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery . W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. ISBN: 9780393066180.
- Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress . Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
- Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War . Harvard University Press, 1997.
- Cochran, Thomas C. “Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?” In Views of American Economic Growth . Vol. 1. Edited by Thomas C. Cochran and Thomas B. Brewer. McGraw-Hill, 1966, pp. 252–61. ASIN: B000YIX6KO.
- Andreano, Ralph, ed. The Economic Impact of the American Civil War . Schenkman Publishing Company, 1967.
- Gilchrist, David T., and W. David Lewis, eds. Economic Change in the Civil War Era . Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1965.
- McPherson, James M. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution . Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780195055429. (see especially chapter 1)
- Grant, U. S. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant . Vol. 2. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1884. (Also available from Penguin Classics (1999), with introduction by James McPherson.)
- Joan Waugh’s reflective essay on the “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A History of the Union Cause.” In More Than a Contest Between Armies: Essays on the Civil War Era . Edited by James Marten and A. Kristen Foster. Kent State University Press, 2008, pp. 219–49. ISBN: 9780873389129.
- ———. Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg . Crown Publishing Group, 2003.
- Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command . Indiana University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780253305466.
- Hess, Earl J. The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat . University Press of Kansas, 1997. ISBN: 9780700614219.
- ———. The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth . University Press of Kansas, 2008. ISBN: 9780700616077.
- Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War . Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780674160552.
- Musicant, Ivan. Divided Waters: The Naval History of the Civil War . Harpercollins, 1995. ISBN: 9780060164829.
- Hoogenboom, Ari. Gustavus Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780801889868.
- Dougherty, Kevin. Strangling the Confederacy: Coastal Operations in the American Civil War . Casemate, 2010. ISBN: 9781935149248.
- Symonds, Craig L. Union Combined Operations in the Civil War . Fordham University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780823232864.
- Still, William N., et al. Raiders and Blockaders: The American Civil War Afloat . Brassey’s Incorporation, 1998. ISBN: 9781574881646.
- ———. “Yankee Armorers and the Union War Machine: A Technological Perspective on the American Civil War.” In Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War. Edited by Barton C. Hacker. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2016. pp. 25-54. ISBN: 9781935623915
- Bruce, Robert. Lincoln and the Tools of War . Literary Licensing, Limited Liability Company, 2011. ISBN: 9781258083427.
- Davis, Carl L. Arming the Union: Small Arms in the Union Army . Kennikat, 1973. ISBN: 9780804690447.
- Tate, Thomas K. General James Wolfe Ripley, Chief of Ordnance: Answers to His Critics . BookSurge Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 9781439207338.
- Nosworthy, Brent. The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War . Basic Books, 2003. ISBN: 9780786711475.
- Bilby, Joseph G. Small Arms at Gettysburg: Infantry and Cavalry Weapons in America’s Greatest Battle . Westholme Publishing, 2008.
- Abrahamson, James L. The American Home Front: Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II . University of Michigan Library, 1983, pp. 43–85.
- Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War . Knopf, 1965.
- Haupt, Herman. Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt . University of Michigan Library, 1901.
- Vandiver, Frank E. Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command System . Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
- ———. Ploughshares Into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance . University of Texas Press, 1952.
- Coulter, E. Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: A History of the South . Louisiana State University Press, 1950. ISBN: 9780807100073.
- Davis, Jr., Robert S. Cotton, Fire, and Dreams: The Robert Findlay Iron Works and Heavy Industry in Macon, Georgia, 1839–1912 . Mercer University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780865545984.
- Iobst, Richard W. Civil War Macon . Mercer University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780865546349.
- Jones, Gordon L. Confederate Odyssey: The George W. Wray Jr. Civil War Collection at the Atlanta History Center . University of Georgia Press, 2014. ISBN:9780820346854
- Abdill, George B. Civil War Railroads . Superior Publishing Company, 1961. ISBN: 9780517012437.
- Clark, Jr., John E. Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact Of Management On Victory And Defeat . Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
- Turner, George Edgar. Victory Rode the Rails The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War . Bobbs-Merrill, 1953.
- Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War . King’s Crown Press, 1952.
- Ward, James R. That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt . Louisiana State University Press, 1973. ISBN: 9780807102251.
- Thienel, Philip M. Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders: The Right Hand of American Genius . White Mane Publishing, 2000. ISBN: 9781572491984.
- Thomas, William G. The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America . Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780300141078.
- Black, Thomas C. The Railroads of the Confederacy . The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780807847299.
- Gudmestad, Robert. Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom . Louisiana State University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780807138397.
- Hochfelder, David. Chapter 1 in The Telegraph in America . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781421407470.
- Raines, Rebecca R. Getting the Message through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps . University of Michigan Library, 1996, pp. 3–40.
- Thompson, Robert L. Wiring a Continent - The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States 1832–1866 . Princeton University Press, 1947.
- Plum, William R. The Military Telegraph during the Civil War in the United States . Vol. 2. Ayer Company Publishers, 1974. ISBN: 9780405060533.
- Markle, Donald E., ed. The Telegraph Goes to War: The Personal Diary of David Homer Bates, Lincoln’s Telegraph Operator . Edmonston Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 9781892059024.
- Wheeler, Tom. Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War . Harper Business, 2006. ISBN: 9780061129780. Articles by James R. Fleming.
- See chapter on Civil War.
- Adams, George W. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War . Henry Schuman, 1952. ISBN: 9780890290866.
- Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs . Galen Press Limited, 2002. ISBN: 9781883620080.
- Denney, Robert E. Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded . Sterling Publishing Company Incorporation, 1994. ISBN: 9780806908793.
- Duncan, Louis F. Medical Department of the U.S. Army in the Civil War . Butternut Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780942211306.
- Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War . University of Illinois Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780252070105.
- Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service . Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
- Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. Confederate Hospitals on the Move: Samuel H. Stout and the Army of Tennessee . University of South Carolina Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780872499645.
- Schmidt, James M., and Guy R. Hasegawa, eds. Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine . Edinborough Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781889020358.
- Wilbur, C. Keith. Civil War Medicine . Globe Pequot Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780762703418.
- Beller, Susan Provost. Medical Practices in the Civil War . Shoe Tree Press, 1992. ISBN: 9781558702646.
- Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine . Random House, 2005. ISBN: 9780375503153.
- Coco, Gregory A. A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1-November 20, 1863 . Thomas Publications, 1988. ISBN: 9780939631094.
- Calcutt, Rebecca B. Richmond’s Wartime Hospitals . Pelican Publishing, 2005. ISBN: 9781589802971.
- Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War . W W Norton & Company Incorporations, 1994. ISBN: 9780393036664.
- Maher, Mary Denis. To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War . LSU Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780807124390.
- Smith, George W. Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories during the Civil War . Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780789009470.
- Steiner, Paul E. Disease in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861–1865 . Charles C Thomas Publications Limited, 1968. ISBN: 9780398018528.
- Fredrickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union . University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780252062742.
- Donald, David, ed. Why the North Won the Civil War . Collier, 1960.
- Cowley, Robert, ed. With My Face to the Enemy . Highbridge Audio, 2001, pp. 59–102. ISBN: 9781565114616.
- Wesley, Charles H. The Collapse of the Confederacy . University of Nebraska Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780803221703.
- Kerby, Robert. “Why the Confederacy Lost.” In The American Civil War . Edited by Ethan S. Rafuse. Ashgate Publication Company, 2005, pp. 505–24. ISBN: 9780754625148.
- Black, Thomas C. Chapter 22 in The Railroads of the Confederacy . The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780807847299. (see above).
- Wiley, Bell I. The Road to Appomattox . Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983.
- Grimsley, Mark, and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. The Collapse of the Confederacy . University of Nebraska Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780803221703.
- Beringer, Richard E., et al. Why the South Lost the Civil War . University of Georgia Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780820308159.
- Davis, William C. The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy . University Press of Kansas, 1996. ISBN: 9780700608096.
- Castell, Albert. Chapters 1–2 in Winning and Losing in the Civil War: Essays and Stories . University of South Carolina Press, 2010, pp. 1–32. ISBN: 9781570039171.
- ———. Articles of War: Winners, Losers, (and Some Who Were Both) During the Civil War . Stackpole Books, 2001, pp. 233–38. ISBN: 9780811700054.
- Gallagher, Gary. The Confederate War . Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 3–13, 153, and 157–72. ISBN: 9780674160552.
- Ransom, Roger. Chapter 2 in The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been . W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. ISBN: 9780393059670.
- Maier, et al. Alex Keyssar’s chapter on “Reconstruction.” Chapter 19 in Inventing America: A History of the United States . 2nd ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. ISBN: 9780393168167.
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 . Harper Collins, 1988. ISBN: 9780060158514.
- Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865–1901 . Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674006379.
- Nevins, Allan. The State Universities and Democracy . University of Illinois Press, 1962.
- Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America; Non-Military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress . Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. ISBN: 9780826511171.
- Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War . Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780674362130.
- Bain, David H. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad . Diane Publishing Company, 1999. ISBN: 9780756764494.
- White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America . W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. ISBN: 9780393061260.
- Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 . Doubleday, 1987.
- Bradley, Joseph. Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-Century Russia . Northern Illinois University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780875801544.
- Marcot, Roy. Chapters 2–5 in Remington: America’s Oldest Gunmaker . Primedia, 1998. ISBN: 9781881657002.
- Wengenroth, Ulrich. “Industry and Warfare in Prussia.” In On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 . Edited by Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 249–62. ISBN: 9780521560719.
- Roe, Joseph W. English and American Tool Builders . Yale University Press, 1916.
- Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780801829758. For a synopsis of Hounshell’s argument, see his “Mass Production in American History, 1800–1932.” Polhem 1 (1984): 1–28.
- Chandler, Jr., Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business . Harvard University Press, 1997.
- For an excellent synopsis of the V. H., see Chandler. “The United States: Evolution of Enterprise.” Chapter 2 in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume VII. The Industrial Economies Capital, Labour, and Enterprise, Part 2 . Edited by Peter Mathias and M. M. Postan. Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 70–133. ISBN: 9780521215916.
- For a critique of Chandler, see White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America . W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, pp. xxix–xxxi, 231–32, 244, and 509. ISBN: 9780393061260.
- Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877–1920 . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1967. ISBN: 9780313226472.
- Porter, Glenn. The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1920 . 2nd ed. Harlan Davidson, 1992. ISBN: 9780882958828.
- Noble, David F. America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism . Knopf, 1977. ISBN: 9780394499833.
- Nelson, Daniel. Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 . University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780299069001.
- Trachtenberg, Alan. Chapter 4 in Incorporation of America: Culture and Society, 1865–1893 . Hill & Wang Publishing, 1982, pp. 79–107. ISBN: 9780809058273.
- Licht, Walter. Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century . Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780801850141.
- Wrege, Charles D., and Ronald Greenwood. Frederick W. Taylor: The Father of Scientific Management: Myth and Reality . Business One Irwin, 1991. ISBN: 9781556235016.
- Aitken, Hugh G. J. Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal: Scientific Management in Action, 1908–1915 . Harvard University Press, 1960.
- Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 . University of Illinois Press, 1981. ISBN: 9780252008696.
- Gutman, Herbert. Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America . Vintage, 1977. ISBN: 9780394722511.
- Wallace, Anthony F. C. Chapter 6 in St. Clair: A Nineteenth Century Coal Town’s Experience with a Disaster-prone Industry . Knopf, 1987. ISBN: 9780394528670.
- Bruce, Robert. 1877: The Year of Violence . Bobbs-merrill Company, Incorporations, 1959.
- Foner, Philip. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 . Pathfinder Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780873488280.
- Bellesiles, Michael. 1877: America’s Year of Living Violently . New Press, 2012.
- Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America . Pantheon, 2006. ISBN: 9780375422379.
- Buder, Stanley. Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880–1930 . Oxford University Press, 1967.
- Hayes, Samuel. The Response to Industrialism 1885–1914 . University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226321646.
- Luvaas, Jay. The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance . University Press of Kansas, 1988, pp. ix–xxx, 1–13, and 203–33. ISBN: 9780700603794.
- O’Brien, Patrick. Chapters 1 and 6–7 in The Economic Effects of the American Civil War . Humanities Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780391035614.
- Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery . Granta Books, 2003, pp. 1–101.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.