First published 2013
The Civil War transforms every aspect of life for Northern families far from the battlefields. Households struggle with new economic realities as the cotton trade collapses and traditional systems break down. Women take on unfamiliar roles when young men march off to fight, leaving communities forever changed. Neighbors organize relief efforts that connect their quiet towns to distant fronts at Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Meanwhile, frontier communities face their own battles as Indians find themselves forgotten by a nation consumed with its own division. Artists capture these upheavals in landscape paintings that reveal how Americans see their country's destiny. This is the story of a home front bound to war's horror yet removed from its immediate violence, where ordinary people discover that no corner of the nation can escape the conflict's reach.
Genres: american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, ordinary-people
Setting: Northern, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg
Period: Civil War
216 pages · Hardcover · University of Chicago Press