Civil War Citizens

Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict

Susannah J. Ural

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780814785690
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814785737
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

At its core, the Civil War was a conflict over the meaning of citizenship. Most famously, it became a struggle over whether or not to grant rights to a group that stood outside the pale of civil-society: African Americans. But other groups--namely Jews, Germans, the Irish, and Native Americans--also became part of this struggle to exercise rights stripped from them by legislation, court rulings, and the prejudices that defined the age.
Grounded in extensive research by experts in their respective fields, Civil War Citizens is the first volume to collectively analyze the wartime experiences of those who lived outside the dominant white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant citizenry of nineteenth-century America. The essays examine the momentous decisions made by these communities in the face of war, their desire for full citizenship, the complex loyalties that shaped their actions, and the inspiring and heartbreaking results of their choices-- choices that still echo through the United States today.
Contributors: Stephen D. Engle, William McKee Evans, David T. Gleeson, Andrea Mehrländer, Joseph P. Reidy, Robert N. Rosen, and Susannah J. Ural.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Yankee Dutchmen: Germans, the Union, and the Construction of Wartime Identity
• 2 “With More Freedom and Independence Than the Yankees”: The Germans of Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans during the American Civil War
• 3 “Ye Sons of Green Erin Assemble”: Northern Irish American Catholics and the Union War Effort, 1861–1865
• 4 Irish Rebels, Southern Rebels: The Irish Confederates
• 5 The Jewish Confederates
• 6 Native Americans in the Civil War: Three Experiences
• 7 The African American Struggle for Citizenship Rights in the Northern United States during the Civil War
• About the Contributors
• Index