In this Book
- The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
- Series: Civil War America
summary
This is the story of how Americans attempted to define what it meant to be a citizen of the United States, at a moment of fracture in the republic's history. As Erik Mathisen demonstrates, prior to the Civil War, American national citizenship amounted to little more than a vague bundle of rights. But during the conflict, citizenship was transformed. Ideas about loyalty emerged as a key to citizenship, and this change presented opportunities and profound challenges aplenty. Confederate citizens would be forced to explain away their act of treason, while African Americans would use their wartime loyalty to the Union as leverage to secure the status of citizens during Reconstruction.
In The Loyal Republic, Mathisen sheds new light on the Civil War, American emancipation, and a process in which Americans came to a new relationship with the modern state. Using the Mississippi Valley as his primary focus and charting a history that traverses both sides of the battlefield, Mathisen offers a striking new history of the Civil War and its aftermath, one that ushered in nothing less than a revolution in the meaning of citizenship in the United States.
In The Loyal Republic, Mathisen sheds new light on the Civil War, American emancipation, and a process in which Americans came to a new relationship with the modern state. Using the Mississippi Valley as his primary focus and charting a history that traverses both sides of the battlefield, Mathisen offers a striking new history of the Civil War and its aftermath, one that ushered in nothing less than a revolution in the meaning of citizenship in the United States.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xvi
- Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- 1. A Government without Citizens
- pp. 13-37
- 3. Schools of Citizenship
- pp. 64-86
- 5. Loyalty Under Fire
- pp. 118-144
- 6. It Looks Much Like Abandoned Land
- pp. 145-166
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469636344
Related ISBN(s)
9781469636320, 9781469636337, 9781469654591, 9798890847980
MARC Record
OCLC
1028905649
Pages
240
Launched on MUSE
2018-03-19
Language
English
Open Access
No