Almost 200,000 African Americans fought to save the Union, many believing that military service was the pathway to freedom. Yet, even after enlisting, their journeys for liberation continued amid the bloody civil war. They marched across taxing terrain, performed backbreaking labor, and endured corporeal punishment meted out by white officers. They also agonized over families still enslaved and suffered virulent diseases. Many grew disillusioned, disgruntled, or homesick. They fought on br...

The Substances of War explores how drugs, alcohol, and other substances were perceived, used, and fought over during the Civil War era. Because the Civil War unfolded in a culture already saturated in drugs, the essays in this collection take substance use and abuse as the center of its study, charting the consumption of many substances—from water, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol to quinine and opiates—from the beginning of the Civil War to its contested and indeterminate endings.In ...

Investigates how Americans have remembered violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments, historical markers, college classrooms, and history books.George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020 sparked a national reckoning for the United States that had been 400 years in the making. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest both the murder and the centuries of systemic racism that already existed among European colonists but ...

Almost 200,000 African Americans fought to save the Union, many believing that military service was the pathway to freedom. Yet their journeys for liberation continued. They marched across taxing terrain, performed backbreaking labor, and endured corporeal punishment. They agonized over families still enslaved and suffered virulent diseases. They fought on bravely, yet thousands ran. Chafing against restraints and violence, they briefly liberated themselves.The men examined in ...