Reading Between the Lines

New! Making Sense of the Civil War

The program is designed as a series of five conversations exploring different facets of the Civil War experience, informed by reading the words written or spoken by powerful voices from the past and present, as listed below. Sites receive three books and are strongly recommended to follow the outline of topics and suggested readings provided by the NEH. Facilitators may choose some or all of the suggested texts from America's War. The introductory essay (PDF) by project historian Edward L. Ayers lays out the scope of the series and will help facilitators formulate a syllabus and questions of their own.

Texts include historians’ accounts; novels; speeches; proclamations and government documents; news accounts; and journals and letters from soldiers, nurses, abolitionists, former slaves, and other eye-witnesses to the transformative events of the mid-19th century.

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	This introductory essay (available online) by project historian Edward L. Ayers beautifully and succinctly overviews the themes of the series and explains the scope of topics. The text may serve as an introductory text for participants but is required reading by scholar-facilitators before the series begins.
	Geraldine Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March imagines the experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Little Women. The novel traces his experiences as a Union chaplain and, later, teacher on a plantation of recently emancipated slaves. To research her character, Brooks drew heavily upon the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott’s father Bronson, the friend and colleague of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
	In Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, James McPherson, a leading historian of the Civil War, tells the story of the bloodiest day in American history and its ramifications, including Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
	Edward L. Ayers, award-winning historian of the Civil War and president of the University of Virginia, edited this new anthology of seminal writings and key primary documents of the Civil War. America's War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th Anniversaries is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.

Topics of Conversation

Session 1: Imagining War

Geraldine Brooks, March (2005)

Suggested selections from America’s War anthology:

• Louisa May Alcott, excerpt from Journal kept at the Hospital, Georgetown, D.C. (1862)

Session 2: Choosing Sides

Suggested selections from America’s War anthology:

• Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1852)
• Henry David Thoreau, excerpt from “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (1859)
• Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)
• Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone” speech (March 21, 1861)
• Robert Montague, Secessionist speech at Virginia secession convention (April 1-2, 1861)
• Chapman Stuart, Unionist speech at Virginia secession convention (April 5, 1861)
• Elizabeth Brown Pryor, excerpt from Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters (2007)
• Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign that Failed” (1885)
• Sarah Morgan, excerpt from The Diary of Sarah Morgan (May 1862)

Session Three: Making Sense of War

Suggested selections from America’s War anthology:

• Ambrose Bierce, “What I Saw of Shiloh” (1881)
• Ulysses Grant, excerpt from the Memoirs (1885)
• Shelby Foote, excerpt from Shiloh (1952)
• Bobbie Ann Mason, “Shiloh” (1982)
• General Braxton Bragg, speech to the Army of the Mississippi (May 3, 1862)

Session 4: The Shape of War

James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (2002)

Suggested selections from America’s War anthology:

• Gary W. Gallagher, excerpt from “The Net Result of the Campaign was in Our Favor?Confederate Reaction to the Maryland Campaign” (1999)
• Drew Gilpin Faust, “The Work of Death,” preface to This Republic of Suffering (2009)

Session Five: War and Freedom

Suggested selections from America’s War anthology:

• Abraham Lincoln, address on colonization (1862)
• John M. Washington, “Memorys [sic] of the Past (1873)
• Frederick Douglass, “Men of Color, To Arms!” (March 1863)
• Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation” (January 1863)
• Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” (November 1863)
• Abraham Lincoln, letters to James C. Conkling and Albert G. Hodges (1864)
• James S. Brisbin, report on U.S. Colored Cavalry in Virginia (October 2, 1864)
• Colored Citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, Petition to the Union Convention of Tennessee Assembled at the Capitol in Nashville (January 9, 1865)
• Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
• Margaret Walker, excerpt from Jubilee (1966)
• Leon Litwack, excerpt from Been in the Storm So Long (1979)

 

“Making Sense of the American Civil War” is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of its We the People initiative, which promotes scholarship, teaching, and learning about American history and culture.