The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era

Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era

by Mark E. Neely Jr.

Did preoccupations with family and work crowd out interest in politics in the nineteenth century, as some have argued? Arguing that social historians have gone too far in concluding that Americans were not deeply engaged in public life and that political historians have gone too far in asserting that politics informed all of Americans' lives, Mark Neely seeks to gauge the importance of politics for ordinary people in the Civil War era. Looking beyond the usual markers of political activity, Neely sifts through the political bric-a-brac of the era--lithographs and engravings of political heroes, campaign buttons, songsters filled with political lyrics, photo albums, newspapers, and political cartoons. In each of four chapters, he examines a different sphere--the home, the workplace, the gentlemen's Union League Club, and the minstrel stage--where political engagement was expressed in material culture. Neely acknowledges that there were boundaries to political life, however. But as his investigation shows, political expression permeated the public and private realms of Civil War America.

Genres: History

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Mark E. Neely, Jr. is an American historian best known as an authority on the U.S. Civil War in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991. He earned his undergraduate degree in American Studies at Yale University in 1966 and his Ph.D. in history at the same school in 1973. Yale's Graduate School would award him with a Wilbur Cross Medal in 1995.

From 1971 to 1972 Neely was a visiting instructor at Iowa State University. In the latter year, he was named director of The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a position he held for twenty years.

In 1992, Dr. Neely was named the John Francis Bannon Professor of History and American Studies at Saint Louis University. And, in 1998, he was made the McCabe Greer Professor of Civil War History at Pennsylvania State University.

Neely is best known for his 1991 book The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, which won both the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Bell I. Wiley Prize the following year. In March 1991, he published an article in the magazine Civil War History, entitled Was the Civil War a Total War?, which is considered one of the top three most influential articles on the war written in the last half of the 20th Century.

- from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this was really just the transcript for a series of lectures, it still read well. The author makes the case that traditional historians have overlooked political culture in relation to the Civil War era. He refutes several myths that have cropped up and makes the case that 19th century Americans were far more politically savvy than they get credit for. An interesting perspective on a relatively obscure topic.