The Children's Civil War

by Marten, James Alan

• ISBN13: 9780807849040
• ISBN10: 0807849049
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Summary

Children--white and black, northern and southern--endured a vast and varied range of experiences during the Civil War. Children celebrated victories and mourned defeats, tightened their belts and widened their responsibilities, took part in patriotic displays and suffered shortages and hardships, fled their homes to escape enemy invaders and snatched opportunities to run toward the promise of freedom. Offering a fascinating look at how children were affected by our nation's greatest crisis, James Marten examines their toys and games, their literature and schoolbooks, the letters they exchanged with absent fathers and brothers, and the hardships they endured. He also explores children's politicization, their contributions to their homelands' war efforts, and the lessons they took away from the war. Drawing on the childhoods of such diverse Americans as Jane Addams, Booker T. Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt, and on sources that range from diaries and memoirs to children's "amateur newspapers, " Marten examines the myriad ways in which the Civil War shaped the lives of a generation of American children.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction Children of War	1	(5)
War Ain't Nuthin' but Hell on Dis Earth: Children, Society, and War	6	(25)
Fighting against Wrong, and for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful: The War in Children's Literature and Schoolbooks	31	(37)
When I Come Home Again, I Won't Go Away Any More: Fathers, Brothers, and Children	68	(33)
We Lived Years in As Many Days: The War Comes to Children	101	(47)
Rabid Partisans among Their Playmates: Children Respond to the Civil War	148	(39)
Childhoods Lost and Found: Civil War Children as Adults	187	(56)
Notes	243	(64)
Bibliography	307	(48)
Index	355