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Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States
This innovative study presents a new, integrated view of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the history of the western United States.
Award-winning historians such as Steven Hahn, Martha Sandweiss, William Deverell, Virginia Scharff, and Stephen Kantrowitz offer original essays on lives, choices, and legacies in the American West, discussing the consequences for American Indian nations, the link between Reconstruction and suffrage movements, and cross-border interactions with Canada and Mexico.
In the West, Civil War battlefields and Civil War politics engaged a wide range of ethnic and racial distinctions, raising questions that would arise only later in places farther east. Histories of Reconstruction in the South ignore the connections to previous occupation efforts and citizenship debates in the West. The stories contained in this volume complicate our understanding of the paths from slavery to freedom for white as well as non-white Americans.
By placing the histories of the American West and the Civil War and Reconstruction period within one sustained conversation, this volume expands the limits of both by emphasizing how struggles over land, labor, sovereignty, and citizenship shaped the U.S. nation-state in this tumultuous era. This volume highlights significant moments and common concerns of this continuous conflict, as it stretched across the continent and throughout the nineteenth century.
Publishing on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, this collection brings eminent historians into conversation, looking at the Civil War from several Western perspectives, and delivers a refreshingly disorienting view intended for scholars, general readers, and students.
Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
Award-winning historians such as Steven Hahn, Martha Sandweiss, William Deverell, Virginia Scharff, and Stephen Kantrowitz offer original essays on lives, choices, and legacies in the American West, discussing the consequences for American Indian nations, the link between Reconstruction and suffrage movements, and cross-border interactions with Canada and Mexico.
In the West, Civil War battlefields and Civil War politics engaged a wide range of ethnic and racial distinctions, raising questions that would arise only later in places farther east. Histories of Reconstruction in the South ignore the connections to previous occupation efforts and citizenship debates in the West. The stories contained in this volume complicate our understanding of the paths from slavery to freedom for white as well as non-white Americans.
By placing the histories of the American West and the Civil War and Reconstruction period within one sustained conversation, this volume expands the limits of both by emphasizing how struggles over land, labor, sovereignty, and citizenship shaped the U.S. nation-state in this tumultuous era. This volume highlights significant moments and common concerns of this continuous conflict, as it stretched across the continent and throughout the nineteenth century.
Publishing on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, this collection brings eminent historians into conversation, looking at the Civil War from several Western perspectives, and delivers a refreshingly disorienting view intended for scholars, general readers, and students.
Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
332 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2015
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About the author
Adam Arenson
6 books2 followersAdam Arenson is an associate professor of history and director of the urban studies program at Manhattan College.
He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, and he previously taught at the University of Texas at El Paso. He researches, writes, and teaches the history and memory of North America, concentrating on the cultural and political history of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction, as well as the development of cities--from California to the Yukon Territory, from the province of Ontario to St. Louis to El Paso.
He writes accessible history including on the pages of The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he coordinates the Writing History Seminar in New York City, where he lives.
https://manhattan.edu/campus-director...
He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, and he previously taught at the University of Texas at El Paso. He researches, writes, and teaches the history and memory of North America, concentrating on the cultural and political history of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction, as well as the development of cities--from California to the Yukon Territory, from the province of Ontario to St. Louis to El Paso.
He writes accessible history including on the pages of The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he coordinates the Writing History Seminar in New York City, where he lives.
https://manhattan.edu/campus-director...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2018
This collection is more successful when the essays deal with post-war issues of Reconstruction and citizenship. All of the essays are well-done. I can't say I learned anything new about Sibley's Campaign or about the defense of the Pacific Northwest. If you haven't read on these topics, then the wartime essays will balance better with the others.
March 16, 2025
Toward a transcontinental Civil War historiography
If you’re generally aware that the West is important in 19th century American history but would like some more specific information, this collection of essays is ideal.
If you’re generally aware that the West is important in 19th century American history but would like some more specific information, this collection of essays is ideal.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews