Victorian America and the Civil War

Description

Victorian America and the Civil War examines the relationships between American Victorian culture and the Civil War. The author argues that at the heart of American Victorian culture was Romanticism, a secular quest to answer questions previously settled by traditional religion. In examining the biographies of seventy-five Americans who lived in the antebellum and Civil War eras, elements of disequilibrium, passion and intellectual excitement are explored in contrast to the traditional view of Victorian self-control and moral assurance. The Civil War is shown to be a central event in the cultural life of the American Victorians, which both was an environment for the resolution of their questions and a place where their values and aspirations could be reshaped.

"Exciting books and articles have continued to appear in recent years that take the study of the Civil War in new directions. Anne C. Rose's Victorian America and the Civil War does just that...The introduction--perhaps the most thorough I have ever read--defines the study's terms and explains the author's agenda...merits a wide scholarly reading." The Annals of Iowa "...a significant contribution to American studies, breaking new ground in our understanding of those 'influentials' who became secular zealots, even hedonists, and who saw war as another medium for self-gratification." Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas "No summary can do justice to the rich insight, careful analysis, and historiographic sophistication of Rose's text...As a study of Victorian culture, this work cannot be surpassed." Reviews in American History "This is a highly engaging and humane piece of cultural history, whose greatest strength is its sensitivity both to individual lives and to the larger patterns of behavior and values revealed in those lives." Karen Halttunen, University of California, Davis "Through a study of seventy-five white, middle-class Victorians, Anne C. Rose has created a compelling portrait of Civil War era American culture. Her 'Victorian Moment' is an ingenious inquiry into middle-class culture and how the Civil War changed or amplified trends that had begun a decade or two earlier." Donald Yacovone, Journal of the Early Republic "Rose has managed to pack an impressive amount of material into the text...readers who make their way through it will be amply rewarded, as she has shed new light on the mid-nineteenth-century middle class. Rose has effectively set the Victorian generation in its historical context and shown how it was affected by the central event of the nineteenth century." Bill Cecil-Fronsman, North Carolina Historical Review "Victorian America and the Civil War should be viewed as a useful counterweight to the extensive literature presenting the Civil War as a cataclysmic breaking point in all facets of American culture...scholars will find much insightful information in this work." Nina Silber, Journal of American History "Rose's well-written study is both critical and empathetic in ways that will help us think more clearly about the time when the war came." Steven M. Stowe, Georgia Historical Quarterly "The ideas set forth in her splendid introduction and elaborated in each chapter must be reckoned with in any future work on either the Civil War or Victorian Culture." Susan Curtis, American Historical Review "The great advantage of Rose's method is the broad base of data it provides for her generalizations, many of which are fresh and insightful. Her descriptions of how this generation held apparently incompatible values in ambivalent tension are perfectly nuanced, and give us a more three-dimensional picture of familiar figures than we may have yet encountered." Michael S. Hamilton, Journal of American Culture