Beyond the Battlefield: New England and the Civil War

This publication is a collection of papers presented at the Dublin Seminar of New England Folklife conference in June of 2011. New England’s large role in the Civil War, at home and abroad, and even occasionally for the South, is difficult to comprehend because of the myriad of facets to the story: from social complaint, domestic support, and munitions production to bravery and cowardice in the field. The contribution of this publication is to look “Beyond the Battlefield” and back to the home front where every day between 1861 and 1865, like elsewhere in our fractured country, demands were made on untold human commitment and resources.

The following is a list of the title and author of each paper:  Picturing Violence: The Amistad Affair, Panorama Painting, and National Identities by Naomi Hood Slipp, Old Man Eloquent and the Haverhill Petition of 1842 by Kathleen F. Dacey, Uriah Parmelee’s Ordeal: A Connecticut Yankee’s Abolitionist Principles and the Reality of the Civil War by Norman MacLeod, “Armed with Needles”: New England Woman in the Civil War by Juanita Leisch Jensen, Battle on the Home Front: The Hartford Soldiers’ Aid Association by Lynne Z. Bassett, “To provide for the comfort of those of our race”: African American Soldiers’ Aid Societies and the New England Civil War Effort by Patricia L. Richard, “I should like to feel that I was doing some real good to somebody”: The Civil War Sacrifice of Harriet Ward Foote Hawley by Elizabeth C. Stevens, New England’s “Other War” by Catherine Lynch Deichmann, Bunker Hill and Fort Moultrie: The Revolutionary Centennials and Reconciliation by Jeffrey Kosiorek, “They come not with fire and sword”: Sheridan’s New England Veterans and the Opening Campaign for Remembrance and Reconciliation in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley by Jonathon A. Noyalas.