SYLLABUS
HISTORY 4860 (Civil War and Reconstruction)
Fall 2010
I. Readings
The textbook for the course is Charles P. Roland's An American Iliad. Read the textbook for background and context, keeping up with the material covered in class. In addition, you should also have two other books from which I will assign specific readings: Ralph Wooster’s Lone Star Blue and Gray and Michael Perman's Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. All three books are available in paperback in the University Store. I will also assign other outside readings for class discussion. These are on reserve in the department library (Wooten 267).
II. Purpose of Course: to help you understand what caused the Civil War, why the North won the war, the nature and purposes of Reconstruction, and the significance of this whole period for American history.
III. Examinations
Three one-hour examinations (September 24, October 22, November 19), each worth 20 percent of your course grade. One two-hour final exam (Friday, December 17, 10:30 AM) worth 30 percent of your course grade. Questions on all exams will be short-answers (i.e., multiple choice and/or fill-in-the-blanks) and short essays. The grading system is the usual: any grade in the 90s is an A, in the 80s is a B, in the 70s is a C, etc. A grade of 59 or below is an F.
IV. Paper
One ten-page paper due on Wednesday, December 8, worth 10 percent of your course grade. This paper must be typewritten, with one-inch margins on left and right, top and bottom. The paper must provide a short biographical sketch of the author of a book (see the attached list of books), summarize the book, analyze at least three scholarly reviews of the book, and give your own opinion of the book. You can generally find reviews in the following scholarly journals: Civil War History, Journal of American History, History: Reviews of New Books, the American Historical Review, Journal of Southern History, and regional or state-level historical journals (e.g., Military History of the West, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Southwestern Historical Quarterly). Some of these journals are on-line. (Look under “Electronic Resources” at www.library.unt.edu and then click on “JSTOR” for the list of on-line journals.) Another potential source of scholarly reviews, H-NET, is on the Web at
(http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showlist.cgi?lists=h-civwar and
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showlist.cgi?lists=h-south).
Reviews from popular magazines or short summaries in library journals are not acceptable because the whole point is to introduce you to critical scholarly reviews.
V. Office Hours (Wooten Hall, room 244)
Mon., Wed., and Fri., 10:00-10:45 AM
or by appointment ()
VI. Make-up examinations
Make-up examinations for the first three exams will be given only if you have a legitimate reason for missing the regularly scheduled exam. Make-ups will be given in the History Help Center (Wooten Hall, room 220) at any time on Thursday and Friday during the week after the regular exam. The make-up will be different from the regular exam. If you must miss the final exam, have a legitimate excuse for missing, and are passing at the time, you will receive a grade of I (Incomplete) for the course. Make-up exams are not given for final exams.
VII. Special Accommodations
Reasonable adjustments will be made to accommodate the special needs of students with disabilities.
R. Lowe, 244 Wooten Hall
(e-mail: )
RESERVE MATERIALS
WILLIS LIBRARY
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
BOOKS
Andreano, Ralph. The Economic Impact of the American Civil War (call # HC105.6.A5 1967)
Donald, David. Why the North Won the Civil War (call # E468 .D65 1962)
McKitrick, Eric. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (call # E668 .M156)
McWhiney, Grady. Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals (call # 973.7 M257g)
Pressley, Thomas J. Americans Interpret Their Civil War (call # 6635)
Randall, J. G. The Civil War and Reconstruction (call # E468 .R26 1969, 3039)
Sellers, Charles G. The Southerner as American (call # 917.5 Se48s)
ARTICLES
Castel, Albert. "The Historian and the General" (call # 1299, 3040)
Connelly, Thomas L. "Robert E. Lee and the Western Confederacy" (call # 0685, 3042)
Donald, David. "An Excess of Democracy" (call # 0687)
Eaton, Clement. "The Logistics of the Gray Army" (call # 0686, 3041)
Foner, Eric. "The Making of Radical Reconstruction" (call # 0104-5)
Foner, Eric. "Reconstruction Revisited" (call # 6097, 1807)
Gara, Larry. "Slavery and the Slave Power" (call # 5891, 3044)
Green, Fletcher. "Democracy in the Old South" (call # 3043, 5889)
Higginbotham, R. Don. "The Martial Spirit in the Antebellum South" (call # 6465-67)
McKitrick, Eric. "Afterthought: Why Impeachment?" (call # 0103, 0106)
McMurry, Richard. "Historians and Generals" (call # 0131, 0154)
McPherson, James M. "The Second American Revolution" (call # 5316)
Nevins, Allan. "A Major Result of the Civil War" (call # 0684, 3045)
Potter, David. "Civil War" (call # 3046)
Rosenberg, John S. "Toward a New Civil War Revisionism" (call # 3047, 5888)
Sellers, Charles. "The Travail of Slavery" (call # 5892, 3135)
Stampp, Kenneth. "The Irrepressible Conflict" (call # 5854, 5869)
Vinovskis, Maris. "Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War?" (call # 2343-44)
LIST OF BOOKS FOR REPORTS
Biographies
Carwardine, Richard J. Lincoln. London: Longman, 2003.
McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Marszalek, John F. Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: Free Press, 1993.
Robertson, James I., Jr. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend. New York: Macmillan, 1997.
Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Thomas, Emory. Robert E. Lee: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Battles and Campaigns
Ballard, Michael B. Vicksburg: The Campaign That Opened the Mississippi. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Castel, Albert. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1992.
Cooling, Benjamin F. Forts Henry and Donelson. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1987.
Cozzens, Peter. The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth. Chapel Hill: Univ. of
North Carolina Press, 1997.
Cozzens, Peter. The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois
Press, 1994.
Daniel, Larry J. Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Furgurson, Ernest B. Chancellorsville, 1863: The Souls of the Brave. New York: Knopf, 1992.
Hennessy, John J. The First Battle of Manassas. Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1989.
Johnson, Ludwell. Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1958. (Reprinted by Kent State Univ. Press, 1993)
Joiner, Gary Dillard. One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003.
Marvel, William. Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Rable, George C. Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.
Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992.
Shea, William L., and Earl J. Hess. Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
Carolina Press, 1992.
Trudeau, Noah Andre. The Last Citadel: Petersburg, Virginia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.
Texas and the Civil War
Cotham, Edward T., Jr. Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Cotham, Edward T., Jr. Sabine Pass: The Confederacy’s Thermopylae. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004.
Dupree, Stephen A. Planting the Union Flag in Texas: The Campaigns of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks in the West. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008.
Johansson, M. Jane. Peculiar Honor: A History of the 28th Texas Cavalry, 1862-1865. Fayetteville: Univ. of
Arkansas Press, 1998.
Lowe, Richard. Walker’s Texas Division, C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State Univ., 2004.
McCaslin, Richard B. Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State Univ. Press, 1997.
McMichael, Kelly. Sacred Memories: The Civil War Monument Movement in Texas. Denton: Texas State Historical Assn., 2009.
Simpson, Harold B. Hood’s Texas Brigade: Lee’s Grenadier Guard. Waco: Texian Press, 1970.
Thompson, Jerry D. Vaqueros in Blue and Gray. Austin, TX: State House Press, 2000.
Townsend, Stephen A. The Yankee Invasion of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2005.
Black Americans in the Civil War
Cornish, Dudley T. The Sable Arm. New York: Longmans Green, 1956.
Durden, Robert F. The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965.
Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle : The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New
York: Free Press, 1990.
McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.
Ripley, C. Peter. Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1976.
Smith, John David, ed.. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: Univ.
of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.
Women in the Civil War and Reconstruction
Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel
Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Bonnet Brigades. New York: Knopf, 1966.
Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1989.
Miscellaneous Topics
Adams, Michael C. C. Our Masters the Rebels: A Speculation on Union Military Failure in the East, 1861-1865.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978.
Baldwin, John, and Ron Powers. Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship. New York:
Crown Publishing, 2007.
Dean, Eric T., Jr. Shook over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1997.
Fellman, Michael. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War. New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1989.
Fowler, William M. Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War. New York: Norton, 1990.
Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997.
Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2008.
Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole
Books, 1994.
McPherson, James M. What They Fought For, 1861-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1994.
McWhiney, Grady, and Perry D. Jamieson. Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage.
University: University of Alabama Press, 1982.
Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Miller, Robert J. Both Prayed to the Same God: Religion and Faith in the American Civil War. Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2007.
Reed, Rowena. Combined Operations in the Civil War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978.
Sanders, Charles W., Jr. While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2005.
Steiner, Paul E. Diseases in the Civil War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861-1865. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1968.
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