A Great Sacrifice
Northern Black Soldiers, Their Families, and the Experience of Civil War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4157732 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Earl F Mulderink (Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 482-482 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaaa322 |
| OpenAlex | W3089070069 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
A Great Sacrifice strives to explore and explain the impacts of the Civil War on Northern black soldiers and their families. Besides drawing on standard secondary sources well known to scholars, James G. Mendez has dug deeply into the National Archives to unearth and transcribe letters written by female family members. Some letters are poignant, others mundane, and together they offer varied voices of Northern African Americans during the war. The book's main contribution is its compilation and analysis of letters written by otherwise-anonymous women, such as Hannah Johnson of Buffalo, New York, who penned a letter to President Abraham Lincoln on July 31, 1863. Concerned about her son in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, she reported that “I am a colored woman and my Son was Strong and able as any to fight for his country and the colored people have as much to fight for as any.” Affirming the right of African Americans to fight for their country, Johnson expressed particular concern that black soldiers be granted the same protection as white men if taken as prisoners of war. She implored the president to see that all black soldiers be “fairly treated” (p. 82). In his reliance on letters such as this one, Mendez emphasizes his fidelity in transcribing them exactly as written to “retain their historical value as the real words left by the people who lived through the war and endured its many challenges” (p. 8
African american · Archaeology · Colored · Ethnology · Genealogy · Political science · Sacrifice · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Value (mathematics · White (mutation · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |