Steven J. Ramold. Across the Divide

Soldiers' letters are one of the richest bodies of material available to historians of the U.S. Civil War. During those four years, ordinary Americans in uniform sent home long missives dense with details about the life of the soldier. Researchers who wade into these sources are rewarded with commentary about camp life, battles, and camaraderie, and about fear, boredom, and despair. Soldiers shared their opinions on everything from politics, to religion, to emancipation. They missed loved ones, and they complained about officers, politicians, and corrupt war contractors. Many great historians have accepted the challenge posed by these letters, beginning with Bell Irvin Wiley in his study The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (1943), followed a decade later by The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (1952). Since then, dozens of other scholars have turned to soldiers' writings for clues to their motivations, notions of masculinity, ideology, and opinions on race and politics.

Boredom · Emancipation · Front (military) · Home front · Ideology · Masculinity · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · White (mutation) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Engineering · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies