Prof. Mark Grimsley
Winter Quarter 1999

Office: 363 Dulles Hall
292-1855
E-mail: grimsley.1@osu.edu

This course describes and analyzes the history of America's greatest crisis, from its origins in the early nineteenth century through the abandonment of Reconstruction in 1877, with some attention to sectional reconciliation and the various ways in which the crisis is remembered. It interweaves the political, military, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of this experience in roughly equal proportions, with emphasis on the linkages between them.

Students will achieve an understanding of the main developments of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, the ways in which these developments reflected or shaped developments in general American history, and the main interpretations advanced by scholars who have studied this subject. They will also hone their skills at critical writing and analysis, and will gain greater insight into the way historians explore the human condition.

Quizzes (10 @ 2% each) 20%
Midterm 20%
Review Essay 20%
Participation 20%
Final Exam 20%

Required

Textbooks

America's Civil War, by Brooks D. Simpson.
A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner.

Reader

Major Problems in Civil War & Reconstruction, by Michael Perman

Monographs

Mothers of Invention : Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust
For Cause and Comrades : Why Men Fought in the Civil War, by James M. McPherson

Reference

Elements of Style, by William Strunk, E. B. White

All students must be officially enrolled in the course by the end of the second full week of the quarter. No requests to add the course will be approved by the department chair after that time. Enrolling officially and on time is solely the responsibility of each student.

If for any family or medical reason you find it absolutely necessary to miss an examination, you must provide written documentation to substantiate the request in order to take a make-up. Whenever possible, notify me in advance. Make-up exams are administered by the department at certain scheduled times during the quarter. If you take a make-up, it will be at one of these times.

Please do not come to class late. If you do, please enter as unobtrusively as possible. Similarly, if you know you will need to leave early, please seat yourself close to an exit so that you can leave without distracting other students.

Wednesdays, 10:30-11:30, 2:30-3:30; and by appointment.

Week 1.

Tuesday
1. Introductory matters; John Brown's Raid, October 1859
2. Theories of Causation

Thursday
3. The North and South Compared
4. Origins of the Civil War, 1846-1850

Perman, 2-30, esp. 11-30.

Week 2.

Tuesday
5. The End of the Second Party System, 1850-1856
6. The Rise of the Republicans, 1856-1860

Perman, 31-63, esp. 40-63.

Thursday
7. The Secession Crisis
8. Grand Strategy and Mobilization; Study Questions for For Cause and Comrades Due.

Simpson, 7-48; Perman, 64-88, esp. 71-88.

Week 3.

Tuesday
9. Concliation and Its Failure, April 1861-July 1862
10. Dodging the Obvious: The Quandary of Slavery

Simpson, 49-79; Perman, 89, 93-94 [McClellan letter], 277-280 [Butler document].

Thursday
11. The Bloodiest Day: Antietam, September 17, 1862
12. Discussion: For Cause and Comrades

Simpson, 80-99; Perman, 94-97 [Lee and E.P. Alexander documents]; 104-112 [Gallagher essay]; McPherson, all; skim Perman, 124-155.

Week 4.

Tuesday
13. The New York City Draft Riot, July 1863
14. Wartime Politics in the North

Simpson,130-161 ; Perman, 191-193; 203-214

Thursday
15. The Limits of Mobilization: Finance
16. The Limits of Mobilization: Conscription; Take Home Exam Distributed

Simpson,130-161; Perman, 191-193; 203-214

Week 5.

Tuesday
17. The Wartime North
18. The Wartime South

Simpson, 130-161; Perman, 186-245, esp. 195-203 and 223-245; Take Home Exam Due

Thursday
19. Bitter Jubilee: The Moment of Emancipation
20. The Civil War as an Interracial War

Simpson, 120-128; Perman, 280-310.

Week 6.

Tuesday
21. The Campaigns of 1863
22. From the Rapidan to the James: Grant versus Lee, May-June 1864

Simpson, 100-120, 162-219; Permam, 101-103; 112-123.

Thursday
23. The Collapse of the Confederacy
24. Origins of Reconstruction; Study Questions for Mothers of Invention Due

Foner, 1-103; Perman, 342-345.

Week 7.

Tuesday
25. Gender and the Civil War Era: The North
26. Gender and the Civil War Era: The South

Foner, 254-260; Perman, 246-265; Faust, all.

Thursday
27. Discussion: Mothers of Invention
28. The Meaning of Freedom

Week 8.

Tuesday
29. The Making of Radical Reconstruction
30. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Foner, 104-147; Perman, 311-341, esp. 322-341.

Thursday
31. Southern Republicans in Power
32. The Evolution of Free Labor in the South

Foner, 148-179; Perman, 345-376; esp. 351-376.

Week 9.

Tuesday
33. Changing Agendas in the North
34. "Ballot and Bullet": The White Conservative Counterrevolution

Foner, 180-216; Perman, 377-430.

Thursday
35. The Road to Redemption
36. The End of Reconstruction

Foner, 217-253; Perman, 377-430.

Week 10.

Tuesday
37. The Civil War Era Assessed
38. Discussion: The Meaning of the Civil War

Perman, 431-459.

Thursday
39. Antietam Battlefield Today
40. The Civil War and Public Memory

Readings TBA

Introduction

History 557.03 is an upper division course taught at an advanced level. It is also an elective. I therefore assume that students have chosen to take it because they are interested and motivated to learn the material. I also assume that students have an appropriate background in American history, which is why I strongly encourage you to have at least taken History 151 (American Civilization to 1877) before attempting this course.

The course requires about 150 pages of reading per week—sometimes more, seldom less. If you accept this reality at the outset you will be all right. If you assume you can pick up everything from lecture or from a light skimming of the texts you will not do well. It's as simple as that. But don't assume that you can blow off the lectures, either. For one thing, paying attention to the lectures will help keep you on track, so that you don't overemphasize some issues while ignoring others. For another, good attendance helps generate a certain good will between instructor and student, because it more or less demonstrates that the student is trying. That good will can come in handy if you fall down on the mid-term and need a little extra help. Finally, there is almost always a strong positive correlation between good attendance and good course performance. So while lecture attendance is not required, it is strongly encouraged.

Office Hours

Similarly, I encourage you to take full advantage of my office hours and those of the teaching associate. As a practical matter, you may want to visit him in preference to myself, since he will be grading your examinations.

Quizzes

I administer quizzes weekly in order to test whether students have done the assigned reading. The quizzes are not announced in advance. They consist of a few (typically four) multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. The questions are drawn from the most important arguments and historical developments discussed in the readings. If you have absorbed the major points of the assigned reading, you should do well. If not, not.

Examinations

2. Essay

On Thursday of the quarter's fourth week you will receive a take-home exam that will require you to write a 5-page essay on one out of three possible questions. (The exam questions will also be posted on the Web.) The essay should be typed, double-spaced, free of misspellings or grammatical faults, and consistent with the guidelines set forth in Strunk and White's Elements of Style. The essay is due in class the following Tuesday. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED barring a serious emergency. Computer or printer problems do not constitute an emergency and will not be accepted as a legitimate excuse.

An essay exam is mainly concerned with the student's grasp of the overarching concepts of the course and how these concepts organize and give meaning to the historical facts. Students frequently assume that the essay is just another way for them to demonstrate what they know about the material that has been presented in class. In fact, an essay principally tests your ability to think analytically and to explain your analysis on paper. This involves, in turn:

a. an ability to write clearly, so that the reader is not baffled by misspellings, grammatical faults, run-on sentences, etc.;

b. an ability to articulate a thesis; in other words, to assert a point of view concerning the question being discussed;

c. an ability to prioritize. What issues are most important in answering the question? What is the most logical order in which to present them? What examples most clearly illustrate these critical issues?

d. an ability to avoid the irrelevant: everything you write should relate directly and explicitly to the question posed;

e. an ability to write an essay that is proportional to the length allowed. If asked to write a 5-page essay, you must tailor your depth of coverage so that you cover the whole question in 5 pages, without omitting important points or overemphasizing one point to the detriment of another.

For additional information about how to write a college essay exam, please see the following:

Writing the Essay Type Examination

"Essay Exam" handouts from the OSU Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing

Review Essay

You will write a 5-page review of ONE book from a list to be distributed in the second week of the course.

I expect your book review to conform more closely to those found in scholarly journals than to those in newspapers and general interest magazines. In newspapers and magazines, the main point of the review—besides telling what the book is about—is often to give the reader a sense of the work's style and dramatic qualities. Academic reviews, on the other hand, have a somewhat different agenda. Their purpose is fourfold: (1) to explain briefly what the book is about, (2) to analyze its thesis, (3) to offer a critical assessment of the book's strengths and weaknesses, and (4) to appraise its historical value. While this is not intended as a rigid formula, each of these points should be addressed in the course of your review.

1. What the Books Are About - Offer the reader a brief overview of the book's subject matter, but try to encapsulize each work within three or four paragraphs. Identify the major events and personalities examined, key concepts employed, etc., but do not summarize the books in detail.

2. Thesis - What is the author's main argument?

3. Strengths and Weaknesses - What do you think of the author's thesis? Do she or he do a good job of proving it? What sources were used—personal experience, unpublished government documents, private manuscript collections, published primary or secondary works? Do you think they addressed all the relevant issues or can you think of some that they ought to have examined but did not? What were the author's qualifications for writing such books? Did the author have a particular ax to grind? Was the writing style clear or difficult to follow?

4. Historical Importance - How useful would an interested historian find the book to be? What makes you think so? Most especially, place the books within the context of one or more of the main themes and concepts discussed in the course.

These questions and issues are intended as examples of what your paper should cover. They are not a checklist. Some may be more relevant to the books you select than others while you may come up with other questions not mentioned here.

Your review should be typed, double-spaced, and about four pages in length. It should be written clearly and free of grammatical errors and misspellings.

On a separate cover sheet, give the review some sort of title and below it, place your name, the course number, and the date. The book's bibliographical data should appear at the top of the review: author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, number of pages. For example:

Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1997. Pp. viii, 218.

In instances where you quote directly from a work under review, a parenthetical citation [e.g., (Gallagher, 26)] is appropriate. If other works are quoted, give the full citation in a footnote [e.g., Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 26.] When in doubt, consult an appropriate reference work. One of the best is Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (5th ed., Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987). It sells for about $7.95 in paperback and is readily available.

Links

The U.S Civil War Center Comprehensive attempt to catalog all Civil War-related resources on the Web.

Freedmen and Southern Society Project The homepage of an ambitious project to document the emancipation moment.

Selected Civil War Photographs Home Page Over a thousand Civil War images.

Historical United States Census Browser Census Data for the antebellum and Civil War eras can be highly revealing.

The Civil War still resonates in the minds of many, not just historically but also politically. Check out this ring of Southern nationalist and Neo-Confederate websites.

HarpWeek This site, available through Ohiolink, contains all issues of Harper's Weekly published during the Civil War.

Valley of the Shadow recreates the Civil War as it was experienced and understood in two American communities, one in Pennsylvania, the other in Virginia.

JSTOR provides access to hundreds of scholarly articles and book reviews.

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