It is October 1862, one year and six months since the start of the Civil War. An envelope is printed, painted and dispersed. Unnamed, the print is referred to as a Civil War envelope showing woman pouring a drink for a wounded soldier as a battle rages in the background. Although it does not contain a formal title or a claimed artist the print depicts various social constructs and developing principles that were in attendance throughout the Civil War. The establishment of Lithography on envelopes became a key component of social change during the civil war. The print openes the eyes of the viewer to the fiendish realities of war , in doing so the artist avoids presenting a northern or southern perspective and instead focuses of the patriotism of soldiers during the dood death while also encouraging women to join the war effort.
In order to be able to create a print such as the Civil War envelope, one must go through a process known as lithography. Lithography is the “art of printing from stone” it consists of carving an image, in reverse, onto a stone, which is later covered in ink and placed on a surface (in this case being an envelope). Lithography became an increasingly popular medium due to its ability to be reused and redistributed. The effectiveness of the distribution is important because the faster a print can be replicated the more people will be able to see the print.
The combination of lithography and envelopes was seen as a revolutionary tool for the Civil War. “While Northern and Southern armies battled in the field, Northern and Southern stationers battled on envelopes” (Berry). Decorated envelopes served as a platform of political and social expression. The country was made self-conscious and made to look at the r...
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...e as an envelope print can serve as an embodiment of a progressing country. At the start of a war many saw the war as a good, and honorable reach towards progress. When new media began to bring to light how truly devastating war can be, it altered the perspective of many. Men and especially women, were consequently motivated to reach out and assist wounded soldiers. Through the involvement of women in the war, they were granted responsibilities that were far beyond their reach in prior years. With envelope prints such as the one referred to as the Civil War envelope women assisting in the war effort began to be a norm and it was accepted rather than being seen as unorthodox. This acceptance lead women to question what their proper place was in the country. They were exposed to the possibility which they would harness and eventually lead the women’s suffrage movement.
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
There are many different ways in which the war was represented to the public, including drawings, newspaper articles, and detailed stereographs. Stereographs such as John Reekie’s “The Burial Party” invoked mixed feelings from all of those who viewed it. It confronts the deaths caused by the Civil War as well as touches upon the controversial issue over what would happen to the slaves once they had been emancipated. This picture represents the Civil War as a trade-off of lives- fallen soldiers gave their lives so that enslaved black men and women could be given back their own, even if that life wasn’t that different from slavery. In his carefully constructed stereograph “The Burial Party,” John Reekie confronts the uncertainty behind the newly
Brockenbrough, Judith White, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries. Richmond: Randolph and English (1889): 174.
When first examining the documentation it is difficult to comprehend whether women were being patronized or treated too delicately; the fact of the matter is the average treatment of women during this era was radically different from society’s attitude toward men. It is also evident women exploited stereotypes to their advantage. Larry G. Eggleston explains the particular viewpoint of American society in Women of the Civil War as “Women were held with respect even though they were considered to be the weaker sex. Many women broke away from society’s traditional view of women when the Civil War began” (1). To avoid detection agents often manipulated social stigmas. Traditionally, Men were expected to join their countrymen upon the battlefield and women were to remain at home attempting to keep order. Some women were equally effective from their posts at home, while acting as scouts for their respected causes.
The author covers how the telegraph revolutionized communication and strategy on the battlefields during the Civil War. The differences and benefits of such communications on the battlefield is compared with pre-telegraphic warfare. The source is reliable because the writer of the article is an expert on communications (Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission) who used many primary source documents in his research. This source did not give me any information on the outcome of the Civil War and lacked in defining terms, but this article did help me gain a general understanding of how important the telegraph was to the outcome of the Civil War, and originally got me interested in this
I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)
Emily Dickinson’s response to the Civil War was once discounted as nonexistent, but in the last few decades her works have been added to the Civil War canon. The previous belief that Dickinson’s poetry was not influenced by the Civil War is preposterous given that her most successful years as a poet coincided with the Civil War. Like any American during the war, she too experienced loss when a person from her childhood had been killed in a battle, and she kept her correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson throughout the war. No American was left unscathed; the war had influenced the country in many different ways – political, personal, and literary. This is why it would be the most logical to assume Dickinson had written about the Civil
When the American Civil War began on April 12th, 1861, over 3 million Union and Confederate soldiers prepared for battle. Men from all over America were called upon to support their side in the confrontation. While their battles are well documented and historically analyzed for over a hundred years, there is one aspect, one dark spot missing in the picture: the role of women in the American Civil War. From staying at home to take care of the children to disguising themselves as men to fight on the battlefield, women contributed in many ways to the war effort on both sides. Though very few women are recognized for their vital contributions, even fewer are
In Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier the continual coverage made by the media of the war during its occurrence and the infectiousness it had on those back home is portrayed through the eyes of her narrator, Jenny. The use of a female narrator wasn’t uncommon nor new but the way West includes her feminist values into Jenny without making it central to the story is fascinating. Up to this point in history, coverage of a war had never been read about as it was during this period. Because of this advancement in getting news out had improved drastically from the last war, people back home were more aware of what was occurring from reading a newspaper without having to wait for letters from their loved ones out on the front lines. West took this information in full stride and wrote about the emotional turmoil it causes the women back home waiting for their men to come back. She makes mention by focusing and bringing to attention the elements of class, exile from being deployed and the trauma that war causes on the soldier.
Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is regarded as one of American’s greatest artists in the 19th Century. Many of his works, such as “The Cotton Pickers,” “The Bright Side,” and “Prisoners from the Front,” are still very well-known and famous pieces of art. At the start of his artist career, he was a print maker and design chief for Harper’s Weekly Magazine; but during the course of the Civil War, his art took on a much deeper meaning as a result of it (“Winslow Homer and his paintings”). Homer’s works began to reflect on the effects the Civil War had on the nation, her people, and himself (Wood). “Near Andersonville” is one of Homer’s least known works (having gone unknown of until the 1960s) that had been one of his first works focusing on the African
A day has not passed in these wretched trenches where I hadn’t remembered my sweetest wife and two sons. How is everyone, Mildred? I hope you and the boys are healthy and eating well. This total war must be taking its toll on our home as well. Have you been making ammunition in the factories yet, Mildred? In accordance with the news arriving from the village, almost all women have begun working in factories and are now producing war-related goods to support us soldiers. Many of us had experienced consternation when hearing the news of women and children participating in laborious tasks such as factory and farm work. It is of my greatest hope that this letter may reach you as I may not be able to write again.
The Civil War was the first major conflict to be documented by photography. At the time of the Civil War, it was vital to have public support on both the North and the South side of the dispute. It is also said that if war efforts do not have complete support of its’ citizens that it will not result to any benefits. Photography was one way that was almost guaranteeing support of citizens on the homefront. Photographers had power within their photographs, toying with the pathos of the civilians, and causing them to feel whatever the photographers wanted them to. This power was abused at time by manipulating people’s opinions towards the war. There were pictures coming back from the warfront one after the other which made it impossible for people to feel an emotional connection to the soldiers at war. These photographs allowed events happening miles away to feel like they were closer to home causing people to support the war efforts more heavily. Instead of people having their own opinions during the war, photographers used manipulative
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
This was the start of a new age in the history for women. Before the war a woman’s main job was taking care of her household more like a maid, wife and mother. The men thought that women should not have to work and they should be sheltered and protected. Society also did not like the idea of women working and having positions of power in the workforce but all that change...
Among so many other mediums, it is of particular interest to note that the practice of photography is not simply bound to one side of the spectrum of creative expression. As much as it can be perceived as an emotional piece of art, a photo can also very well be seen as a showcase of the current social world through an objective lens. What it is that truly defines a photo as being either an artistic endeavor or a means for documentation, however, is the context in which it is meant to be viewed by a particular audience. One single picture, after all, could appear drastically different alongside an article in a newspaper than it would if it were to be framed and hung alongside other photos on a museum wall. This idea is especially prevalent in the pieces shown in the exhibition Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle, wherein several photos are both seen as a standalone piece, as well as how they appeared in magazines or journals on the Civil Rights movement. Through comparing and contrasting several sets of these pictures, each displaying two vastly different ways in which they can be observed, the importance of context in regards to photography comes into full view, giving a larger perspective on what it is that gives a specific piece a certain meaning.