Winner of the Founders Award from the American Civil War Museum The most contentious event in our nation’s history; the Civil War deeply divided families; friends; and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms―Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery; while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty; apprehension; and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens.No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland―where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War; Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters; diaries; and period newspapers―many previously unpublished―to portray the passions of a wide variety of people―merchants; slaves; soldiers; politicians; freedmen; women; clergy; slave owners; civic leaders; and children―caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell tells the compelling story of how Maryland African Americans escaped from slavery and fought for the Union and their freedom alongside white soldiers and he reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland’s Southern sympathies―while genuine―never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland. Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.
#674671 in Books Cornell University Press 2004-10-14Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .56 x 6.08l; .73 #File Name: 080148944X216 pages
Review
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Better Title: Yet Another Holocaust Book. Features Holocaust Fatigue; and the Question About the Nazis and HomosexualityBy Jan PeczkisThe title of this book is misleading. It makes the reader suppose that this book is about how the moral capital of Jews; caused by gentile sympathy because of the Shoah; is slipping away. Instead; this book is not about that at all. Instead; it rehashes the standard fare of books of this type.HOLOCAUST FATIGUEAuthor Carolyn J. Dean suggests that the constant exposure of people to the Holocaust; far from creating and sustaining a “Never Again!†atmosphere; actually dulls them to violence and to the suffering of others. However; isn’t desensitization a characteristic of modern mass media IN GENERAL? (For instance; wasn’t the constant featuring of homosexuals; on TV; part of a strategy of desensitizing the general population to it?).The author goes further. She suggests that; in a sense; the media portrayals of the Holocaust have become a sort of pornography (p. 22)—in that they both titillate the viewer (to see the violence); and then end up dulling the viewer (to violence)—in much the same way that pornography causes both short-term titillation and long-term desensitization in sexual matters. As an example; she cites Jerzy Kosinski’s THE PAINTED BIRD; which had been widely criticized as a “pornography of violenceâ€. (p. 24).There are other; unsaid implications of Holocaust fatigue. For instance; we often hear that other peoples who had experienced genocide--such as the Poles--merely need to "work harder" and "get the word out". This is unrealistic. Even if Poles somehow acquired the level of influence; in American society; that Jews enjoy; the American public; already desensitized by Holocaust fatigue; would scarcely be receptive to information about the Nazi German genocide of the Poles.THE STANDARD DOUBLE STANDARDAuthor Carolyn J. Dean features the ideas of Daniel Goldhagen; who suggested that Germans as a whole share complicity in the Holocaust (pp. 45-on); even though only a small fraction of them were actively involved in it. However; exactly the same could be said about collective Jewish complicity in the crimes of Communism; even though only a small fraction of Jews were actively involved in it.The author (p. 80) repeats the canned complaint that the people of Poland; Ukraine; Japan; etc.; see themselves as victims and not victimizers while; just as predictably; exempting the Jews from this same standard.JEWS IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLICInterestingly; the author touches on Jewish influence (even dominance) in Weimar Germany. She comments; “And he [Daniel Goldhagen] also ignores the gains Jews made in Germany before 1933 and the tremendous social and cultural status they enjoyed; thus he implied that they remained willfully blind to the virulent hatred all around them.†(p. 48). [But hasn’t it been elsewhere suggested that Jews sometimes have a blind spot about legitimate gentile objections to their conduct?]The fate of German Jews varied. Most of those German Jews who were married to German gentiles ended up surviving WWII. (p. 83).WAS HITLER GAY?The title of this book does not convey; to the reader; the extensive attention that the author pays to the relationship of Nazism and homosexuality. (pp. 107-on). Dean also puts it in historical context. For instance; during a series of famous 1906-1909 trials against some of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s advisors; leading Jewish sexologists such as Magnus Hirschfeld accused these advisors of homosexuality. (p. 116).Interestingly; author Carolyn J. Dean (p. 188) cites Dagmar Herzog and his SEX AFTER FASCISM. Herzog showed that the notion of the Nazis being sexually repressed did not emerge until after 1966; and was a retrospective fantasy about Nazism. She also contended that Nazism challenged strict bourgeois morality while paying lip service to middle-class sexual conventions.
