The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

Description

Published to mark the Civil War sesquicentennial, The Yellowhammer War collects new essays on Alabama’s role in, and experience of, the bloody national conflict and its aftermath. During the first winter of the war, Confederate soldiers derided the men of an Alabama Confederate unit for their yellow-trimmed uniforms that allegedly resembled the plumage of the yellow-shafted flicker or “yellowhammer” (now the Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, and the state bird of Alabama). The soldiers’ nickname, “Yellowhammers,” came from this epithet. After the war, Alabama veterans proudly wore yellowhammer feathers in their hats or lapels when attending reunions. Celebrations throughout the state have often expanded on that pageantry and glorified the figures, events, and battles of the Civil War with sometimes dubious attention to historical fact and little awareness of those who supported, resisted, or tolerated the war off the battlefield. Many books about Alabama’s role in the Civil War have focused serious attention on the military and political history of the war. The Yellowhammer War likewise examines the military and political history of Alabama’s Civil War contributions, but it also covers areas of study usually neglected by centennial scholars, such as race, women, the home front, and Reconstruction. From Patricia A. Hoskins’s look at Jews in Alabama during the Civil War and Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño’s examination of white women’s attitudes during secession to Harriet E. Amos Doss’s study of the reaction of Alabamians to Lincoln’s Assassination and Jason J. Battles’s essay on the Freedman’s Bureau, readers are treated to a broader canvas of topics on the Civil War and the state. CONTRIBUTORS Jason J. Battles / Lonnie A. Burnett / Harriet E. Amos Doss / Bertis English / Michael W. Fitzgerald / Jennifer Lynn Gross / Patricia A. Hoskins / Kenneth W. Noe / Victoria E. Ott  / Terry L. Seip / Ben H. Severance / Kristopher A. Teters / Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño / Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins / Brian Steel Wills Published in Cooperation with the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction - Kenneth W. Noe 1. Precipitating a Revolution: Alabama’s Democracy in the Election of 1860 - Lonnie A. Burnett 2. “The Aggressions of the North Can Be Borne No Longer”: White Alabamian Women during the Secession Crisis and Outbreak of War - Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño 3. Confederate Alabama’s Finest Hour: The Battle of Salem Church, May 3, 1863 - Ben H. Severance 4. The Confederate Sun Sets on Selma: Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Defense of Alabamain 1865 - Brian Steel Wills 5. Fighting for the Cause? An Examination of the Motivations of Alabama’s Confederate Soldiers from a Class Perspective - Kristopher A. Teters 6. Voices from the Margins: Non-Elites in Confederate Alabama - Victoria E. Ott 7. Augusta Jane Evans: Alabama’s Confederate Macaria - Jennifer Lynn Gross 8. “The Best Southern Patriots”: Jews in Alabama during the Civil War - Patricia A. Hoskins 9. Every Man Should Consider His Own Conscience: Black and White Alabamians’ Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Harriet E. Amos Doss 10. Alabama’s Reconstruction after 150 Years - Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins 11. Of Ambition and Enterprise: The Making of Carpetbagger George E. Spencer - Terry L. Seip 12. “He Was Always Preaching the Union”: The Wartime Origins of White Republicanism during Reconstruction - Michael W. Fitzgerald 13. Labor, Law, and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Alabama, 1865–1867 - Jason J. Battles 14. Freedom’s Church: Sociocultural Construction, Reconstruction,and Post-Reconstruction in Perry County, Alabama’s African American Churches - Bertis English Suggestions for Further Reading Contributors Index