While a Confederate prisoner of war on Johnson’s Island, William Norman wrote what he calls a “short diary or sketch” - a summing up of the important events of his life before he was captured at Kellysford Virginia, in 1863. Born into a hard working but somewhat poor family in Surry County, North Carolina; the future Confederate Captain lived a life out on the frontiers in Iowa and Nebraska as a schoolteacher, clerk and farmer with varied success. When the Civil War broke out he was a practicing lawyer in his native state and quickly took up arms in the Second North Virginia regiment; he fought in the army of Northern Virginia at the great battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg before his capture.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the men of the 30th North Carolina rushed to join the regiment, proclaiming, "we will whip the Yankees, or give them a right to a small part of our soil--say 2 feet by 6 feet." Once the Tar Heels experienced combat, their attitudes changed. One rifleman recorded: "We came to a Yankee field hospital ... we moved piles of arms, feet, hands." By 1865, the unit's survivors reflected on their experiences, wondering "when and if I return home--will I be able to fit in?" Drawing on letters, journals, memoirs and personnel records, this history follows the civilian-soldiers from their mustering-in to the war's final moments at Appomattox. The 30th North Carolina had the distinction of firing at Abraham Lincoln on July 12, 1864, as the president stood upon the ramparts of Ft. Stevens outside Washington, D.C., and firing the last regimental volley before the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

In 1864, Union soldier Charles George described a charge into battle by General Phil Sheridan: "Such a picture of earnestness and determination I never saw as he showed as he came in sight of the battle field . . . What a scene for a painter!" These words proved prophetic, as Sheridan’s desperate ride provided the subject for numerous paintings and etchings as well as songs and poetry. George was not alone in thinking of art in the midst of combat; the significance of the issues under contention, the brutal intensity of the fighting, and the staggering number of casualties combined to form a tragedy so profound that some could not help but view it through an aesthetic lens, to see the war as a concert of death. It is hardly surprising that art influenced the perception and interpretation of the war given the intrinsic role that the arts played in the lives of antebellum Americans. Nor is it surprising that literature, music, and the visual arts were permanently altered by such an emotional and material catastrophe. In The Arts and Culture of the American Civil War, an interdisciplinary team of scholars explores the way the arts – theatre, music, fiction, poetry, painting, architecture, and dance – were influenced by the war as well as the unique ways that art functioned during and immediately following the war. Included are discussions of familiar topics (such as Ambrose Bierce, Peter Rothermel, and minstrelsy) with less-studied subjects (soldiers and dance, epistolary songs). The collection as a whole sheds light on the role of race, class, and gender in the production and consumption of the arts for soldiers and civilians at this time; it also draws attention to the ways that art shaped – and was shaped by – veterans long after the war.