Mastering Wartime is the first comprehensive study of a Northern city during the Civil War. J. Matthew Gallman argues that, although the war posed numerous challenges to Philadelphia's citizens, the city's institutions and traditions proved to be sufficiently resilient to adjust to the crisis without significant alteration. Following the wartime actions of individuals and groups-workers, women, entrepreneurs-he shows that while the war placed pressure on private and public organizations to centralize, Philadelphia's institutions remained largely decentralized and tradition bound. Gallman explores the war's impact on a wide range of aspects of life in Philadelphia. Among the issues addressed are recruitment and conscription of soldiers, individual responses to wartime separation and death, individual and institutional benevolence, civic rituals, crime and disorder, government contracting, and long-term economic development. The book compares the wartime years to the antebellum period and discusses the war's legacies in the postwar decade.

Philadelphia is famous for its colonial and revolutionary buildings and artifacts, which draw tourists from far and wide to gain a better understanding of the nation’s founding. Philadelphians, too, value these same buildings and artifacts for the stories they tell about their city. But Philadelphia existed long before the Liberty Bell was first rung, and its history extends well beyond the American Revolution.In Philadelphia: A Narrative History, Paul Kahan presents a comprehensive portrait of the city, from the region’s original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century. As any history of Philadelphia should, this book chronicles the people and places that make the city unique: from Independence Hall to Eastern State Penitentiary, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross to Cecil B. Moore and Cherelle Parker. Kahan also shows us how Philadelphia has always been defined by ethnic, religious, and racial diversity—from the seventeenth century, when Dutch, Swedes, and Lenapes lived side by side along the Delaware; to the nineteenth century, when the city was home to a vibrant community of free Black and formerly enslaved people; to the twentieth century, when it attracted immigrants from around the world. This diversity, however, often resulted in conflict, especially over access to public spaces. Those two themes— diversity and conflict— have shaped Philadelphia’s development and remain visible in the city’s culture, society, and even its geography. Understanding Philadelphia’s past, Kahan says, is key to envisioning future possibilities for the City of Brotherly Love.

Monumental and revelatory, Free Labor explores labor activism throughout the country during a period of incredible diversity and fluidity: the American Civil War. Mark A. Lause describes how the working class radicalized during the war as a response to economic crisis, the political opportunity created by the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ideology of free labor and abolition. His account moves from battlefield and picket line to the negotiating table, as he discusses how leaders and the rank-and-file alike adapted tactics and modes of operation to specific circumstances. His close attention to women and African Americans, meanwhile, dismantles notions of the working class as synonymous with whiteness and maleness. In addition, Lause offers a nuanced consideration of race's role in the politics of national labor organizations, in segregated industries in the border North and South, and in black resistance in the secessionist South, creatively reading self-emancipation as the largest general strike in U.S. history.

A rich history of the unique relationship between life and work in an American factory town from 1840 to 1984, A Place to Live and Work tells the remarkable story of Henry Disston's saw manufacturing company and the factory town he built. The book provides a rare view of the rise of one of America's largest and most powerful family-owned businesses, from its modest beginnings in 1840 to the 1940s, when Disston products were known worldwide, to the sale and demise of the company in the postwar years. Henry Disston, however, not only built a factory; he also shaped Tacony, the town in northeastern Philadelphia where the workers lived. The book describes the company's interdependence with the community and profiles the lifestyle that grew out of Disston's paternalistic blueprint for Tacony. Using original letter books, shop committee meeting notes, photographs, and a wealth of other documents, Harry Silcox reveals Disston's highly sophisticated distribution and marketing system as well as a management system that, unlike the one advocated by Frederick Winslow Taylor, responded to the concerns of workers and foremen. Through two world wars, the Depression, and the rise of unions, Disston's innovative business practices enabled the company to remain active and strong even when factories across the nation were failing. This study raises important questions about the demise of the factory system and its impact on urban communities and family life. The Disston company provides one example of how people could work and live together successfully within the larger framework of the factory system.

Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865 is a concise, highly readable account of New York City during the greatest internal crisis in American history. A growing metropolis that was by far America's biggest and most powerful city, New York played a major role in the Civil War, mobilizing an enthusiastic though poorly trained military force during the first month of the war that helped protect Washington, D.C., from Confederate capture. Urban historian Edward K. Spann provides insights on both the varied ways in which the war affected the city and the ways in which the city's people and industry influenced the divided nation. Gotham at War includes observations regarding political, racial, ethnic, and economic aspects of this wartime society and shows how New York served as a center for manpower, military supplies, and shipbuilding, and for assisting sick and wounded soldiers. The efforts of its great Republican newspapers, local leaders such as William E. Dodge and Mayor George Opdyke, women, African-Americans, New Englanders, and the Irish and Germans of New York are all explored. The most southern of the northern cities, New York became a center for many citizens who opposed th

With its rich foundation stories, Philadelphia may be the most important city in America's collective memory. By the middle of the eighteenth century William Penn's "greene countrie town" was, after London, the largest city in the British Empire. The two most important documents in the history of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were drafted and signed in Philadelphia. The city served off and on as the official capital of the young country until 1800, and was also the site of the first American university, hospital, medical college, bank, paper mill, zoo, sugar refinery, public school, and government mint. In First City, acclaimed historian Gary B. Nash examines the complex process of memory making in this most historic of American cities. Though history is necessarily written from the evidence we have of the past, as Nash shows, rarely is that evidence preserved without intent, nor is it equally representative. Full of surprising anecdotes, First City reveals how Philadelphians—from members of elite cultural institutions, such as historical societies and museums, to relatively anonymous groups, such as women, racial and religious minorities, and laboring people—have participated in the very partisan activity of transmitting historical memory from one generation to the next.

A Companion to the U.S. Civil War presents a comprehensive historiographical collection of essays covering all major military, political, social, and economic aspects of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Represents the most comprehensive coverage available relating to all aspects of the U.S. Civil War Features contributions from dozens of experts in Civil War scholarship Covers major campaigns and battles, and military and political figures, as well as non-military aspects of the conflict such as gender, emancipation, literature, ethnicity, slavery, and memory