Looming Civil War
How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future
Published on 8. November 2018
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-19-086816-1 (ISBN)
Description
How did Americans imagine the Civil War before it happened? The most anticipated event of the nineteenth century appeared in novels, prophecies, dreams, diaries, speeches, and newspapers decades before the first shots at Fort Sumter. People forecasted a frontier filibuster, an economic clash between free and slave labor, a race war, a revolution, a war for liberation, and Armageddon. Reading their premonitions reveals how several factors, including race, religion, age, gender, region, and class shaped what people thought about the future and how they imagined it. Some Americans pictured the future as an open, contested era that they progressed toward and molded with their thoughts and actions. Others saw the future as a closed, predetermined world that approached them and sealed their fate. When the war began, these opposing temporalities informed how Americans grasped and waged the conflict.
In this creative history, Jason Phillips explains how the expectations of a host of characters--generals, politicians, radicals, citizens, and slaves--affected how people understood the unfolding drama and acted when the future became present. He reconsiders the war's origins without looking at sources using hindsight, that is, without considering what caused the cataclysm and whether it was inevitable. As a result, Phillips dispels a popular myth that all Americans thought the Civil War would be short and glorious at the outset, a ninety-day affair full of fun and adventure. Much more than rational power games played by elites, the war was shaped by uncertainties and emotions and darkened horizons that changed over time.
Instead Looming Civil War highlights how individuals approached an ominous future with feelings, thoughts, and perspectives different from our sensibilities and unconnected to our view of their world. Civil War Americans had their own prospects to ponder and forge as they discovered who they were and where life would lead them. The Civil War changed more than America's future; it transformed how Americans imagined the future-and how Americans have thought about the future ever since.
In this creative history, Jason Phillips explains how the expectations of a host of characters--generals, politicians, radicals, citizens, and slaves--affected how people understood the unfolding drama and acted when the future became present. He reconsiders the war's origins without looking at sources using hindsight, that is, without considering what caused the cataclysm and whether it was inevitable. As a result, Phillips dispels a popular myth that all Americans thought the Civil War would be short and glorious at the outset, a ninety-day affair full of fun and adventure. Much more than rational power games played by elites, the war was shaped by uncertainties and emotions and darkened horizons that changed over time.
Instead Looming Civil War highlights how individuals approached an ominous future with feelings, thoughts, and perspectives different from our sensibilities and unconnected to our view of their world. Civil War Americans had their own prospects to ponder and forge as they discovered who they were and where life would lead them. The Civil War changed more than America's future; it transformed how Americans imagined the future-and how Americans have thought about the future ever since.
Reviews / Votes
Honorable Mention, WORLD Magazine's Understanding America Book of the Year 2021. * WORLD Magazine * What distinguishes Phillips's work is his ambitious attempt to marry mind and matter, to insert material culture into a study of perceptions, which could have easily relied merely on close readings of textual evidence. Phillips ventures far beyond the usual cadre of theoretical work informing Civil War scholarship, drawing on a wide and interdisciplinary body of work to shape his ideas about temporality, prophecy, and materiality. His omnivorous approach to intellectual influences is particularly welcome considering the traditional reticence in the field to use theory as a grounding for primary source research. The result is a major contribution to the cultural history of the Civil War, a smart, dense, and ambitious book, tackling important questions and offering rich answers. * Yael A. Sternhell, Journal of the Civil War Era * Jason Phillips has produced an exceptionally creative and original work exploring how Americans envisioned impending sectional conflict in the antebellum period. Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future is about more than the Civil War itself; it is a meditation on the nature of historical imagination, demonstrating brilliantly how historical time extends into the future, or into multiple potential futures that shape and constrain the possibilities for action in the present ... Phillips's argument constitutes a major contribution to time studies, the currently burgeoning field of scholarship concerned with the cultural history of temporality. Phillips also pays special attention to material culture ... Looming Civil War is a magnificent accomplishment, a strikingly original and beautifully written remembrance of futures past, those imagined and those made real. * Thomas Allen, American Historical Review * This fine book demonstrates convincingly that antebellum Americans were far from unaware of the carnage to come, and that someactively embraced the prospect of civil war.Phillips marshals his evidence from contemporary diaries, letters, and published texts with admirable skill. The book overflows with insights about the importance of material culture to his subjects and the capacity of new technologies, such as telegraphy and the railroads, to affect how Americans regarded the future. * Robers Cook, Journal of Southern History * Much more than a study of how antebellum Americans confronted the possibility of a civil war, this is a discussion of how men and women conceived of the future and their own ability, as individuals, to affect what would happen to them and their country... Some readers may hear echoes of The Great War and Modern Memory in Phillips's narrative, a blending of history and literature with an imaginative interpretation of language use and material culture in his effort to uncover people's sense of their place in the world and their attempts to understand what was happening to them amidst the crises of rapid, threatening change and, eventually, war. * Christopher J. Olsen, Journal of Social History * Phillips goes far beyond myth busting in this superbly crafted book. By exploring how religion, material culture, and notions of time shaped Americans' prognostications, he weaves diverse forecasts into a sophisticated study that makes an excellent contribution to Civil War historiography... This smart, engaging book will resonate with readers living in unpredictable and portentous times. * Michael E. Woods, Journal of American History * Looming Civil War is a big, bold book... a sparkling addition to the literature... It is a book that should not be missed. * Joseph W. Pearson, Civil War Book review * a groundbreaking history about how Americans viewed the impending crisis. In it, he introduces the reader to a new way of examining history, namely how Americans anticipated the future for themselves as well as for the country at large. He overturns myths about the Civil War ... Phillips examines diaries, prophecies, dreams, art, literature, and sermons by a wide variety of Northerners and Southerners ... Highly recommended. * L. M. Hauptman, CHOICE *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
20 hts
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
669 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-086816-1 (9780190868161)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2018
OUP eBook
€16.99
Available for download
E-Book
09/2018
OUP eBook
€16.99
Available for download
Person
Jason Phillips is the Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies in the Department of History at West Virginia University. He is the author of Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility and the editor of Storytelling, History, and the Postmodern South.
Content
AcknowledgmentsPrologue: LoomingChapter 1: HorizonsChapter 2: SpeculationsChapter 3: RumorsChapter 4: PropheciesChapter 5: AnticipationsChapter 6: ExpectationsEpilogue: ShadowsNotesIndex