Victorian America and the Civil War / Anne C. Rose.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-293) and index.

1. Religion. Religion and Personal Growth. Charitable Spirits and Structured Institutions. Crises in Faith and Nationhood -- 2. Work. A War of Commitments. Family, Schooling, Bureaucracy, and the Trials of Success. Dreams of Glory and Memories of Achievement -- 3. Leisure. Imaginative Acquisition and the Expansion of Self. Social Construction through Play. The Reciprocal Debts of Pleasure and War -- 4. Family. Husbands and Wives. Parents and Children. Victorian Families in Time. The Domestication of War and the Sentimentalization of Culture -- 5. Politics. Political Nurture. Political Professionalism and the Active State. Trials of Political Conscience and Defenses of Sectional Honor. War's Gallery of Heroes and Bureaucracy's Revolving Door -- 6. Victorian America and the Civil War. A Victorian Tale of War. From War Narratives to Autobiography.

"Victorian America and the Civil War examines the relationships between American Victorian culture and the Civil War. The author argues that at the heart of American Victorian culture was Romanticism, a secular quest to answer questions previously settled by traditional religion. In examining the biographies of seventy-five Americans who lived in the antebellum and Civil War eras, elements of disequilibrium, passion and intellectual excitement are explored in contrast to the traditional view of Victorian self-control and moral assurance. The Civil War is shown to be a central event in the cultural life of the American Victorians, which both was an environment for the resolution of their questions and a place where their values and aspirations could be reshaped."--pub. desc.