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Between 1862 and 1878, the view of the United States government towards the nation's money was transformed. Early in the Civil War, the government got into the bank note printing business out of necessity, printing and issuing the first-ever federal currency. Over the following years, debates raged whether the national currency should be printed privately or by the government's bank note printer, the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP). Matters came to a head in 1878 when Congress debated the future of the BEP. That year, in a radical departure from the past, Congress gave the Bureau of Engraving and Printing a monopoly on the production of currency, forever changing the role of the government in the nation's economy. Money, be it in the form of coin or currency, was now the exclusive province of the government – not private banks or bank note companies. This change was the result of a rare consensus between Democrats and Republicans and between the forces of the antimonopoly tradition, Greenbackism, and hard money. For various reasons, they were unanimous in believing that the government, especially Congress, should be in control of those matters affecting the monetary affairs of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Archaeologies of internment present unique challenges and benefits. Myriad aspects of human behaviour that stretch over temporal scales of generations and centuries at other archaeological sites are visible in ephemeral traces of short-term occupation at sites of internment such as prisoner of war (POW)camps; resistance, domination, the structure and scaffolds of authority, agency and identity are created, cast, and discarded into the soil. The paper examines some of these stories from the earth through military prisons of the American Civil War, and the ephemeral archaeology of selected case studies: Camp Lawton, Andersonville, and Johnson's Island. Themes explored are globalization and the intersection of the global at the local in prison camps, resistance, its forms, and function within POW camps; and how resistance intersecting with systems of structural violence within internment camps spurred the development of a masculinity in the 19th century during, and after the American Civil War, different from societal norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roman Catholic Irish nuns formed a large part of the American Civil War nursing experience in both the North and the South. In fact, when Confederate President Robert E. Lee beseeched the assistance of Irish-born Patrick Lynch, then Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, to provide nurses for his hospitals, Roman Catholic sisters from a local convent were pressed into service. Sister M. De Sales (Brennan), born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, became instrumental in establishing two hospitals in the Virginias. During the war years she penned over 1000 pages of letters to him. Initially, the paper provides an overview of the cultural milieu and medical knowledge that existed prior to the onset of the conflict. Attending to soldiers whose wounds changed both the nature of medicine and the approach to it, women willing to move beyond the confines of predominantly private and family-oriented care assisted on battlefields and in field hospitals of various kinds. In these settings, widows, adventure seekers, good-hearted women and Irish Catholic nuns alike offered many kinds of on-the-job training. Their duties ranged from the more traditional tasks of setting up kitchens, organising laundries and writing letters, to the more daunting services of 'cupping', administering anaesthetics such as whiskey and chloroform, and surgically removing limbs. By virtue of the sheer magnitude of the suffering, the experiences endured by these women altered their confidence in their abilities to minister, changed their perspectives on public life, and ultimately redefined their futures in organisation and administration. De Sales' letters serve as a case study by which to examine how, as a result of the American Civil War, the Roman Catholic Church gained ground and its Irish nuns acquired a stronger foothold in American nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting a newspaper in the nineteenth century was a risky business, and this was especially true in the Civil War South where invading armies, spiraling inflation, and conscription laws were constant threats to physical facilities, financial success, and manpower Despite this, North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance and the state's Conservative political party found the money and the will to establish a new daily to support the his re-election bid in 1864. Campaign papers were common in the 1800s, but while most shut down following an election, the Conservative continued to publish after Vance won. Records and archives document how it was financed, equipped, and staffed, providing an unprecedented glimpse into what it took to start a newspaper not only in the nineteenth century but during America's bloodiest war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balance of power theories have come roaring back into prominence in recent years as international relations theory grapples with new developments, including offshore balancing and soft balancing. Recent works demonstrate the importance of more than just the distribution of power, and have addressed the role that domestic politics plays in balancing. One overlooked aspect of this debate, with implications for offensive realism and the current discussion on the United States and soft balancing, is the role that nonintervention conventions play in decision making. British nonintervention during the American Civil War presents a case at odds with offensive realist theory, as Britain should have intervened to protect its national interests - cotton, trade, and shipping - while also restraining a regional hegemonic power. Domestic cleavages, democratic peace norms, and public opinion pressures do not sufficiently explain this behavior. Instead, this paper posits that nonintervention was a result of British adherence to precedents and conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a case study on the relationship between a public sphere and partisan electoral politics based on the civil war in the U.S. Complexity of the relationship between partisanship and the public sphere in the northern U.S.; Importance of antipartyism; Examination of the political papers written by businessman James Batterson on the impact of the Civil War on political mobilization in the U.S.