A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community

Winner: Avery O. Craven Award

Winner: Indiana Center for the Book Award

For all that has been written about the Civil War’s impact on the urban northeast and southern home fronts, we have until now lacked a detailed picture of how it affected specific communities in the Union’s Midwestern heartland. Nicole Etcheson offers a deeply researched microhistory of one such community—Putnam County, Indiana, from the Compromise of 1850 to the end of Reconstruction—and shows how its citizens responded ...