Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era

by Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai

Overview

The elite young men who inhabited northern antebellum states—the New Brahmins—developed their leadership class identity based on the term “character”: an idealized internal standard of behavior consisting most importantly of educated, independent thought and selfless action. With its unique focus on Union honor, nationalism, and masculinity, Northern Character addresses the motivating factors of these young college-educated Yankees who rushed into the armed forces to take their place at the forefront of the Union’s war.

This social and intellectual history tells the New Brahmins’ story from the campus to the battlefield and, for the fortunate ones, home again. Northern Character examines how these good and moral “men of character” interacted with common soldiers and faced battle, reacted to seeing the South and real southerners, and approached race, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823271818
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2016
Series:	The North's Civil War
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of history at Angelo State University. He is co-editor (with Lorien Foote) of So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War-Era North, also from Fordham University Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. "A Stage with Curtains Drawn": New England College Students and Their World
2. "The Great People of the Future": American Civilization and National Character
3. To Act Like Men: Building Character in the New Brahmins
4. "To Put Those Theories into Practice": Secession and The Crisis of Character
5. Marching into "Rebeldom": The Failure of Southern Character
6. The Character to Command
7. Character Triumphant: Reconstruction, Reform, and Reconciliation
Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This important book is the first comprehensive study of a group of young men who provided vital leadership to the Union war effort and played key roles in the post-war United States. It makes a significant scholarly contribution to a variety of discussions regarding nationalism, social class, manhood, and the nature of leadership in the Union Army.——Lorien Foote, Texas A&M University

From the Publisher

This important book is the first comprehensive study of a group of young men who provided vital leadership to the Union war effort and played key roles in the post-war United States. It makes a significant scholarly contribution to a variety of discussions regarding nationalism, social class, manhood, and the nature of leadership in the Union Army.

Texas A&M University - Lorien Foote

[This] book's principal strength is that it traces antebellum ideas about character and leadership through the Civil War and into the twentieth century, as students became soldiers, veterans, and civic leaders.

The Journal of Southern History