H. Matsui's Books

War Is All Hell

The Nature of Evil and the Civil War

By: Edward J. Blum,John H. Matsui

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War Is All Hell

The Nature of Evil and the Civil War

By: Edward J. Blum,John H. Matsui

An examination of how Americans brought concepts of the devil, demons, and hell into every fabric of their lives and times in the American Civil War. These influences continued to impact the nation and its people after the war"--

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Page Count

216

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812253043

ISBN 13

9780812253047

Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares

The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict

By: John H. Matsui

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Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares

The American Civil War as an Apocalyptic Conflict

By: John H. Matsui

In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807175315

ISBN 13

9780807175316

The First Republican Army

The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War

By: John H. Matsui

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The First Republican Army

The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War

By: John H. Matsui

Although much is known about the political stance of the military at large during the Civil War, the political party affiliations of individual soldiers have received little attention. Drawing on archival sources from twenty-five generals and 250 volunteer officers and enlisted men, John Matsui offers the first major study to examine the ways in which individual politics were as important as military considerations to battlefield outcomes and how the experience of war could alter soldiers’ political views. The conservative war aims pursued by Abraham Lincoln’s generals (and to some extent, the president himself) in the first year of the American Civil War focused on the preservation of the Union and the restoration of the antebellum status quo. This approach was particularly evident in the prevailing policies and attitudes toward Confederacy-supporting Southern civilians and slavery. But this changed in Virginia during the summer of 1862 with the formation of the Army of Virginia. If the Army of the Potomac (the major Union force in Virginia) was dominated by generals who concurred with the ideology of the Democratic Party, the Army of Virginia (though likewise a Union force) was its political opposite, from its senior generals to the common soldiers. The majority of officers and soldiers in the Army of Virginia saw slavery and pro-Confederate civilians as crucial components of the rebel war effort and blamed them for prolonging the war. The frustrating occupation experiences of the Army of Virginia radicalized them further, making them a vanguard against Southern rebellion and slavery within the Union army as a whole and paving the way for Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

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Age

Page Count

316

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813939283

ISBN 13

9780813939285

Book's by H. Matsui

War Is All Hell

War Is All Hell

Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares

Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares

The First Republican Army

The First Republican Army

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