Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern History
1 total work
Mastering Wartime is the first study of a Northern city during the Civil War. J. Matthew Gallman argues that although the war posed numerous challenges to Philadelphia and its citizens, the city's institutions and traditions proved to be sufficiently malleable to adjust to the crisis without substantial alteration. Gallman explores the war's impact on aspects of life in Philadelphia. Among the issues addressed in the book are recruitment and conscription of soldiers; individual responses to wartime separation and death; individual and institutional benevolence; civic rituals; crime and disorder; government contracting and the experiences of entrepreneurs; and long-term economic development. The book focuses mainly on how the wartime years compared with the antebellum period, but Gallman also discusses some of the war's legacies for the postwar decade.