studies slavery culture violence

books:

John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War (Cultural Studies of the United States)
Franny Nudelman

The University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Singing "John Brown's Body" as they marched to war, Union soldiers sought to steel themselves in the face of impending death. As the bodies of these soldiers accumulated in the wake of battle, writers, artists, and politicians extolled their deaths as a means to national unity and rebirth. Many scholars have followed suit, and the Civil War is often remembered as an inaugural moment in the development of national identity. Revisiting the culture ...