Front Cover.
Half Title Page.
Recent Titles in Voices of an Era.
Title Page.
Copyright Page.
Contents.
Preface.
Introduction: Civil War America and Reconstruction.
How to Evaluate Primary Documents.
Chronology of Events.
1: Politics.
2: Senator Stephen Douglas's Support of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854).
3: Reaction to Lincoln's First Inaugural Address in the Staunton (Virginia) Spectator (1861).
4: A “Disgrace to the American People”: The Illinois Legislature Denounces the Emancipation Proclamation (1863).
5: A Reaction to the Gettysburg Address in Harper's Weekly (1863).
6: “Election Day … the Most Momentous Since the Days of Washington”: Diary Entries by Union Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lyman (1864).
7: The 14th Constitutional Amendment and the 15th Constitutional Amendment (1868, 1870).
8: Rutherford B. Hayes's Inaugural Address (1877).
9: Military Life.
10: “To Assist … in the Defense of Our Common Country”: David Pierson to William H. Pierson (April 22, 1861).
11: Hardtack and Coffee, or the Unwritten Story of Army Life (1887).
12: “Valiantly Did the Heroic Descendants of Africa Move Forward …”: Letter from Captain Elias D. Strunke (1863).
13: “I Will Commence Writing You a Letter”: Description of Life in Fredericksburg, Virginia (1863).
14: “The Balls Make a Very Loud Singing Noise When They Pass Near You …”: An Experience of Battle (1861).
15: “Our Dear Boys—Now as Ever—I Commit Them into Thy Hands”: A Confederate Woman Supports the War Effort (1862).
16: “We Now Are in Indian Country …”: Life Near a Reservation (1867-1868).
17: Economics.
18: “The Soil Is All the Best Quality …”: Results of the Homestead Act (1872).
19: The Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad: An Eyewitness Observance (1869).
20: “The Chinese Must Go”: Article in The Illustrated Wasp (1878).
21: “A Farmer's Life”: Article in The Atlantic Monthly (1877).
22: “The Old Chisholm Trail”: A Cowboy Ballad (1870s).
23: “Regulations to Be Observed by All Persons Employed in the Lewiston Mills” (1867).
24: Domestic Life.
25: “This Morning We Have Heard That [Father] Is Safe and I Can Take up My Journal Again”: Diary Entries of Emma LeConte (January–February 1865).
26: “Perhaps a Courtship of Generous Length …”: A Columnists Advice to Couples (1871).
27: A Manual for New Mothers: Domestic Advice from Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869).
28: “She Bore the Yoke and Wore the Name of Wife”: In Praise of Domesticity (1872).
29: “Our Household Servants”: Article in The Galaxy (September 1872).
30: Material Life.
31: “… The Air of Substantialness”: A Plan for Home Ownership (1866).
32: “Home to Thanksgiving”: A Currier and Ives Lithograph (1867).
33: Improving Mealtime: Recipes from The National Cook Book.
34: Women's Fashion in an Advertising Lithograph (1869).
35: Consumerism Benefits from the “Dailies”: A Newspaper Advertisement for Household Goods (1874).
36: Religion.
37: An Argument for Slave Ownership: Reverend George Armstrong's The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857).
38: The Battle between Good and Evil: An African American Spiritual (1872).
39: “… The Heat Was So Intense That It Drove Us Down to the Waters …”: An Account of the Chicago Fire (1873).
40: “We Sang ‘Rock of Ages’ as I Thought I Had Never Heard It Sung Before …”: Frances Willard's Crusade Against Alcohol, from Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (1889).
41: “Baby Looking out for Me”: From Samuel Irenaeus Prime's Thoughts on the Death of Little Children (1865).
42: “A Buddhist Mission in the United States?”: A Satire Highlighting Divisions Among Christians (1872).
43: Intellectual Life.
44: Funding Agricultural Colleges: The Morrill Act (1862).
45: “A Physician's Story”: Continental Monthly (December 1862).
46: “Knowledge Is Power,” Lesson XXII, McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic Reader: Instructive Lessons for the Young (1866).
47: Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks by Horatio Alger Jr. (1868).
48: “Harvest of Death”: Photograph by Timothy O'Sullivan (1863).
49: “The Blue and the Gray” by Francis Miles Finch (1867).
50: Recreation and Leisure.
51: “Clubs and Club Life”: The Galaxy (1876).
52: Publicity Photo for P. T. Barnum's American Museum (c. mid-1850s-mid-1860s).
53: “The Baseball Glove Comes to Baseball”: Albert Spalding (1875).
54: “Christmas, 1871”: Manufacturer and Builder (1871).
55: “The Checkered Game of Life”: An Advertisement in The Nursery: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers (1877).
Biographical Sketches of Important Individuals Mentioned in Text.
Glossary of Terms Mentioned in Text.
Bibliography.
Index.
About the Editors.
