Civil War time : temporality & identity in America, 1861-1865 / Cheryl A. Wells.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Athens : University of Georgia Press, [2005]Copyright date: ©2005Description: xii, 195 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0820326577
  • 9780820326573
  • 9780820343426
  • 0820343420
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Time lost, time found : the Confederate victory at Manassas and the Union defeat at Bull Run -- "An hour too late" : the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg -- "Like a wheel in a watch" : soldiers, camp, and battle time -- Battle time : gender, modernity, and Civil War hospitals -- Doing time : the cannon, the clock, and civil war prisons -- Epilogue : antebellum temporalities in the postbellum period.
Review: "In antebellum America, both North and South emerged as modernizing, capitalist societies. Work bells, clock towers, and personal timepieces increasingly instilled discipline on one's day, which already was ordered by religious custom and nature's rhythms. The Civil War changed that, argues Cheryl A. Wells, by overriding antebellum schedules and playing havoc with people's perception and use of time. For those closest to the fighting, the war's effect on time included disrupted patterns of sleep, extended hours of work, conflated hours of leisure, indefinite prison sentences, challenges to the gender order, and desecration of the Sabbath."Summary: "Wells calls this phenomenon "battle time." To create a modern war machine, military officers tried to graft the antebellum authority of the clock onto the actual and mental terrain of the Civil War. However, as Wells's analysis of the Manassas and Gettysburg battles shows, military engagements followed their own logic, often without regard for the discipline imposed by clocks. Wells also looks at how battle time's effects spilled over into periods of inaction, and she covers not only the experiences of soldiers but also those of nurses, prisoners of war, slaves, and civilians."--Jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-185) and index.

Time lost, time found : the Confederate victory at Manassas and the Union defeat at Bull Run -- "An hour too late" : the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg -- "Like a wheel in a watch" : soldiers, camp, and battle time -- Battle time : gender, modernity, and Civil War hospitals -- Doing time : the cannon, the clock, and civil war prisons -- Epilogue : antebellum temporalities in the postbellum period.

"In antebellum America, both North and South emerged as modernizing, capitalist societies. Work bells, clock towers, and personal timepieces increasingly instilled discipline on one's day, which already was ordered by religious custom and nature's rhythms. The Civil War changed that, argues Cheryl A. Wells, by overriding antebellum schedules and playing havoc with people's perception and use of time. For those closest to the fighting, the war's effect on time included disrupted patterns of sleep, extended hours of work, conflated hours of leisure, indefinite prison sentences, challenges to the gender order, and desecration of the Sabbath."

"Wells calls this phenomenon "battle time." To create a modern war machine, military officers tried to graft the antebellum authority of the clock onto the actual and mental terrain of the Civil War. However, as Wells's analysis of the Manassas and Gettysburg battles shows, military engagements followed their own logic, often without regard for the discipline imposed by clocks. Wells also looks at how battle time's effects spilled over into periods of inaction, and she covers not only the experiences of soldiers but also those of nurses, prisoners of war, slaves, and civilians."--Jacket.

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