Tagged: North Carolina Voices

Many people think the American Civil War had to happen. It reunited a torn country and put an end to slavery. But was it a "good" war, and is there even such a thing? Host Frank Stasio talks about the morality of the Civil War with David Goldfield, the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation” (Bloomsbury Press/2011); and Fitzhugh Brundage, the William Umstead Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Before the Civil War, North Carolina was a poor, agrarian state. The people who lived here were renowned for their independence. It was a quality that would serve the state well after the war.

Washington Duke was a penniless, ambivalent Confederate soldier in the spring of 1865 when he was released from a Union prison in New Bern. Ahead of him was a 130 mile walk home to Durham - waiting for him there were 4 children, no wife, and a ransacked farm.

During the Civil War, the Union Army had an increasing supply of something the Confederacy lacked: food. Canning operations in the North kept the Union’s bellies full while Southern soldiers faced starvation. In his new book, “Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War” (St. Martin’s Press/2011), author and culinary historian Andrew F. Smith explores the role of food in the outcome of the war. Smith joins host Frank Stasio to talk about his research and the connection between the Civil War and the industrialization of America’s food supply.

America was a highly religious nation during the Civil War era and spiritual believers on both sides of the conflict turned to their faith to understand the causes and consequences of the war. The concept of divine providence - the idea that God’s will was being played out on the battleground - was a common theme in the messages of preachers and political leaders of the day. For African-Americans in South, the freedom to worship came slowly and black ministers found themselves facing the exciting challenge of emancipation in different ways.