A union tested : the Civil War letters of Cimbaline and Henry Fike /
"This volume reveals how an ordinary American couple, Cimbaline and Henry Fike, wrote their way through struggles that challenged the survival of both their nation and marriage. Drawing on hundreds of letters exchanged between 1862 and 1865, A Union Tested details the lives of an Illinois homem...
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| Other Authors: | , |
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Athens :
The University of Georgia Press,
[2025]
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| Series: | New Perspectives on the Civil War Era.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "This volume reveals how an ordinary American couple, Cimbaline and Henry Fike, wrote their way through struggles that challenged the survival of both their nation and marriage. Drawing on hundreds of letters exchanged between 1862 and 1865, A Union Tested details the lives of an Illinois homemaker and a quartermaster in the Union army and reveals how Civil War correspondence sustained relationships disrupted by war. In his research Jeremy Neely found that such letters became an epistolary bridge that sustained families-wives and husbands, parents and children, brothers and sisters-across the years and miles that stretched between them during the tumult of war. The Fikes' years-long correspondence shows how a fully formed marriage reconstituted itself within the handwritten lines the couple cast across hundreds of miles. Amid the extraordinary circumstances of wartime, writing to one another prompted a remarkable degree of self-reflection and provided for each the space to learn anew about their partners, their country, and themselves"-- |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 233 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780820369440 0820369446 9780820369457 0820369454 |