Overview

Historians have given a great deal of attention to the lives and experiences of Civil War soldiers, but surprisingly little is known about navy sailors who participated in the conflict. Michael J. Bennett remedies the longstanding neglect of Civil War seamen in this comprehensive assessment of the experience of common Union sailors from 1861 to 1865. To resurrect the voices of the ""Union Jacks,"" Bennett combed sailors' diaries, letters, and journals. He finds that the sailors differed from their counterparts in the army in many ways. They tended to be a rougher bunch of men than the regular soldiers, drinking and fighting excessively. Those who were not foreign-born, escaped slaves, or unemployed at the time they enlisted often hailed from the urban working class rather than from rural farms and towns. In addition, most sailors enlisted for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons. Bennett's examination provides a look into the everyday lives of sailors and illuminates where they came from, why they enlisted, and how their origins shaped their service. By showing how these Union sailors lived and fought on the sea, Bennett brings an important new perspective to our understanding of the Civil War.

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9780807828700

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Despite all that is known about the experience of soldiers, the sailor's war has remained shrouded in a combination of mystery and myth. In one stroke, Michael Bennett brings the sailors out of the shadows and situates them within the distinctive maritime culture of seafarers and roustabouts and the broader political culture of mid-nineteenth-century working men. - Joseph P. Reidy, Howard University

"""Despite all that is known about the experience of soldiers, the sailor's war has remained shrouded in a combination of mystery and myth. In one stroke, Michael Bennett brings the sailors out of the shadows and situates them within the distinctive maritime culture of seafarers and roustabouts and the broader political culture of mid-nineteenth-century working men."" - Joseph P. Reidy, Howard University"""

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Michael J. Bennett is an attorney and independent scholar living in University Heights, Ohio.

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