Contemporary Authors

• So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War–Era North Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 2015
• Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 2016

Library of Congress Online Catalog 1. So conceived and so dedicated : intellectual life in the Civil War-era north LCCN 2015009543 Type of material Book Main title So conceived and so dedicated : intellectual life in the Civil War-era north / edited by Lorien Foote and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Fordham University Press, 2015. Description xii, 307 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. ISBN 9780823264476 (cloth : alk. paper) 9780823264483 (pbk. : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2015 122995 CALL NUMBER E468.9 .S669 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) Shelf Location FLM2016 067692 CALL NUMBER E468.9 .S669 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 2. Northern Character : College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era LCCN 2015042061 Type of material Book Personal name Wongsrichanalai, Kanisorn, author. Main title Northern Character : College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era / Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Fordham University Press, 2016. Description 263 pages ; 24 cm. ISBN 9780823271818 (cloth : alk. paper) 9780823271825 (pbk. : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2016 121358 CALL NUMBER F9 .W88 2016 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) CALL NUMBER F9 .W88 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Angelo State U - https://www.angelo.edu/content/profiles/963-kanisorn-wongsrichanalai

  Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, Ph.D.

  Department of History
  Associate Professor

  325-942-2157
  Kanisorn.Wongsrichanalai@angelo.edu
  Academic Building, 239D

  Office Hours Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
  By appointment only 0930-1030, 1230-1330, and by appointment By appointment only 0930-1030, 1230-1330, and by appointment By appointment only

  Education
  Teaching
  Research
  Publications

  Ph.D., University of Virginia
  M.A., University of Virginia
  B.A., Bowdoin College

  U.S. History Surveys
  The Civil War: Causes and Conflict
  U.S. Military History from 1600–1904
  Gender History
  Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Remembrance
  Honors Seminar in the Humanities (Fall 2014, Fall 2015)

  Nationalism
  Gender
  Identity
  The Civil War Era North
  Youth Culture and Education
  Combat Motivations

  Co-director of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded project West Texans and the Experience of War, World War I to the Present.

  Books

  Author, Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016)
  Co-editor with Lorien Foote, So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War Era North (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015)

  Essays

  “Election 1880” in The Civil War Monitor 5, no.4 (Winter, 2015): 54-63, 74-75.
  “The Union of Gentlemen Restored: College-Educated Northern Veterans, Reconciliation, and Northern Honor” in Massachusetts and the Civil War, eds. Matthew Mason, Kate Viens, and Conrad E. Wright (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015).
  “Lessons of War: Three Civil War Veterans and the Goals of Post-War Education” in Lorien Foote and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, eds., So Conceived and So Dedicated: Intellectual Life in the Civil War Era North (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015)
  “‘What Is a Person Worth At Such a Time’: New England College Students, Sectionalism, and Secession” in Children and Youth During the Civil War Era, ed. James Marten (New York: New York University Press, January, 2012).
  “Universities and Their Sons: New England College Students and Graduates in the Civil War,” Massachusetts Historical Review 13 (November, 2011).
  “‘Home and All It Meant’: Bowdoin College as a Nostalgia-Based Intermediate Motivator,” Maine History 43, no. 3 (January, 2008): 166-87.

  Areas of Specialization
  Nineteenth-Century U.S., Civil War and Reconstruction, Gender, Slavery

  \ Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai Department of History Angelo State University ASU Station #10897 San Ange lo, TX 76909 - 0897 Tel: ( 325 ) 942 - 2157 kwongsrichanalai@angelo.edu E DUCATION Ph.D., University of Virginia, Corcoran Department of History, August 2010 Dissertation: “ The Burden of Their Class: College - Educated New Englanders in the Civil War Era .” M.A., University of Virginia, Corcoran Departme nt of History, August 2004 Thesis: “New England’s Elite: Young, College - Educated Men at the Beginning of the Civil War” A. B., Bowdoin College, History and Psychology, May 2003 Honors Thesis: “Home & All It Meant: The Combat Motivations of Bowdoin Men in the Second World War” A PPOINTMENTS Associate Professor August 2017 – present Depart of History, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas Assistant Professor (tenure track) August 2011 - August 2017 Department of History, Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas Post - Doctoral Fellow August 2010 - June 2011 Department of History, East Tennessee State Universi ty, Johnson City, Tennessee P UBLICATIONS B OOK S Edited with David J. Silbey, Wars Civil and Great: A Comparative Analysis of the American Civil War and World War One (advance contract with the University of Alabama Press; expected publication in 2019) Northern Character: College - Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). Wongsrichanalai/ 2 Edited with Lorien Foote, So Conceived and So Dedicated: Northern Intellectuals in the Civil War Era ( New York: Fordham University Press, 2015). Civil War Memories: William Pitt Fessenden and Thomas Worcester Hyde . Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College, 2003. (A collection of feature articles that I wrote for the Bowdoin Orient , the student newspaper – 106 page s.) E SSAYS “The Union Above All Else: College - Educated Northerners, the Course of the War, National Politics, and the Debate Over Loyalty” in Contested Loyalty: Debates Over Patriotism in the Civil War North , ed. Robert M. Sandow (forthcoming 2018). “E lection 1880” in The Civil War Monitor 5, no. 4 (Winter, 2015): 54 - 63, 74 - 75. (Originally titled “This Blackguard Campaign’: James A. Garfield, Winfield S. Hancock, the Election of 1880, and the Memory of the Civil War.”) “Lessons of War: Three Civil War Veterans and the Goals of Post - War Education,” in So Conceived and So Dedicated: Northern Intellectuals in the Civil War Era , eds. Lorien Foote and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015) “The Union of Gentlemen Restored: Colle ge - Educated Northern Veterans, Reconciliation, and Northern Honor” in Massachusetts and the Civil War , eds. Matthew Mason, Kate Viens, and Conrad E. Wright (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). “‘What Is a Person Worth At Such a Time’: New England Co llege Students, Sectionalism, and Secession” in Children and Youth During the Civil War Era , ed. James Marten (New York: New York University Press, January, 2012 ). “Universities and Their Sons: New England College Students a nd Graduates in the Civil War,” Massachusetts Historical Review 13 ( November , 2011) . “‘Home and All It Meant’: Bowdoin College as a Nostalg ia - Based Intermediate Motivator, ” Maine History 43, no. 3 (January, 2008): 166 - 87. E NCYCLOPEDIA E NTRIES (S ELECTED ) Book Review. “Jerry Thompson, ed., Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza & Manual Yturri ,” Military History of the West 12 (2012): 43. Book Review. “Jack Stokes Ballard, Commander and Bu ilder of Western Forts: The Life and Times of Major General Henry C. Merriam, 1862 - 1901 ,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 116, no. 3 (January, 2013): 336 - 37. Book Review. “A. James Fuller, ed., The Election of 1860 Reconsidered ,” The Journal of Military History (October, 2013). Wongsrichanalai/ 3 Book Review. “Gary W. Gallagher and Rachel A. Shelden, eds., A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid - Nineteenth - Century American Political History ,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 117 (October, 2013): 211 - 13. Book Review. “ The Great Hanging at Gainesville, 1862: The Accounts of Thomas Barrett and George Washington Diamond .” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 117 (January, 2014): 329 - 30. Book Review. “Norman C. Delaney, The Maltby Brothers’ Civil War ,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 118 (January 2015): 323 - 324. Website Review. “Catoctin Center for Regional Studies, Frederick Community College, Crossroads of War: Maryland and the Border in the Civil War ,” Journal of American History 102 (June 2015): 332. Book Review. “Orvi lle Vernon Burton with Wilbur Cross, Penn Center: A History Preserved ,” Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (September, 2015): 473 - 75. Book Review. “Justin S. Solonick, Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg ,” Journal of Southern History 82 (May, 20 16): 439 - 40. O THER W RITINGS “The Guns of Fredericksburg,” The Chronicle Blog Network: The Edge of the American West (December 17, 2013). < http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2013/12/17/the - guns - of - fredericksburg/ > “Reenacting Reconciliation, ” The Chronicle Blog Network: The Edge of the American West (May 21, 2013). < http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2013/05/21/reenacting - reconciliation/ > “Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai’s ‘Northern Character,’” The Page 99 Test (July 27, 2016) < http:// page99test.blogspot.com/2016/07/kanisorn - wongsrichanalais - northern.html > “Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai’s ‘Northern Character,’” My Book, the Movie (July 28, 2016) < http://mybookthemovie.blogspot.com/2016/07/kanisorn - wongsrichanalais - northern.html > F ELLOWSHI PS , A WARDS , AND H ONORS Project co - director, National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic Serving Institutions Grant, Project Title: “West Texans and the Experience of War: World War I to the Present,” 2015 - 2017 (Amount awarded : $99,982.00) Project co - director, Library of America, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, “World War I and America,” 2017 (Amount awarded: $1,200.00) Wongsrichanalai/ 4 “ 2017 President ’ s Award for Faculty Excellence in Research/Creative Endeavor , ” Angelo State University, May 2017 Recipient, Angelo State University Faculty Research Enhancement Program Grant, “Honor’s Last Refuge: The Triumphant Union, the Defeated South, and the Myth of the West,” 2016 - 2017 (Amount awarded: $12,553.00) Project co - director, National Endowment for the Humanities & the American Library Associ ation, “Latino Americans: 500 Years of History,” 2015 - 2016 (Amount awarded: $3,000.00) “2015 Faculty Excellence in Research/Creative Endeavor Award,” Angelo State University, May 2015 “2014 Nominee for the President’s Awards for Faculty Excellence in Tea ching,” Angelo State University, May 2014 T EACHING E XPERIENCE Angelo State University, Fall 2011 - Assistant Professor of History “U.S. History To 1865” “U.S. History Since 1865” “The Civil War and Reconstruction” (undergraduate and gradu ate course) “U.S. Military History, 1600 - 1902” “Gender in Victorian America” (undergraduate and graduate course) “Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Remembrance” “The Civil War: Causes, Course, and Conflict” “A Global History of Food” (First Year Hon ors Seminar in the Humanities) “A History of Death and Mortality” (First Year Honors Seminar in the Humanities) “Human - Animal Interactions in History” (First Year Honors Seminar in the Humanities) “ Journeys and Travel in History ” (First Year Honors Seminar in the Humanities) East Tennessee State University, Fall 2010 - Summer 2011 P ost - Doctoral Fellow, Department of History “U.S. History to 1877” “U.S. History from 1877” “Historical Methods” “The Revolutionary Era” “The Civil War: Experienced and Debated” University of Mary Washington, Spring 2010 Adjunct, Department of Histor y and American Studies “U.S. History to 1865” “The American Civil War” Wongsrichanalai/ 5 P ROFESSIONAL M EETINGS “Criminal Intent: How Americans Understood the Civil Wa r Through the Lens of Fraud.” Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Meeting, Chattanooga, Tennessee, June 2 - 4, 2016 “The Union of Gentlemen Restored: College - Educated Northern Veterans, Reconciliation, and Northern Honor.” Massachusetts and the Civil W ar: The Commonwealth and National Disunion, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, April 4 - 6, 2013 “The Home Front Battlefield of History: The Election of 1880, Garfield, Hancock, and the Legacy of the Civil War.” Conference on the Civil War, the Center for Civil War Research at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, October 19 - 20, 2012 “Justified by Victory: Civil War Veterans and Education in the 1860s and 1870s.” History of Education Society, fifty - first annual meeting, Chicago, Illin ois, November 3 - 6, 2011 S ERVICE Project co - director, National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic Serving Institutions Grant, Project Title: “West Texans and the Experience of War: World War I to the Present,” 2015 - 2017. Project co - dir ector, Library of America, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, “World War I and America,” 2017. Project co - director, National Endowment for the Humanities & the American Library Association, “La tino Americans: 500 Years of History,” 2015 - 2016. Co - coordinator (2015 - present). The Great War Centennial Commemoration Lecture Series, Angelo State University. Committee member (2016 - present). E. James Holland Symposium on American Values, Angelo State University. Committee member (2017 - present). Committee on Academic Excellence, Angelo State University. Grant reviewer (Spring 2017), National Endowment for the Humanities Initiatives at Community Colleges. Reviewed grant applications from community coll eges for the NEH. Coordinator (2011 - 2015). Civil War Commemor ation Lecture Series, Angelo State University. Committee chair (2015 - present), Department of History Scholarship Committee, Angelo State University. Website manager (2011 - present). Department of History, Angelo State University.

• -

Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era
Timothy J. Williams
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p688+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era. By Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. The North's Civil War. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. [x], 263. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8232-7182-5; cloth, $140.00, ISBN 978-08232-7181-8.)

In this study of college-educated New Englanders coming of age in the 1840s and 1850s, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai asks what motivated young men to leave their homes and to take up arms for their country. For his answer, Wongsrichanalai turns to a sample of forty-nine young men who attended prestigious New England colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Bowdoin, and Williams. He finds that a uniquely northern culture of "character" compelled young men to fight (p. 8). "An idealized internal standard of behavior consisting most importantly of educated, independent thought and selfless action," this notion of character "should be regarded as a northern variant of the better-known code of southern honor," he argues (p. 2). A matter of a man's interior self and earnest self-presentation (even in the face of adversity), character informed how men thought about their own personal honor as New England's "gentleman class," viewed the South and southerners, and experienced war in various leadership capacities (p. 7).

The book extends George M. Fredrickson's classic work The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1965) to include young intellectuals. Whereas Fredrickson found in New England's intelligentsia a longing for sectional crisis to turn into war to prove the need for educated leadership, Wongsrichanalai shows that this desire was not so for the younger generation. Young college men "did not aimlessly wander through the mid-nineteenth-century world waiting for a conflict to erupt," Wongsrichanalai argues. "Rather these young men concerned themselves with codes of conduct that qualified them as members of the gentleman class, worried about their careers, and observed national affairs with interest" (p. 7). In the language of gender history, and Amy S. Greenberg, these young men valued "restrained manhood" (p. 6). In making this argument, Wongsrichanalai follows a single generation from youth to old age.

The book's principal strength is that it traces antebellum ideas about character and leadership through the Civil War and into the twentieth century, as students became soldiers, veterans, and civic leaders. The first three chapters focus on the antebellum period, especially the social world of college life. The New Brahmins' college writings--mostly commencement orations--revealed a striking New England-centered version of American history, which emphasized nationalism rooted in free labor and the Protestant work ethic. The classical curriculum enforced these ideas, as did the capstone moral philosophy course, which taught young men how to build character through introspection and self-control. Collegians believed that education distinguished them as America's natural leaders; war presented "the ultimate test of character" instilled during college (p. 17). In the four chapters related to the Civil War--the strongest of the book--Wongsrichanalai describes how these young men viewed the South though this lens, criticizing the region's educated class for what they viewed as an impoverished and backward land. Significantly, these men espoused racist views about former enslaved persons, particularly that they had to be taught character and self-control. This presumption fueled many of these men's advocacy for educating freed-people after the war.

In the end, the book is more successful in proving some claims, mostly those about wartime leadership, than others. Indeed, readers of this journal should question the author's premise that "northern character" was regionally unique. Wongsrichanalai argues, "Historians agree that honor, as a cultural code, pervaded southern society" (p. 5). This is not true. While some historians continue to emphasize honor, many other scholars, including myself, have shown that this rigid binary, while convenient, is not reliable, especially in studying education and gender. Southern colleges and universities instilled character by promoting discipline, industry, sobriety, self-control, emulation, and the cultivation of healthy civic leadership. In this way, regional comparison of styles of character, honor, and manhood distract from ideas about nationalism. leadership, and race that defined, more broadly, the culture of the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

Timothy J. Williams

University of Oregon

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Williams, Timothy J. "Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 688+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078142/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f7fd4f25. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078142

So conceived and so dedicated: intellectual life in the Civil War-era North
B.T. Browne
53.2 (Oct. 2015): p313.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
So conceived and so dedicated: intellectual life in the Civil War-era North, ed. by Lorien Foote and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. Fordham, 2015. 307p index ISBN 9780823264483 pbk, $40.00

53-0962

E468

2015-9543 MARC

Acknowledging the seminal nature of George Fredrickson's The Inner Civil War (1965), editors Foote and Wongsrichanalai propose that this collection of essays will provide "a more complete and updated" examination of Northern intellectual life during the Civil War, as the scholarship presented here encompasses much more than the activities of Frederickson's relatively small group of elite New Englanders. The authors of these essays address, in a multitude of ways, three fundamental ideas, the first being to what extent American intellectuals believed that the Civil War revealed the inadequacy of old ideas, thus demanding new patterns of thought and behavior. A second general concern is whether the war engendered intellectual authoritarianism or strengthened democratic individualism. Last, these essays confront the issue of new conceptions of nationalism and individuals' relationships with the state. Among the topics addressed in this volume are the war's impact on health care, race as a factor in conceptions of civic health, postwar reevaluations of higher education, faculty responses to the war, and the meaning of the war for Irish and Catholic Americans. Altogether, the essays go far in building on Frederickson's foundation, delineating new directions for inquiry. Summing Up: **** Essential. All upper-division and graduate collections; doubtless of considerable value to faculty.--B. T. Browne, emeritus, Broward College

Browne, B.T.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Browne, B.T. "So conceived and so dedicated: intellectual life in the Civil War-era North." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2015, p. 313. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A431198549/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=60225336. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A431198549

Williams, Timothy J. "Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 688+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078142/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f7fd4f25. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017. Browne, B.T. "So conceived and so dedicated: intellectual life in the Civil War-era North." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2015, p. 313. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A431198549/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=60225336. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.

• Civil War Monitor
  https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/blogs/wongsrichanalai-northern-character-2016
  Word count: 855

  WONGSRICHANALAI: Northern Character (2016)
  Posted 11/9/2016 Reviewed By James G. Kopaczewski

  Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era by Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai. Fordham University Press, 2016. Paper, IBSN: 978-0823271825. $35.00.

  In Northern Character, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai traces the intellectual lineage of elite white New Englanders before, during, and after the American Civil War. Wongsrichanalai argues that the New Brahmins—a group of young, wealthy, and well-educated elites centered in Boston—developed a code of character based on “individualism, civic responsibility, and societal leadership” (6). Unable to find suitable avenues to exhibit their character in the antebellum period, Brahmins viewed the outbreak of the Civil War as an opportunity to validate a New England-centric worldview, which extolled the principles of industry and free labor. By raising regiments, training new recruits, and leading men into battle, Brahmins believed that they had finally become men of “independent thought and selfless action” (2). Finally, with the Union victorious on the battlefield and Brahmins’ character vindicated by service, Wongsrichanalai argues that New Englanders helped to initiate the process of reconciliation by clasping hands with former Confederates.

  An essential component to the Brahmin worldview was a Whiggish interpretation of American history. Brahmins asserted that America embodied the New England values of industry, thrift, and conservatism, which they believed enabled the spread of civilization into the West. Indeed, the Brahmins offered Americans a vision of history that began with the Puritans and excluded slavery from the national historical narrative. Wongsrichanalai argues that New Englanders sought to incorporate all Americans under “the broad ideological umbrella of progress, industry, and freedom” (45). In doing so, Brahmins labeled slavery as an aberration in American history, which helped to establish “conflicting historical narratives between the North and South” (60).

  Undergirding the Brahmin interpretation of American history was an ardent belief in American exceptionalism. For elite New Englanders, the Union was the embodiment of progress as well as the scion of “Western civilization and democratic ideals around the world” (60). Thus, when the Civil War erupted, Brahmins understood the conflict as an opportunity to test their personal character in defense of their country. Citing their education, they argued that they were uniquely qualified to fill the officer corps. Many Brahmins found it easier to demonstrate character by leading men into battle. In fact, many Brahmins, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., longingly recalled their days in the army and asserted the war was a proving ground for their character development.

  However, as the Union Army marched south, the Brahmins’ worldview was tested. Encountering un-free labor for the first time, Brahmins offered a paternalistic view of slaves and argued that freedmen could only be self-governing after years of education. While some Brahmins, including Robert Gould Shaw, were early supporters of the USCT, many New Englanders were skeptical of African American service and only reluctantly supported post-war Civil Rights legislation. Similarly, the Brahmin worldview was tested by poor white Southerners who, despite being free laborers, fought for un-free labor. Unable to rectify Southerners economic motives with their service in the Confederate Army, Brahmins believed that Southern gentlemen must have fought from a sense of duty and honor.

  With a growing respect for Southern gentlemen’s selfless dedication to service, Brahmins argued that the destruction wrought by the war—as well as emancipation—was punishment enough for the South. Appalled by government corruption and an inability to recapture the glory of military service, many Brahmins sought to hasten the end of Reconstruction. In fact, New Englanders suggested that, “only a reunion of the educated classes could restore peace and prosperity to the region” (176). Since Brahmins believed that their vision of America had succeeded, the dictates of character called for Northern and Southern gentlemen to honor one another’s service. In the post-war years, many prominent Brahmins promoted reconciliation by commending the devotion of enlisted Confederates and blaming the war on radicals.

  Even though Wongsrichanalai offers perceptive analysis of the Brahmin worldview, Northern Character has a few flaws. In particular, Wongsrichanalai fails to explore how Brahmins reacted when direct orders from superiors contradicted their code of character. For instance, Wongsrichanalai does not seriously analyze Brahmins’ understanding of the hard hand of war or Grant’s refusal to parole prisoners. These policies seemingly contradict the Brahmins’ belief in “selfless action.” More importantly, Northern Character undervalues the role of women in the formation of character. While Wongsrichanalai is clear about focusing on men in the Union Army, the lack of women in Northern Character is odd. Surely, mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters were deeply influential figures in how Brahmins developed not only their sense of self, but also their progressive worldview.

  Despite these relatively minor issues, Northern Character sheds new light on a group of men whose influence on postwar America was undeniable. With Brahmins serving as governors, professors, judges, and presidents, Wongsrichanalai offers provoking insight into the intellectual development of America’s elite. In doing so, he offers intellectual historians and historians of the Civil War era a framework that may help untangle the underpinnings of reconciliation.

• Civil War Book Review
  http://www.cwbr.com/civilwarbookreview/index.php?q=6449&field=ID&browse=yes&record=full&searching=yes&Submit=Search
  Word count: 1125

  Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era
  by Wongsrichanalai, Kanisorn
  Publisher: Fordham University Press
  Retail Price: $35.00
  Issue: Spring 2017
  ISBN: 9780823271825

  Patrician Leaders: New England’s Men of Character and the Civil War

  In Northern Character, Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai tells the story of an influential cohort of college-educated northerners who served as Union officers during the Civil War and played a leading role in American public life during the postwar era. This generation of “New Brahmins” included the likes of James A. Garfield, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Joshua L. Chamberlain, Oliver O. Howard, and Charles Russell Lowell. Wongsrichanalai offers a fresh and compelling interpretation of these well-known figures by examining how their ideas about character and nationalism, forged during their college years, guided them throughout their adult lives.

  Wongsrichanalai challenges scholarly narratives that portray honor culture as primarily a southern phenomenon. New Brahmins, he argues, had an honor code of their own. As young men, they internalized an ideal of gentlemanly character that emphasized independent thought, self-sacrifice, and self-control. Their identity as men of character influenced their decisions about military service, their conduct as officers, their perceptions of white southerners and slaves, and their attitudes toward Reconstruction.

  Northern Character begins by examining the social and intellectual world that young men encountered at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Amherst, and other New England colleges during the 1850s. Although the proliferation of colleges made higher education more accessible to northern youth during the antebellum decades, colleges continued to cultivate a fundamentally conservative and elitist worldview. Through their coursework, young men came to attribute the nation’s troubles to selfish politicians, who found it all too easy to manipulate a poorly educated citizenry. In order ensure the success of America’s republican experiment, New Brahmins believed, it was imperative for men of character to take the reins of national leadership.

  Northern colleges also promoted a “New England-centric vision” of America’s national character, history, and destiny (37). New Brahmins learned that Yankee industry and love of liberty had made the United States the pinnacle of Western civilization. While northern collegians were generally suspicious of radical abolitionism, they saw slavery as a blight on the nation, because it undermined the industry of slaveholders and diminished opportunities for free laborers. Only by extending free labor over the entire nation could the United States achieve its mission to promote liberty and democracy the world over.

  When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Union officials faced a shortage of experienced officers. They responded by turning to college-educated men, who seemed to possess the discipline and leadership abilities necessary to prepare soldiers for combat. Although their elders often sought to dissuade them from volunteering, many New Brahmins believed that it was their duty as men of character to risk their lives to preserve the Union and advance their free-labor vision. Despite their professed commitment to self-sacrifice, however, young elites also saw military service as an opportunity to secure their rightful place as societal leaders. Intent on maintaining their class status during wartime, they often went to great lengths to secure commissions as officers rather than joining the rank and file.

  On the battlefront, New Brahmins’ notions about character colored their impressions of the South and its people. While they admired the beauty of the southern landscape, they often decried the region’s untapped economic potential and the indolence of white southerners and slaves. In one of the most insightful parts of the book, Wongsrichanalai contends that New Brahmins drew a false distinction between the unseen slaveholders who led the movement for secession, and the officers and soldiers whom they confronted in battle. They blamed the former for impeding the region’s development through their reliance on slavery, and neglecting their responsibility to uplift poor whites. By contrast, New Brahmins often expressed admiration for their Confederate counterparts across the battlefield, who seemed to share their commitment to courage, self-sacrifice, and gentlemanly behavior.

  As officers, genteel northerners sought to use rigid discipline to cultivate character among their troops. According to Wongsrichanalai, the hierarchy and discipline of the Union army allowed these young elites to realize their vision of an ideal society, “in which everyday individuals obeyed orders from their social superiors” (141). Although Wongsrichanalai notes that they achieved “mixed results” on the battlefield, he presents a favorable assessment of their ability to prepare troops for battle, maintain their composure under fire, and earn the trust of their subordinates (162). For the most part, however, New Brahmins’ wartime experiences did little to alter their ethnic, racial, and class prejudices. Even as they witnessed the valor of black soldiers on the battlefield, for example, they often continued to see African Americans as innately deficient in character.

  After the war, as New Brahmins assumed positions of power in government, the military, and the professions, they quickly grew ambivalent about Reconstruction. On the one hand, many supported the establishment of constitutional protections for black citizenship rights and the use of the Freedmen’s Bureau to educate former slaves. On the other hand, their aversion to radicalism, identification with southern elites, and concerns about governmental overreach led them to push for speedy reconciliation with the South’s “natural leaders” (17). Furthermore, the scandals of the Grant administration convinced many New Brahmins that the federal government had fallen into the hands of the same type of corrupt politicians who had led the nation astray during the antebellum era. Some worked to reform the Republican Party from within; others bolted for the Liberal Republican movement. Increasingly, however, New Brahmins withdrew from electoral politics altogether, dedicating themselves to founding schools, working as lawyers and judges, and participating in various reform movements.

  Throughout Northern Character, Wongsrichanalai deftly weaves together a wealth of source material from the letters, diaries, college essays, speeches, and published writings of forty-nine New Brahmins. These sources allow him to present a rich portrait of his subjects’ views and motives, but they provide fewer insights into how other historical actors perceived and responded to these self-styled men of character. In analyzing New Brahmins’ conduct as officers, for example, Wongsrichanalai offers only one intriguing example of how a rank-and-file soldier viewed his commanding officer. Consequently, it is difficult for the reader to evaluate how New Brahmins’ assessment of their own character and leadership comported with the assessments of those who followed them into battle. Northern Character is nevertheless an impressive scholarly achievement. Engagingly written and convincingly argued, the book holds important insights for scholars interested in the cultural roots of sectional conflict, the social dynamics of the Union army, and the postwar movements for reconciliation and liberal reform.

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