During the Civil War, humans impacted plants and animals on an unprecedented scale as soldiers on both sides waged the most environmentally destructive war ever on American soil. In Flora and Fauna of the Civil War, Kelby Ouchley blends traditional and natural history to create a unique text that explores both the impact of the Civil War on the surrounding environment and the reciprocal influence of plants and animals on the war effort. After discussing the physical setting of the war and exploring humans' attitudes toward nature during the Civil War period, Ouchley presents the flora and fauna by individual species or closely related group in the words of the participants themselves. Collectively, no better sources exist to reveal human attitudes toward the environment in the Civil War era.

Animals mattered in the Civil War. Horses and mules powered the Union and Confederate armies, providing mobility for wagons, pulling artillery pieces, and serving as fighting platforms for cavalrymen. Drafted to support the war effort, horses often died or suffered terrible wounds on the battlefield. Raging diseases also swept through army herds and killed tens of thousands of other equines. In addition to weaponized animals such as horses, pets of all kinds accompanied nearly every regiment during the war. Dogs commonly served as unit mascots and were also used in combat against the enemy. Living and fighting in the natural environment, soldiers often encountered a variety of wild animals. They were pestered by many types of insects, marveled at exotic fish while being transported along the coasts, and took shots at alligators in the swamps along the lower Mississippi River basin. Animal Histories of the Civil War Era charts a path to understanding how the animal world became deeply involved in the most divisive moment in American history. In addition to discussions on the dominant role of horses in the war, one essay describes the use of camels by individuals attempting to spread slavery in the American Southwest in the antebellum period. Another explores how smaller wildlife, including bees and other insects, affected soldiers and were in turn affected by them. One piece focuses on the congressional debate surrounding the creation of a national zoo, while another tells the story of how the famous show horse Beautiful Jim Key and his owner, a former slave, exposed sectional and racial fault lines after the war. Other topics include canines, hogs, vegetarianism, and animals as veterans in post–Civil War America. The contributors to this volume—scholars of animal history and Civil War historians—argue for an animal-centered narrative to complement the human-centered accounts of the war. Animal Histories of the Civil War Era reveals that warfare had a poignant effect on animals. It also argues that animals played a vital role as participants in the most consequential conflict in American history. It is time to recognize and appreciate the animal experience of the Civil War period.

Slavery was at the heart of the South's agrarian economy before and during the Civil War. Agriculture provided products essential to the war effort, from dietary rations to antimalarial drugs to raw materials for military uniforms and engineering. Drawing on a range of primary sources, this history examines the botany and ethnobotany of America's defining conflict. The author describes the diverse roles of cash crops, herbal medicine, subsistence agriculture and the diet and cookery of enslaved people.

During the Civil War, humans impacted plants and animals on an unprecedented scale as soldiers on both sides waged the most environmentally destructive war ever on American soil. Refugees and armies alike tramped across the landscape foraging for food, shelter, and fuel. Wild plants and animals formed barriers for armies and carried disease, yet also provided medicine and raw materials necessary to implement war, greatly influencing the day-to-day life of soldiers and civilians. Of the thousands of books written about the Civil War, few mention the environment, and none address the topic as a principal theme. In Flora and Fauna of the Civil War, Kelby Ouchley blends traditional and natural history to create a unique text that explores both the impact of the Civil War on the surrounding environment and the reciprocal influence of plants and animals on the war effort. The war generated an abundance of letters, diaries, and journals in which soldiers and civilians penned descriptions of plants and animals, sometimes as a brief comment in passing and other times as part of a noteworthy event in their lives. Ouchley collects and organizes these first-person accounts of the Civil War environment, adding expert analysis and commentary in order to offer an array of fascinating insights on the natural history of the era. After discussing the physical setting of the war and exploring humans' attitudes toward nature during the Civil War period, Ouchley presents the flora and fauna by individual species or closely related group in the words of the participants themselves. From ash trees to willows, from alligators to white-tailed deer, the excerpts provide glimpses of personal encounters with the natural world during the war, revealing how soldiers and civilians thought about and interacted with wild flora and fauna in a time of epic historical events. Collectively, no better sources exist to reveal human attitudes toward the environment in the Civil War era. This one-of-a-kind reference book will spark widespread interest among Civil War scholars, writers, and enthusiasts, as well as environmental historians.

The Blue, the Gray, and the Green is one of only a handful of books to apply an environmental history approach to the Civil War. This book explores how nature-disease, climate, flora and fauna, and other factors-affected the war and also how the war shaped Americans' perceptions, understanding, and use of nature. The contributors use a wide range of approaches that serve as a valuable template for future environmental histories of the conflict. In his introduction, Brian Allen Drake describes the sparse body of environmental history literature related to the Civil War and lays out a blueprint for the theoretical basis of each essay. Kenneth W. Noe emphasizes climate and its effects on agricultural output and the battlefield; Timothy Silver explores the role of disease among troops and animals; Megan Kate Nelson examines aridity and Union defeat in 1861 New Mexico; Kathryn Shively Meier investigates soldiers' responses to disease in the Peninsula Campaign; Aaron Sachs, John C. Inscoe, and Lisa M. Brady examine philosophical and ideological perspectives on nature before, during, and after the war; Drew Swanson discusses the war's role in production and landscape change in piedmont tobacco country; Mart A. Stewart muses on the importance of environmental knowledge and experience for soldiers, civilians, and slaves; Timothy Johnson elucidates the ecological underpinnings of debt peonage during Reconstruction; finally, Paul S. Sutter speculates on the future of Civil War environmental studies. The Blue, the Gray, and the Green provides a provocative environmental commentary that enriches our understanding of the Civil War.

The relationship between humans and domestic animals has changed in dramatic ways over the ages, and those transitions have had profound consequences for all parties involved. As societies evolve, the selective pressures that shape domestic populations also change. Some animals retain close relationships with humans, but many do not. Those who establish residency in the wild, free from direct human control, are technically neither domestic nor wild: they are feral. If we really want to understand humanity's complex relationship with domestic animals, then we cannot simply ignore the ones who went feral. This is especially true in the American South, where social and cultural norms have facilitated and sustained large populations of feral animals for hundreds of years. Feral Animals in the American South retells southern history from this new perspective of feral animals.

"Although many books have depicted the roles of men and women in the Civil War, Dogs of War, on the other hand, contains important information on the roles that animal played in that brutal war. Few people know that many soldiers carried their pets with them when they went off to war, that dogs provided the recruits with both companionship and a connection to the home front, and that cats, birds and goats, not to mention Old Abe, the eagle, served as mascots. Mules and horses, however, were the animals that bore the brunt of the war alongside the American soldiers fighting against each other in a devastating war that was to see the preservation of the Union and the end to the scourge of chattel slavery." -- Amazon.com.