Claiming the Union

Susanna Michele Lee is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University, where she specializes in nineteenth-century American history, especially the Civil War and Reconstruction. She received her BA in History and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and her MA and PhD in History from the University of Virginia. Lee has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and Wake Forest University. Active in the burgeoning field of digital humanities, she has served as the project manager for the digital archives The Valley of the Shadow, The State of History, and North Carolina in the Civil War Era. Lee has received fellowships from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the Virginia Historical Society. She has also participated in a National Endowment in the Humanities summer seminar on the ethnohistory of Indians in the American South at the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

• Introduction; 1. 'We have fought the first skirmish': loyalty and citizenship; 2. Men's Union: fixing the standard of a Union man; 3. Women's Union: reckoning with the female Union man; 4. Former slaves' Union: bestowing charity or rewarding loyalty; 5. The colored Union: being all things to all men; Conclusion.

'This important addition to postbellum Southern and US history brings into focus contributions from various sources to the understanding of citizenship in the US … Highly recommended.' J. P. Sanson, Choice